Shaun King’s Blog on Courage & Corn Pops
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Check out all of the podcasts, including the concluding message from this past Sunday, from our 100 Life Goals series here:
Part 4 (Physical & Influence Goals)
Part 3 (Travel & Experience Goals)
Part 2 (Family & Friends Goals)
Stream them, download them, or get ‘em on iTunes!
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Search “Courageous Church” on iTunes or get our latest podcast from 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory here.
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The Courageous Church is currently going through a series entitled 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory. It has been a powerful experience as we guide our community through a very real process of creating a real, working, God-inspired plan for their lives. Here are the scriptures that we used this past Sunday to help inspire & guide us as we create the first 25 goals we call Family/Friend Goals.
Scripture on Family/Living in Community
Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him. – Genesis 2:18
Thinking of Your Spouse
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.[b] 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body. – Ephesians 5:21-30
Thinking of Your Parents
Honor your father and your mother so that you may have a long life in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. –Exodus 20:12
6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. –Deuteronomy 6:6-7
Thinking of Your Children
3 Children are a gift from the LORD;
they are a reward from him.
4 Children born to a young man
are like arrows in a warrior’s hands.
5 How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them! – Psalm 127:3-5
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Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them. Rather, bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the Lord. – Ephesians 6:4
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SCRIPTURES ON FRIENDS
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There are “friends” who destroy each other,
but a real friend sticks closer than a brother. – Proverbs 18:24
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An open rebuke
is better than hidden love!
Wounds from a sincere friend
are better than many kisses from an enemy. – Proverbs 27:5-6
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9 Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. 10 If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. 11 Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? 12 A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. – Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
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12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. 13 There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. – John 15:12-15
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(This is part 2 from my opening message for 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory)
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Do you still have dreams? You used to.
You used to dream big, exciting, audacious dreams in which you were courageous and fully alive. In those dreams you saw yourself as successful. In fact, the funny thing about the dreams that you used to have is that in your old dreams they didn’t show you running for President – you were just the President. They skipped the process.
You weren’t in law school or med school – you were just a lawyer or a doctor. It didn’t show you working day and night to study the playbook, you were just an NFL quarterback. In your dreams you were already an astronaut or a pilot or chef or a teacher or a pastor or a rock star or an actress or a New York Times bestselling author – dreams have a way of skipping the process and going right to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and this is partly what makes dreams so much fun.
Then we move out of mom’s house with our dreams a bit battered by the madness they call high school, but we still have them, until something nefarious comes along. More evil than Darth Vader & Jigsaw, more sinister than a child spawned by the Joker & Cruella DeVille – something ominous comes along that has eaten away at all of our dreams…
Wanna know what it is…3 words…maybe 2.5
To-Do List!
You used to have dreams. Beautiful dreams. Amazing dreams. You used to have self-esteem. You used to really believe in yourself and in the possibilities of who you could become, but you traded your dreams in for a to-do list.
Do laundry.
Pay cell phone bill or ask for extension.
Return emails.
Download iPhone app.
Be nice.
Blow dust off of Bible.
Read Bible.
Lose weight.
Cook dinner.
Eat breakfast.
Clip coupons.
Look for new job.
Improve resume.
Find doctor for pain.
Look at college websites.
Don’t die.
Start praying.
Join health club.
Cancel HBO before free trial ends.
You traded your dreams in for a to-do list. It’s not even a juicy to-do list. It’s not really pro-active – it’s a reactionary list. A never-ending list of semi-important things you need to do to pretty much maintain the status quo in your life, but the Bible says that Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundantly. Jesus did not come and die on the cross so that your sorry butt could cancel HBO 30 minutes before the free trial ends.
I’d like to jog your memory. Forget about the to-do list for a minute and I want you to remember your childhood dreams. For some of you that is going to require a bit more digging than others, but I want you to start thinking and remembering your childhood dreams and I want you to grab the little notebooks in front of you. They’re yours to keep. Grab a notebook. We’re going to sing the song Free, and while we sing, I want you to write everything you can remember about who and what you dreamed of becoming…
Trust me, this exercise is going to help you in many ways for where we are about to go.
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(As we wait for our podcast to be put up…I thought I’d post the intro to my message from this past Sunday up for you to read. Our series is entitled 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory. I’ll post part 2 tomorrow.)
I started off God’s Minute which you can read here.
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Minute by minute. Hour by hour. Day by day. Month by month. Year by year. Life goes on.
Many a people have made the mistake of thinking that life won’t go on without them, but with you or without you, time keeps on ticking and life goes on, but sadly, most of us are living but we aren’t fully ALIVE because we exist with the cart before the horse.
Our bills set our budget.
Our job and our boss set our schedule.
McDonald’s makes our menu.
The television lineup sets our sleep patterns.
Pretending like God didn’t give us charge over the time that He gave us, we allow time to squeeze the value out of us instead of us squeezing the value out of time. And at the end of our day, at the end of our month, and the end of our year, at the end of our lives, most of us have nothing or nearly nothing to show for the tens of thousands of days that we have been here on Earth. Indeed, today is day #10,545 in my life and in some ways I feel young, but as I reflect on that number and think of that number for you, I have to wonder, have I, have we lived far beneath our potential? I think so.
And while many reasons exist for why we live beneath our God-given potential, I think that Proverbs 29:18 states it better than any of them…
“Where there is no vision, people perish.”
Hellen Keller, who was deaf and blind, but determined, echoed Proverbs 29:18 when she said this,
“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.”
Where there is no vision, where there is no ability to see the magnificent possibilities of what God could do through you and through us, where there is no vision, people die. Some of them keep on breathing, keep on clocking in, keep on ordering a #1 with cheese and a Coke to drink please, but where there is no vision perish, but God. But God. But God is not through with you and although you may have been vision-less for 10,545 days, today can be the day you decided to do life differently.
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This past Sunday we launched into what I think is the most life-changing message series we have experienced as a community faith entitled, 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory. Beyond record attendance, we had record participation and buy-in and it was overwhelmingly obvious to me that people are hungry and ready to live a life that not only honors God, but is a part of a well conceived vision.
One of the passages of scripture that guided my message this past Sunday was Hebrews 11:1. I was familiar with the passage, but saw it very differently as we prepared to help people create a vision for their lives. The passage, which gives a simple but profound definition of faith, states
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
The question that I could not shake after reading this is… What Do You Hope For?
If faith is being sure of what we hope for, but we have not clearly articulated and defined our hopes, what does this say about our faith? For most of us, we have a very reactionary, shallow type of hope like fueled by statements like,
I hope I have enough money to pay the bills. I hope I don’t get a ticket while speeding. I hope this burger doesn’t make me fat. I hope people like my new shirt and hairstyle. I hope I don’t lose my job.
Here’s the thing…we all have reactionary and shallow hope from time to time, but God is calling us to better define our hopes!
What are you hoping for? Have you thought it through? Have you bathed in prayer? Have you consulted wise people? Have you spent more time planning out your dinner and organizing your iPhone than you have creating a vision for your life?
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I heard this poem regularly as a student @ Morehouse College. It’s about squeezing value out of the time that God has given you. I’m pretty sure most of us forget that our time on earth was given to us as a gift to use and is severely limited.
Simple but profound, Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, the beloved President of Morehouse from 1940-1967, recited this poem regularly to students and I will be sharing it today as we launch our series on 100 Life Goals @ Courageous Church.
I’ve only just a minute,
Only sixty seconds in it.
Forced upon me, can’t refuse it,
Didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it,
But it’s up to me to use it.
I must suffer if I lose it,
Give an account if I abuse it,
Just a tiny little minute,
But eternity is in it.
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Tomorrow we are starting what I think is going to be the most powerful, life-changing series in the life of our young church – 100 Life Goals: Creating a Vision for Victory. I wanted to create a simple resource list for you that I will be referencing throughout the series. This is a living list that I will be adding my sermon notes to as well as other resources that will help you in this journey.
10 Steps to Setting 100 Life Goals by Mark Batterson (This is an amazing instructive article that also includes Mark’s 100 Life Goals list. Much of what I am basing our 100 Life Goals series on was first inspired by this article.)
John Goddard’s 127 Life Goals (The list of the world’s greatest goal achiever)
Ted’s 101 List (You will be shocked when you see how many checks on this list from the owner of the Washington Captials. I love the categories too.)
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This short article from Mark Batterson about 10 Steps to Setting 100 Life Goals is a life-changer.
I am pretty much basing the 100 Life Goals series that I am starting tomorrow on the ideas I read here.
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If faith is “the substance of things HOPED FOR and the evidence of things unseen,” the question is….
What are YOU hoping for?
If you don’t choose what you HOPE for, here’s the thing…life will choose for you!
Ever find yourself just hoping you have enough money to make it through the month? We all have.
Ever find yourself hoping that the weekend will hurry up and get here? Sure.
These aren’t terrible goals, but they are reactionary. They lack depth.
For 4 weeks @ Courageous Church (http://Courageous.tv) Pastor Shaun King is going to be teaching us the true power of “Creating a Vision for Victory” by setting 100 Life Goals that serve as the focus of your hope.
God desires that YOU have a vision for what’s next!
Come learn how to set life goals that stick!
Learn how to set life goals that honor God AND improve the quality of your life.
EVERY SUNDAY @ 10:30am on
August 16th
August 23rd
August 30th
September 6th
RSVP for 100 Life Goals TODAY!
FREE BREAKFAST every Sunday from 9am-10:30am too.
Details @ http://FreeBreakfastChurch.com
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