EPIC -- What's Holding You Back?

If you look up the word EPIC in the dictionary and look under the adjective part of the definition you will find it to say; heroic, majestic, impressively great. For most of us it is hard to think that our lives could be listed as heroic, majestic, impressively great, but that is what God intended our lives to be, that is what He wants our lives to be and unforunately for many of us we have a ton of things that are holding us back from believing what we are truly created to be.

Remember the best stories you have ever read, even maybe the stories you read as a child, there was always a villian that was ready to destroy the dream, the witch that wanted to spoil Dorothy's trip home to Kansas, the wolf that wanted to get the three little pigs, Lucy who kept pulling the football out of the way just at the last moment -- isn't that how life feels sometimes? Like everything is going well and then BAM! something happens -- you lose a friend, someone ticks you off, your car breaks down, you fight with your family. Every story has a villian and yours is SATAN -- John 10:10.

What is holding you back in writing the EPIC of your story? Is it fear of failure? Is it fear of rejection? Is it fear of the unknown. See Satan is trying to be the villian of your story. He is trying to mess up your story so that you DON'T believe in yourself, so that you don't believe that your life can be heroic, majestic, impressively great. Whatever is holding you back, examine it, name it, and overcome it, because the best part of my life, your life, is yet to come.

Just Find Someone Else

Reading through Exodus today focusing on Moses' life and got to the point where Moses makes every excuse he can think of to not go to Egypt to rescue the Israelites -- I am no good, they won't believe me, they won't like me, they will laugh at me, I don't talk well and God responded to everything that he came up with and finally Moses said -- just go and find someone else, I don't want to go!

I at times just want someone else to do stuff that I don't want to do. I know God wants me to do something, but I just don't want to do it and I rationalize tons of excuses but none of them really measure up. As I look to this year I know God is calling me to tasks, to opportunities that are bigger than I can imagine and outside of my comfort zone. It would be very easy for me to say no God, not going there, find someone else, find someone who is better qualified, more exciting, better chance to succeed, but I realize that God wants to use me, He wants to use you -- join me in 2008 being used by God in the WAY HE WANTS us to be used.

I guarantee it will be a wild ride

THE EPIC

Will Your Story Live On

This week I am going to start a 4 week series titled THE EPIC -- Will Your Story Live On -- as we prepare our students and parents for a shift in how we do student ministry at Horizons. I am going to work through the life of Moses as we look at the story that we all are telling in our lives. I think that many of us want our lives to mean something, we want to know that life is more than working hard, running in and out of relationships, doing the dishes, making sure we have got everything done that we were supposed to get done, trying to just get by another day. See I believe that we each are telling a story with our lives and that story has the potential to be earth shattering and everyday we have a choice to make our stories an EPIC novel or a infomerical on page 32 of the newspaper.

As we go forward in life, we MUST choose to live and to write our EPICS one day at a time. Moses was not always a confident guy, he didn't always believe in himself or others, he made mistakes, but he also took risks, did the unimaginable and listened to God and God used him. In the Christian world and even in the nonChristian world the EPIC of Moses life lives on 1000's of years after he lived. I want to live like my story matters, not to see if my name will live on after I die, but to make sure the story I am living points to Jesus and that people will remember Him through my life long after they remember me.

Join me this year in wrting the next chapter in THE EPIC of your life. Hang on it is going to be a great ride!