01-Guardrails

What’s Next? is not a question you ask once. It’s a question you continually ask yourself to keep moving forward. Deciding to reorder your life based on God’s priorities is an ongoing process. God calls this process sanctification and he’s eager to see you grow. Paul writes: “[God] who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

This series of articles is intended to help you walk from your own way to God’s way as efficiently as possible. If you’re going to go take this on, there are a couple of things we need to agree on. They’re like guardrails. They may not tell us which way to go, but they make certain we stay on the road and don’t wind up in the ditch.

FAITH

It’s my sincere hope that some of you are not believers just yet, but that you’re exploring something new because you’ve realized that what you’re doing is not working very well. This may be harder for you to embrace. For example, if I’ve learned anything about discussing matters of faith with those who aren’t Christ-followers, it’s that the idea that the Bible is true because the Bible says its true doesn’t necessarily work for you. I get that this type of circular reasoning is problematic for you.

For our purposes, let’s define faith simply as: a complete trust or confidence in something. I’m not asking you to start this project and to take my word for it. I want you to think of it this way: for the moment, approach faith like you approach an action movie or a Hallmark movie.

When you’re watching an action movie, some people have no problem believing that the hero can dive behind a couch, roll to the corner, and take out six bad guys and stand up without a scratch on them. When you’re watching a Hallmark movie, some of you can suspend your cynicism long enough to believe that at the exact moment the spunky female protagonist was about to lose her apple cider business to foreclosure, her high school crush wanders into her life looking to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big city by investing his extra billions in a cider press.

Some of you however, are like me…you’re a menace during these movies! You like to point out every possible exception, every questionable application of physics, and any possible exception or loophole. I’m not saying you should blindly follow the tenets of scripture or the concepts I’m going to put forward, but if you approach the project looking to poke holes in it, you’ll struggle to reap any benefits (plus you’ll get hit by your wife during rom-coms).

SCRIPTURE

If you are already a person of faith, or if you grew up in the Church, this one will be easier for you and you’re probably already familiar with this passage from 2 Timothy, “16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). For any of this to work, you have to embrace that what’s in the Bible is the actual Word of God and that it can and must be applied to our lives. We’ll be looking to scripture as the ultimate guardrail as we move forward.

THE SUPERNATURAL DOESN'T MEAN SUPER WEIRD

This is a spoiler, but a big part of you going from where you are to a healthier place is you accepting your need for community. When it comes to building a community of faith, part of that process is worshipping together. Take a moment and think about what a modern church service looks like: a group of people gather together at a set time to sing songs, to give some of their hard earned money in obedience and support of that community, and to hear someone give a speech that calls on us to make changes in our lives. If we don’t admit that we believe in the existence of something supernatural (i.e. God), then Sundays are the weirdest country club meeting of all time. That being said, the Church, and the way it’s often portrayed in the media, can trend itself towards the weird. You can absolutely believe in something bigger than yourself and trust it to guide your life without living like the caricatures of Christ-followers you may have seen before.

Peter writes in the Book of Hebrews, “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). The good news is, when some of your challenges feel impossible, the supernatural God that we believe in is not limited by what we see as possible.

THE NEED TO START BAILING!

As the pastors at CCC, we’ve walked many people out of a variety of situations. Some of them were just unhappy, or felt stuck in their marriage, or their job, or in an addiction or a habit. We’ve also helped people who were in a destructive or a dangerous environment find a safe place to land until they could get on track to a better life. In either situation, at some point you have to take a step forward. In our lives, God doesn’t reveal his entire plan. Most of the time, we just know what we’re supposed to do next. Sometimes when we’re struggling, we get stuck in a bad place because we feel like we don’t know the entire plan or the entire solution. These delays, sometimes called “analysis paralysis,” just make the problem worse.

Picture yourself on a canoe that had sprung a leak. If you sit there debating how you would even patch the hole or get back to land, you might sink before you decide. At some point, you may need to just start bailing water to keep yourself afloat until you can identify what to do next. The process is easier if you get to work. You can do it, and you don’t have to do it alone.