What To Do When... Things Go Right Series

What to Do When… part 3 “When things go right”

Story – my good day: woke up feeling good after a good nights sleep. I for the first time in my life had an outfit that was less that 1 year out of fashion and it was hanging up waiting for me. I got to school and found out that to that point in the semester I had straight A’s… then it was lunch time and I had two girls fighting over me. Not only that but the year book was taking pictures and they took one of me holding hands with the best looking girl in school… I sat down and thought, “man these are some good times” of course it was only my first day of kindergarten but…

In the first week of our series “what to do when” we looked at what to do when you are confused. From Jesus example we said that we should: Stop, Seek, Submit, Then last week we continued our series on “what to do when” by taking a look at what to do when things go wrong. We took a look at a guy named Job and said from his example we should:

 Thank, God for our current situation

 Think, about your life and see if God is trying to

get your attention about something

 Take, your circumstances as a chance to grow, don’t

fight them

 Trust, that God will protect you and deliver you.

Of course life is full of confusing times, and it is also filled with times when things go wrong, but it is also filled with times when things go right. There are times when things are just going good!!! We all can relate to this, sometimes there are times when you look out at the sea of life and it is nothing but smooth sailing ahead. For many of us we may be thinking that “hey life is good, nothing to worry about…” I hate to be the one to break this to you, but we should be aware of some dangerous things that can occur during good times. Now how can that be? How can there be dangerous things to look out for when things are going good? Well, one word… Titanic! I think we all know the story about how the maiden voyage of this magnificent boat was supposed to be a triumph of man’s ability to build a boat that could not sink. This boat was bigger and grander than any boat in the world and the party, for those special guest who got to go out the first time, was incredible!!! But right as the people were just getting the night going in full swing and everything was going good… boom, they hit an ice burg. The rest we say is history, but there is an interesting analogy that I would like to draw here. While the people on board were partying without a care in the world, the crew was still controlling the vessel and they found one of the most dangerous things in the ocean, an ice burg. The thing that is so dangerous about them is that only a small percent of the ice is actually above the surface of the water. You may see what you think is just a little piece of floating ice, and it turns out to be a deadly ice burg. Here is my point in all of this, when life is going good and things are going right, there can still be a very real danger for the Christian lying just beneath the surface. The danger is that just like in the other situations we have talked about we can become so focused in on ourselves that we forget God. If you will remember the goal of this series is to become less me focused in our situations and more God focused… so how are we going to do that when things are going right?

There is a guy named David that was the second king of the nation of Israel, and he has an interesting story that could be used for each one of the things we have looked at so far, but he had a time when things were just going good and I would like to take a look at his life. From David’s life and, as we have done in the past, some passages from the New Testament, I believe we can figure out what to do when things go right.

The three things we are going to talk about are:

 Rejoice

 Rest

 Reach Out

Before we look at number one lets look at David’s story for just a moment… As I said before David was the second king of Israel. But this is only part of his story. To begin he was a shepherd boy who under the first king of Israel killed the giant Philistine warrior Goliath with just a sling shot and a stone. Later on he is anointed the be the next king, but the first king, Saul, is still in power and getting more and more jealous of David every day. In fact he tries to kill David, but he escapes and finally he is made the king of Israel. His first task was to bring back the Ark of the Lord to Israel, and this was a very big deal because this ark or box was the centerpiece for the tabernacle back in the desert during Moses time. This is where we pick up our story of things going right.