Stratgies For A Powerful Life Journey Series

Galatians 6:9-17

Strategies for a Powerful Life Journey

Introduction

A. How many of you like a good story?

B. That is what I thought, we all enjoy hearing a good story

C. That is why we get so involved in watching a movie

D. That is why we like to talk to certain people

E. We like stories, we like to listen to stories

F. However, if I would have said “Testimony” instead of “stories” some of you might get afraid

G. There is not need to be afraid

H. Your testimony, your life journey is simply the story of what God has done for you in your life.

I. Relax you do not need your Doctorate and theology to share your testimony

J. You do not know everything in the Bible to tell others what God has done in your life

K. Look that the blind person that Jesus healed. Look what he said “I know this: I was blind and now I can see (John 9:25)

L. He was simply telling common people an extraordinary story of Jesus working in his life

M. Jesus told his disciples “You must testify” or “You must tell others about me

N. But lets be honest, sometimes we are ashamed to tell our story.

O. Now it is not that we are ashamed of the story, we are ashamed that we don’t really meet the expectation of the story

P. Other words, our lives don’t always match with what we know God has done in us.

Q. Instead of living a good story and having a good “testimony” we get sidetracked and our testimony, our lives, become a mess. We become ashamed of our testimony.

R. That’s what Paul is dealing with in our passage today

S. Galatians 6 is all about testimonies, life journeys

T. The first part tells us how to help someone who fall

U. The 2nd tells us about four pitfalls that will ruin your testimony

a. Pride, comparing yourself with others, selfishness and lying to our self

V. The final section deals with what it takes to maintain a powerful life journey

W. What it takes to make sure you day to day walk matches the moment by moment work God is doing in your life

X. Here it is – Four strategies to a powerful life journey

Y. You follow these four steps and you will feel confident about sharing god’s work in your life and people will be begging you to share it

Z. Let us take a look at the first strategy

I. Do Good

A. Explanation

1. Take a look at verse 9-10 (Read 9-10) (Insert 9-10 here)

2. These verse I have had highlighted in my Bible for about 10 years now

3. Doing good is not always easy

4. Let’s be honest, sometimes it is a lot harder to do good then to do bad

5. It is a lot harder to find something positive to say to a person then to put them down

6. It is a lot harder to confront someone in love about sin, then it is just to forget about it

7. But The Bible is very clear on this point we are to do good

8. See this is not about you making yourself look good

9. We try and do good because of what God has done for us

10. Somewhere sometime we got to the point were we thought it was all about us, it is not it is all about God

B. Application

1. Let’s apply this to our lives

2. Most people in this world ignore God’s purposes for their life

3. The crowd follows the easiest way, not the best way

4. That is were we should different

5. While the rest of the world tells us to do bad, to do wrong, we simply must determine that whatever we do will be good and Godly

6. Here we are again talking about being a witness and notice where we start

7. We start with living a life worthy of the calling you have received (Romans 5:1)

8. There must be an intentional, not just accidental, choice to do good

9. To get up and start the day and try to make ever decision to do good to all people

10. Now by doing good does not necessarily create friends, but it will win respect

11. People are influenced by people they respect

12. By doing good to all people you will gain respect

C. Illustration

1. Mother Teresa once has one of the greatest all time quotes “Preach the Gospel everywhere and whenever necessary use words”

2. There is a problem however, it is impossible on our own to do good all the time

3. WE will fall, we will fail if we attempt to just be “good or do good”