My Epic Journey

Here is the programming outline for Week 4 of our Outflow series:

Supply List:

• 8×14 inch paper (one per student)
• Different colored markers (lots)
• Dry Erase board and markers

Connection Game:

Students find a partner. They are given 30 seconds to share answers to the questions below. After 30 seconds, they switch to the other partner answering the question. Students will then change partners and re-do the process.

• Who was your childhood friend and why? (change partners)
• Who is your favorite relative and why? (change partners)
• Who is your wackiest relative? (change partners)
• Which family member is hardest for you to talk to about God? (change partners)

Read Acts 1.8

• What is your Judea?
• Who falls into that category?
• What is the best way for us to reach our Judea?

Video Clip—Week 3

• Where are you friends in the “process” of becoming Christians?
• How can you be there for them and help them as they go through the process?

Practical Activity—Spiritual Timeline

Hand out 8×14 paper and copies of personal timeline. Give students time to think and then construct their own personal timeline.

Divide students into pairs and have them share their personal timeline.

We are a family of sleep-walkers.  I won’t always remember it but my wife says I will talk and sit-up in my sleep.  She will talk and has been known to pet invisible dogs in her sleep.  But our middle child is probably the worst.  Noah will carry on a conversation and will also walk aimlessly around the house–all while being dead asleep.  Speaking of aimlessly–we have caught him a couple of times using the restroom while asleep.  The problem is he doesn’t aim for the toilet but the trash can!!!!  Makes for fun clean-up.  We usually have a lot of fun with him.

But sleepwalking can be dangerous.  Here are signs of sleepwalking:

• eyes open during sleep
• may have blank facial expression
• may sit up and appear awake during sleep
• walking during sleep
• other detailed activity during sleep, any sort
• no recall of the event upon awaking
• confusion, disorientation on awakening
• sleep talking is incomprehensible and non-purposeful

Spiritually speaking, there are also sleepwalkers.  People who walk through life as if they are spiritually alive and yet are still spiritually asleep.

Here are the signs to look for to see if you are a SPIRITUAL sleepwalker:

• you HEAR the Word but don’t DO what is says. (James 1.22-24)
• you sit in church service yet never look engaged to what is going on.
• you come to worship service hoping to be fed because you haven’t fed yourself any time during the week.
• you don’t recall any spiritually impacting moment in your life.
• when it comes to spiritual things, you are confused and disoriented.
• your spiritual life is incomprehensible and non-purposeful.
• your spiritual talk is incoherent and doesn’t match your lifestyle

As you read down this list does any of them point to you?  If so, you need to take a spiritual inventory of your life and ask the question, “Am I a spiritual sleepwalker?”

Life is not as bad as it could be.  I know it is tough but after reading a quote by Wallace Stegner in his memoir, Wolf Willow,  where he describes the Dust Bowl drought of 1917 in southern Saskatchewan life for us looks pretty good.  Here is the quote:

There was a whole folklore of water. People said a man had to make a dipperful go as far as it would. You boiled sweet corn, say. Instead of throwing the water out, you washed the dishes in it. Then you washed your hands in it a few times. Then you strained it through a cloth into the radiator of your car, and if your car should break down, you didn’t just leave the water to evaporate in its gullet, but drained it out to water the sweet peas.

But as I read this quote I was struck by how desperate times must have been and to what great lengths people had to go through to simply meet basic needs.

In my reading this morning in 1 Kings 18, Israel is faced with their own dust bowl–a drought God had placed on the land because of the wickedness of Ahab but mostly because the Israelites where worshipping between two gods.

21 Elijah went before the people and said, “How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.”

The hearts of the people wavered and God needed their undivided attention.  This recalls to my mind another verse in Scripture, Matthew 6.24,

24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

I can relate to both of these verses.  I know I often waver between which god to serve–the One true living God or the god of pride, lust, money, personal preference, etc.  And yet EVERY time I find myself worshipping a god other than THE God, I always find myself in a Spiritual Dust Bowl.

Questions:

1.  Would you consider yourself in a Spiritual Dust Bowl/Desert now?

2.  If so, why?

3.  Where is your current focus?  On self or on God?