No More Cutting In

No More Cutting In

2/11/07 1 Kings 13:1-10 Galatians 5:7-18

Have you ever been standing in line for a long time, and then someone comes to the line and a person up ahead of you says, ”you can get in front of me”? How do you feel about it?

Have you ever been driving on I-90 and the traffic is backed up on dead man’s curve, and somebody comes zooming past you on the right, and then when you get to the place where dead man curve turns off of Route 2, and you now see the car that zipped past you trying to cut in? What do you do about it? Have you ever been waiting for a parking space, and when the car pulled out, before you could pull in, someone else got to it first? What goes through your mind.

One day I was standing across the street from Finast on St. Clair. I saw a person trying to find a parking space. He saw a car pulling out of a space and waited patiently for it. Another car came into the lot, and did not see the car that had been waiting. He simply pulled into the lot. When he got out of his car to go into the store. The man in the waiting car got out, and walked up to him and punched him in the side of this face as hard as he could. There is something about somebody cutting in front of us, that makes us feel as though we were robbed of something. Somebody else took what we were entitled to receive.

Have any of you ever been to a track meet. If you have you will notice, that there are white lines painted all the way up and down and around the track. The purpose of the lines is to let runners know this is where you are to run. You are to stay in your lane so there is no cutting in. Those lanes are there to guide you and to protect you from others.

I want you to meet a guy who has a dream of going to the Olympics. He has worked hard. He has planned, he has trained, he has disciplined himself. He is fast. He wants to represent his country. In the 100 meters, they usually put the fastest guys in the inside middle lanes. Let’s see what happens as he runs the race that will launch him in his quest to go to the Olympics. (Show Video Clip)

What happened when the runner stumbled in his lane, and fell into the lane of two others. He not only lost his dream, he knocked out the dreams of others. You see, when you run in the lane God has set for your life, not only do your dreams become reality, but you keep from ruining the dreams of others.

When you stumble, you do not know how many other lives you ruin in the process. On any given day, you can look in the paper and see where someone has stumbled in a host of bad choices. What you don’t see, is the people around them who have fallen and had their lives messed up.

We are all like runners on a track. We are racing against who we are, who we were, and who we can be in God. We only win if at the end of the day, who we can be in God wins the race. Because you see who we were is going to try to cut in on us with all kinds of temptations and desires. It says let’s stop running for a while and take a step off the track and do something else. We’re going to have a good time.

Now the other fellow who we are says, it does not take all this running to win. Let’s stop right here and just rest for a while. We are fine just like we are. Who needs to grow and change any further? So we have got both of these characters trying to cut in on us. Both of them are trying to rob us of what we could have. What we need to say, is no more cutting in. God has a better plan for my life.

In our New Testament reading, we came across a verse that said, in Galatians 5:7 You were running a good race. “Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? “ Can you see how you were running well, but allowed someone to cut in on you? Your grades were not always bad, and you’re certainly not dumber today than you were last year. You were running well but somebody or something cut in on you. You know you use to feel about your parents and how you obeyed them, but somebody or something has cut in on you.