(Discussion Notes Below) Today’s topic is ambition. The lie is that ambition is the fuel for personal success. The truth is that ambition is a gift for Kingdom impact. Ambition: a working definition – “A strong desire which leads to a willingness to overcome and fight through obstacles – to achieve a desired outcome.” Ambition is a good thing. God’s mandates are very ambitious! Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them…
(Discussion notes below) Good morning – if you’re visiting or you go to another church – my name is Matt McFarling – assistant pastor here at CCC. Paul asked me to pick up this meeting where we left off last meeting – the topic of Lust – pt. 2. Our discussions are based on Fighting Shadows, and the chapter on Lust is chapter 5. I don’t know if Paul knew this about me when he asked me, but this discussion…
The lie is that I am a slave to my sexual desire. The truth is that faithfulness is a key to my formation. Lack of sexual control is not a new problem. Proverbs 7:21-27 and Proverbs 6:32 tell us this. We see this self-destruction in the Bible. David, the man after God’s own heart, self-destructs. In 1 Samuel 11, David was alone with no accountability. Then he saw Bathsheba, he inquired about her, he sent for her, he took her….
(Audio transcription below) Last time I mentioned that the very first thing in the Bible that is said to be “not good” is loneliness. Genesis 2:18 says “it’s not good that man should be alone.” The lie is that loneliness is part of being a man. The truth is that friendship is a superpower. When you’re in a war, you go through a lot of intense things in a short period of time and create friendships that you wouldn’t create…
(Audio transcription below) Because we are separated from God, what was right now seems wrong. The deceptive thing about sin is that you can’t see it clearly. We see a problem and so often misdiagnose the solution. We lie to ourselves more than we lie to anybody else. We deceive ourselves. Our topic this week and next week is loneliness. The lie we believe is that loneliness is part of being a man. It’s almost like a badge. I can…
(Audio Transcript Below) I don’t know why this is, but dogs can feel shame. We’ll talk about five signals of shame and this dog has picked up on one, blame shifting! One signal that shame is operational in your life is if you’re blame shifting. The book talks about shame this way: the lie that we buy into is, “I need to do everything possible to prevent people from seeing my failures and weakness.” So we walk in here this…
The lie of shame is that I need to do everything possible to hide. I need to do everything possible to prevent people from really knowing me. The truth is God really delights in you and he’s the one who does see everything. He sees everything and he wants you to change, but he loves you fully just the way you are. He doesn’t want you to stay where you are, but he loves you as you are because you…
We are meant to point our lives in one direction towards the Lord, but something comes in between us (sin) and we can’t see it. We’re turned around, but we don’t know that we’re turned around. You’re walking away thinking wealth, women, wine, work is the right way to go. We’re trying to have Christ come in and lift that off of us so we repent and turn around. There’s a different way to live our lives and we don’t…
(Audio Transcription Below) This is my very favorite video. It’s about how a small introduction, few in number, changes everything in the ecosystem. The reason I like it is that men, coming in and living in the right way, change the ecosystem of the world. Romans 8:19 says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.” Much like the wolves have this downstream effect on the rivers themselves, men coming into the world’s…
The wiseman who wrote the book of Ecclesiastes makes a series of observations about the futility of life. Listen to what he says in Chapter 6:7-12: “All a man’s work is for his mouth…yet this appetite is never satisfied.” You work all your life to feed the beast – your family, your ego, opinions of other people. Yet those appetites are never quite satisfied, so without the correct perspective it can feel like futility. “There are many words which only…