Talk Notes
How To Stop Before You Flop – Talk Notes
Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Overflow podcast. My name is Craig Booker, the title of this episode is How To Stop Before You Flop. A lot of the material for this week’s episode was inspired by Craig Groeschel’s book The Power to Change: Mastering the Habits That Matter Most. Note: I will talk a lot about mental health, but please note this is not a substitute for therapy or mental health care. I am not a counselor or a physician, if you need help with mental health challenges please find a qualified mental health professional. This episode’s title is How to Stop Before You Flop. In this section of the book, Craig Groeschel talks about life summary sentences. These are like one sentence that sums up an entire person’s life. You’ve probably heard people use these life summary sentences about other people. Some examples are “yeah she fell into sin” or “he cheated on his wife”. Another example from Judges 16 verses 1 was “one day Samson went to the Philistine town of Gaza and spent the night with a prostitute”. Samson didn’t live a short life, right, but this one sentence seems to sum up his entire life. In a quote from Craig Groeschel, it says “disasters are rarely the result of an isolated decision, they are almost always the end of a slippery slope”. Samson lived in the town of Zora. Some say was 25 miles from Gaza. You know Samson didn’t just take a quick walk across the street to get to Zora, it was 25 miles from his hometown of Gaza. Do you know how many steps it takes to go 25 miles? He did the math and it’s approximately 56,250 steps. It wasn’t that he got in his car and drove real quickly to this destination. He had a lot of time to think about this. We don’t wreck our lives all at once, but a little at a time. He said, like erosion, we are all tempted to slide down that 56,250 step slope every day. That’s why it’s important to get a hold of our habits. Based on who you want to become, what one habit do you need to stop? Colossians 3:1-3 and verse 10, “you have been raised to life with Christ. Now set your heart on what is in heaven where Christ rules at God’s right side”. Think about what is up there. Not about what is here on Earth. You died, which means that your life is hidden with Christ who sits beside God. Each of you is now a person, now a new person. You are becoming more and more like your Creator and you will understand him better. So here, Paul is encouraging us to forget about who you were, know who you are in Christ, and who you want to become in Him. So in our study, we’ve been talking a lot about, you know the reason behind why we do things. We’ve been talking about the Who we feel called to become. In Colossians 3:5, 8-9 it says “don’t be controlled by your body. Kill every desire of the wrong kind of sex. Don’t be immoral or indecent or have evil thoughts. Don’t be greedy, which is the same as worshiping Idols, but now you must stop doing such things. You must quit being angry, hateful, and evil. You must no longer say insulting or cruel things about others and stop lying to each other. You have given up your old way your old way of life with its habits”. So here we’re hearing this call, I believe this is from Paul as well, to leave our old ways behind, our old habits, our old desires. We are to kill off those desires and grow new habits into the person that were to become. If you want to become who you want to become, there are some habits you need to give up. So based on who you want to become, what one habit do you need to break? Now if this is overwhelming because there’s not just one habit but a lot, I know that you’re not alone. All of us can probably sit and think about all these habits we need to break in our lives and that process can really be overwhelming.
