07 Jul “The Courage to Start Over” | Jared Moore
TESTIMONIES: Looking for your testimonies! If you have group wins to share, please email them to me! maparsons@waterschurch.org
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Key Verse: Joshua 2
The choices we make determine our future. Some choices we make are game changers. Regardless of any bad decisions, we make, these choices do not define us. Where there is life, where there is a heartbeat, we can start over.
In the game of Golf, there is something called a Mulligan: A Mulligan is a second chance to perform an action, usually, after the first chance went wrong…Its best-known meaning is in golf, whereby a player is informally allowed to replay a stroke, even though this is against the formal rules of golf.
Ice-breaker Question:
Q. If you had the chance for a Mulligan in your life, what would it be?
This city was fortified with massive gates and everyone knew that the spies were at Rahab’s house. Word had leaked out. If Rahab had turned them in, it would have been all over for them.
Rahab was a prostitute and she was faced with a decision that could completely change her future. Rahab is not innocent, she had made terrible choices but she probably was not who she really wanted to be. Inside, she hoped for a different life.
Q. What decisions were some of the biggest choices you have made that were game changers? What caused you to make these decisions?
God looks past who we are to who we can become.
In this statement, Rahab is making the choice to start over. She knows that God has rescued and redeemed His people over and over again. She is wondering if He can do that for her.
Rahab did 2 things:
1. TRUSTED GOD TO FORGIVE AND REDEEM HER
2. ABANDONED HER FORMER WAY OF LIFE.
Rahab had the worst label and yet she trusted God and made the decision to start over. Some of us allow labels to define us. We should never accept those labels. We should do something about it. If we are frozen where we are because of a label we believed, we need to put our faith in God just as Rahab did and start over.
Q. What labels had been placed on you that caused you to be frozen where you are (or were) and why?
Why Start Over?
- GOD MADE YOU TO BE MORE THAN YOU ARE.
God’s plan for us is not to be average. It is not to be useless. Rahab made the courageous choice to put her trust in God and leave her old life which forever changes her label.
Rahab lives among the Israelites ‘to this day’. Because of her courageous choice, a prostitute gets grafted into the family of God! Her name shows up in the Hall of Faith:
Rahab became the grandmother of Jesus! Rahab is what the Gospel is all about, what Waters Church is about. If God can redeem and rescue Rahab, he can redeem and rescue all of us. All God had taken from Rahab was her courageous choice.
2. OTHERS NEED YOU TO ME MORE THAN YOU ARE.
Rahab made this choice for her entire family. Her decision was not only for her but for her families sake. Just like Rahab, people are counting on us to be more than who we are. In parenting, in marriage in singleness, people are counting on us to be more than who we are. No matter where we are in life, people are counting on us to be more than who we are.
BELIEVE THERE IS MORE FOR YOUR LIFE.
Q. What does this mean for you? What can you believe God for as far as being more than who you are to those who are counting on you?
Pray for the lost and for each other. Pray for Woonsocket’s permanent location, for the zoning to be approved. Pray for our nation and leaders. Guatemala missions and Compassion Weekend. Pray for our church and it’s leaders.
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