It's Game Time--Time To Call An Audible

It’s Game Time-Calling An Audible

January 16, 2011 Genesis 32:1-8 Acts 16:6-15

How many of you have ever been in a situation in which you were going to do something with another person and at the last minute you realized what you had planned was not going to work, so you needed to get in touch with the other person right away to let them know of the change of plans? Well today we have the cell phone which makes it very easy to contact the other person, but before the cell phone there were other ways of getting our change of plans across.

For those of you who have been to a football game, you may have heard a quarterback walk up to the center and start yelling out numbers and colors. He may look at the defense and then shout down one side, red 47, red 47, hut1, hut 2, hut 3 and off goes the play. The next time its green 84, green 84, hut 1, hut2, hut 3. Then a play is called into the huddle, to run the ball up the middle, but when the quarterback comes to the line, he notices two big linebackers have lined up right where his team is going to run the ball.

He has the option of running the play they had planned to run, and getting squashed in the process, or he could change the play. All those colors and numbers he has been calling has been setting up a chance for him to call an audible and change the play. For the first time he uses the color blue followed by the number 38. Blue tells the other players on his team, that this is a real audible, and we are really going to change the play. So now all the other players on his team know, they are no longer running up the middle, instead they are going to run around the end. Knowing when to call an audible can help you tremendously in the game. Likewise, knowing when to call in audible in your life can save you from some serious setbacks.

We are in the series “It’s Game Time”— and today’s message involves “Calling An Audible.” If you have not discovered it yet, you will discover that you are going to come up with some great plans for how you intend to do things in your life, and somebody or something is going to get in the way. You will have the choice of either trying to go ahead with your plan as originally planned and getting hit by the linebackers of life or you can call an audible and choose to go a different way. Your goal is to still win the game, but you are smart enough to recognize, this play just is not going to work. I’ve got to make an adjustment. Sometimes the mistake of others, will force you to make an adjustment.

Right now, many of us need to make some adjustments in our lives. The financial plan we had going is not working. The relationship we thought we had, is crumbling. Our walk with the Lord is drifting far from center. The career we thought would last is coming to a close. We’re about to graduate from high school and the grades we need for college are not there, so the scholarship money is not going to come. We had not planned on getting pregnant, but the child is on the way or already here . We had not expected to be put in the position we are in because of the poor choices our kids or family members have made. We find ourselves playing against a different team than who we thought we were going to be playing against in this stage of our lives. How many of you know, it may be time to call an audible? The good news is, God still has a plan for your life and you can still make it.

We want to know okay God, what’s your will for my life right now. We want to know if it’s this school or that one, this job or that one, this person, or that one, this car or that one and on and on the list goes. We are under the delusion that 1) if we knew what God’s will was for our lives, we would always do it and 2) that if we were doing God’s will, then everything would be easier for us and life would fall in place and we would live happily ever after. For those of you who came to church today wanting to know God’s will for your life, I can give you 5 things that is God’s will for you for this week, and that if you do them, you will be a stronger believer next week than you are right now. God has revealed these things to us in His word.