This fall at church, we’re going to be starting up a whole new series of small groups and I’ll be leading a men’s group called “Curveball.” Here’s the promo paragraph I wrote for it:
Phil 3:13-14a “But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on …”
In a perfect world, there would be no curveballs - life would be under our control and go as expected. The problem is, it simply doesn’t work that way! Life throws a lot of curves, and the purpose of Curveball is to help men get past them. Fair or not, the curveballs of life are part of who we are today. And given that reality, Curveball will help men ask the important question, “So now what?” The short answer can be found in the first three words of Phil 3:14: I…PRESS…ON!
The thing that got me started on this topic was my job lay-off that I just went through this year. That was my most recent “curveball.” Of course, we’ll be taking a Christian approach, but it occurs to me that this topic is something that could be useful to people of any faith or non-faith.
The question that we’ll be working on isn’t “Why did this happen?” or “Why did GOD LET this happen?” (although that may come up!), but rather, “Given that this happened, how am I going to respond?”
The material I’m planning on using is two series by Andy Stanley called Destinations, and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. I’ve never heard them before, but I like Andy Stanley’s communication style and I think it will connect well. Here’s what they’re about:
We all have places we want to end up in life. Yet the paths we choose often lead us away from our intended destinations. One poor decision can send us down the wrong road, crushing our dreams, and wasting years of our lives. As time passes, we look back wondering how we got off course, and how we can recover from broken dreams. In this four-part series Destinations, Andy Stanley examines the disconnect between our dreams and the paths we take to reach them—that our direction, not our intentions, determines our destinations. Then, in the two-part series Boulevard of Broken Dreams, we learn how we should react when our dreams can’t ever come true.
It seems to be taking more an angle of “recovering from bad choices” than “dealing with difficult circumstances,” but I think it will apply well - especially the last two parts.
Another one I’m considering using is called “Life Interrupted,” by Louis Giglio.
Posted in A Cacophony of Posts, Mike O | 2 Comments »A pink slip you didn’t see coming. A devastating test result. An untimely death. Sooner or later, interruptions come crashing in on us all, bringing with them a flood of questions about life and truth. Why did this happen? Where is God? How am I ever going to make it through these days? Yet, in the midst of confusion, God calls us to ask a different set of questions and embrace a new way of thinking, a path that leads us to understand His purposes in a seemingly unstable world.
Two weeks ago I wrote about false assumptions and how Christians suffered in the past because of them just as atheists suffer today. Atheism doesn’t have a philosophy or principles to counter these false assumptions any more than it has a philosophy or principles to deserve them. Secular humanism does put forward a set of positive traits and promotes a world view. These are:
This week I wish to discuss why reason, evidence and the scientific method are important to our world view.
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