Without friction in our lives it is hard to get the ruff edges off.  I worked construction all growing up and when you want to deliver the final product to the customer, you want it to be smooth with no ruff edges. You don’t want them to slide their hand on a railing and get a splinter, that would be a very bad thing.  No you want everything to be perfect.  So what you do is you get the wood into place and then you sand it like crazy, back and forth, back and forth until it is smooth and ready to be used for what it was intended.  God is doing the same thing in our lives so many times.  He is taking out the sand paper of life(trials) and going back and forth, back and forth to smooth out the ruff areas of our lives so we can be used for his glory and purpose.  The problem is that most of us don’t like the trials.  So instead of enduring the pain, we run from the pain and wonder why we are not doing something great in our lives.  We have got to go through the trials to become the man or woman that God wants us to become.

I want to encourage you today to look for the hope in the trial, not the trial itself.  In the end you will come out looking more and more like your intended purpose.

I want to encourage EVERYONE and I mean EVERYONE to find some people in life who will encourage, build you up, stand with you, give you a kick in the butt, push you towards your dreams, hold you accountable and most importantly love you.  If you don’t know where to find people like that, I would encourage you to get involved in a small group at church.  I know that for us at Coastal Community Church we will have the opportunity to sign up for small groups again this Sunday, January 31st after the service and all the groups will be starting next week.  Find some place to jump into relationships with others and see how God transforms your life to look more like the life you have always dreamed.

I am jacked up about this weekend because I am sharing a principle that has guided our life throughout the years.  I believe that this weekend can revolutionize where you are going in life and how you are getting there.  I know that God has a purpose and plan for your life.  I also truly believe that God wants you to know that vision more than you or I want to know what that vision is for our life.  I am believing that all of you would get a picture of where God wants to take you.  I can’t wait to share, so be ready for God to show up and do something BIG in your life.

“We live in the pain between the way things are now and the way they are supposed to be. Jesus didn’t teach us to pray, ‘God get us out of this story. This is a bad story. Take us out of here.’  He taught us to pray, ‘Let Thy Kingdom come!  On earth as it is in Heaven. In my body. In my family. In our church. In every dark place on the planet.’”

Check out this video on the Lord’s Prayer, it is very moving

As a staff we are reading a book by Skye Jethani called The Divine Commodity.  The book is about discovering our faith beyond being consumer Christians.  We are just in chapter one but there are some great and thought provoking quotes that I thought I would share.

“Problems cannot be solved with the same consciousness that created them.” Albert Einstein

“Questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined.  The imagination must come before implementation.  Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and imagine almost nothing.”

“The fertile land of imagination is a terrain we pass through, not a field we cultivate.”

“Jesus’ adult followers suffered from a chronic lack of imagination.  Their minds were shackled by conventionality.”

“Art should do more than present reality; it should represent reality by uncovering the truth that is not apparent to the naked eye.”  Vincent Van Gogh

“He didn’t merely present the world as it is; he represented it as one full of God’s presence and love.  But to see this world a person needs more than eyes.  He or she needs a ray from on high, an imagination awakened and illuminated by God.”

“If your imagination of God is starved then when you come up against difficulties, you have not power, you can only endure darkness.”  Oswald Chambers

and the most convicting statement

“The contemporary American church is so largely enculturated to the American ethos of consumerism that it has little power to believe or to act.”