Last night was fun… Man I love when we get together at the Five.  Thanks for coming!  If you weren’t there, check over here for the Podcast from last night’s teaching.  It is www.thefiveonline.com there it is… put it in your favorites…

Anyway, we continued in the teaching series “Empowered”.  I hope that this has been as challenging to you as it has been to me.  Let’s keep the conversation rolling from last night…  As usual, we have the text questions throughout the service and there were two really good ones that came in last night.  I would love to hear your feedback as well on them.  So here they are…

1. You talked about God having plans laid out for us.  Where does this leave free will?

God has a plan for our lives.  God had a plan for Jeremiah’s life and He has a plan for your life and mine.  Free will comes in to play here: what do we do with the plan that God has laid out for us.  A builder gets all kinds of plans and sketches done for how to build and frame a house.  Now when it gets into the hands of the framers, the HVAC guys, the masons, the fireplace guy, the carpenters, the tile guys, then you can see what ends up where and how well they stick with the plan.  That’s where free will comes into play.  It’s your choice wether or not to follow what God has planned for you.

2. So how do you know when to say no to serving opportunities? I mean obviously bad things but like the whole “some things are good to do but some things are best” discussion.

Well this is a tough one.  I think that this is where prayer comes into play.  If I were you I would pray and ask God to clearly lead you in the direction that He would have you go.  That way you know without a doubt that you are doing the right thing.  I would pray and ask God to show you which area of service you are needed most. This is where checking your attitude comes in to play too.  Sometimes it’s easy to get the attitude of “I’ve already done enough…”  We need to be careful about not having this attitude.

I think the reality is that you need to be the judge of how much is to much.  You need to know when doing one more thing will take away from your effectiveness of all the other things that you are doing.  When you can become aware of that and remain balanced, that is where you will know when to not do the next “good” thing.  Stick with those things that you do “best”.

What do the rest of you think?  What has helped you?  Thoughts?

~Peter