This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching the message at both of our services at FPC. The title of the message was “The Best-Laid Plans.” After thinking about how my own plans for my life had changed drastically over the years, I prayerfully considered how my situations might relate to others in our society. The result of my prayer and contemplation was this message. You can listen to it below. A transcript is also available underneath the audio version. I’d certainly love to hear your feedback!

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The Best Laid Plans – Transcript

This past weekend, I took a group of teens and preteens to Montreat, NC for our Fall Retreat. The theme of this trip was “Transformed.” During our Saturday morning program, we talked about where our “center” is – that is, what the rest of us revolves around. To use a somewhat silly but somewhat common example, sometimes the center of a person lies in a sport. Everything they do revolves around a sport – making a team, staying on that team, and hopefully getting to a better team in the future. Sometimes everything revolves around a person – a boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife, child, etc.

I could use more examples here, but the point I’m trying to make is that in every situation but one, the nucleus of a person is tied to something that directly effects that person. If your world revolves around a sport, it’s not for the sake of the sport, it’s for your own sake. If it’s a person at your center, it’s tied to your relationship with that person. All of these things can be related to self.

I struggle with this. It’s really hard for me to take myself out of the focus. As I went through this past weekend, it was significantly easier to keep Jesus in the middle of everything. I mean, that’s what we were there for! But how do I (or we) do that on a daily basis, through the mundane tasks of everyday life?

I don’t have a concrete answer for this right now. But what I do know are three things that have helped keep me from putting total focus on things that make me happy.

1. The hierarchy: Jesus first, others second, me last.
2. The motto: Live with Christ in your heart, and His love as your motivation.
3. The prayer. I’ve been using this prayer every morning this week, and it’s helped my days get off to a “right” start:

Lord, please rid me of my own self today and help me to remember that I should be serving you and you alone. Keep my eyes and my heart focused on the cross, and help me to be motivated by your love and not my own vain desires. Amen.

When you pray this week, I’d invite you to pray this same prayer. I’ve noticed that my motivations have been altered, and feel as though I’ve really furthered the Kingdom this week as a result.

Have a great, Christ-centered week!

This Fall, I’m teaching our young adult “Bread For The Journey” class on Sunday mornings. I love leading this group. Here are the topics, in case you’d like to be a part!

Here are my topics for the Bread for the Journey class this Fall:

9/20 – Can the Bible be trusted?
9/27 – “All I Want is World Peace”
10/4 – GUEST LEADER
10/11 – God and your health
10/18 – How to handle difficult people
10/25 – Biblical money management
11/1 – Living “outside the box”
11/8 – The new atheism
11/15 – GUEST LEADER
11/22 – GUEST LEADER
11/29 – Are there angels among us?
12/6 – GUEST LEADER
12/13 – Working 9 to 5
12/20 – Are you happy now?

Looks like it’s going to be fun!

So this weekend, I was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Presbytery of Coastal Carolina’s Middle School retreat. I was also, coincidentally, on the planning team for this event, which worked out great.

I thought it might be nice for those who were in attendance, both students and adults, to post a quick “recap” of the weekend’s three keynotes. It may be useful for other, too, I suppose!

So the first talk I gave outlined our theme of the retreat: Mirror, mirror, on the wall… This was a theme that was picked way back in May of 2008, and when it was picked I don’t think we did much planning on what we’d actually be talking about or doing relating to the theme – we just thought it sounded good.

During this first talk, I focused on what you see when you look at yourself in the mirror. We tend to focus so much on the negative aspects of our outer selves, such as our weight, height, eye color, etc. It’s a common problem for everyone, myself included. But we learned through the book of Judges, and a guy named “Gideon,” that while we may not be the smartest, most talented, most athletic, or most good looking person around, we are viewed in the eyes of God as a “mighty warrior,” that is, someone who is capable of enormous things. The phrase we left with after this talk was, “Don’t focus on who you are now, focus your efforts on who you can become.”

Later that evening, we moved into the second talk. This was geared around how we deal with the ways others see us. We came to the common realization that it’s pretty unrealistic to completely change our outer appearances, so we have to focus on changing the ways others look at us. We uncovered a few ways to do that, and started really grappling with the question, “Who am I?” After this keynote, the students and their church leaders went off for a bit of individual “soul-searching” time, where they were invited to ask god the question, “Who am I?”

Finally, this morning’s talk was a culmination of our other two topics, and centered around the question, “What does God see in you?” After hearing an adaptation of the story of the prodigal son from Luke, we looked to Genesis 1:27, which says “God created man in His image; in the image of God He created them.” We ended by finally answering the “Who am I?” question with the simple yet powerful phrase, “I am a child of God.”

I need to thank the Presbytery Youth Council for their tremendous work on this past weekend’s event. I was humbled and privileged to be a part of it.

Can’t wait for the Senior High Retreat in November!

-jon