C. S. Lewis “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” We are going to find ourselves in the middle of a Plan B. These are the huge potholes of life. And what do you do?

One of the biggest distortions in Christianity today is this phrase “God will never give you more than YOU can handle.

Here’s the truth: Throughout your life you will face one situation after another that will be completely beyond what you can handle.

The wall is when you reach the limits of what your capable of doing. This is when your world gets turned upside down. It could be a divorce, a betrayal, a job loss, a death, deep depression.

In this series entitled Plan B and we’ve been looking at this pattern that is pretty familiar to us.

Living the Dream: get married, successful career, financially stable, have kids and have a healthy family

You can either choose Trust or Control.

David chose control. Joseph chose trust.

One of the things I want to help you see in this series is there is an undeniable relationship between crisis and hope. Between waiting hopefully and being transformed.

Genesis 37

We are in series called Plan B. We are talking about what you do when you feel like your dream is shattered. What do you do when your living with an unmet expectations. What do you do when you God doesn’t show up for you the way you thought your God was going to show up for you?

I want to introduce you to another guy out of the Old Testament. His name is Joseph and we learn another incredible lesson from Joseph on how to deal with the ups and down’s of life.

Joseph knows all about plan B’s. His life was a series of plan b’s. It almost seems unbelievable, but then again you’ve probably been there.

Maybe not quite so many times as Joseph, but you recognize that whiplash feeling. You’ve been in the good-news season of life where you feel things couldn’t get much better, only to transition into a crushing bad-news period.

-Maybe you prayed for a particular job and were thrilled when you finally got it . . . only to find out your boss was a total jerk that made your life miserable.

-Maybe you remember celebrating the fact that you finally got pregnant after years of trying and praying . . . only to miscarry a few weeks later.

-Maybe you stood there at the altar gazing into the eyes of someone you thought you would be with for the rest of your life . . . but something happened. Now you’re staring into the same person’s eyes across a courtroom.

What do you think our response is to be when we go from the good news part of life into the bad news season where everything seems to be falling apart, from our desired Plan A into a Plan B we never asked for and don’t want?

Eventually, we all have dreams, wishes and goals that don’t happen. Sometimes it’s clearly our fault. Maybe we made a poor decision and took the wrong path. Other times our Plan B’s and unmet expectations seemingly happened because of someone else’s poor decision. Sometimes honestly it's a combination of things. Join me for this series, I hope wii change your life.

Most everything is done, it's Christmas Eve and we have this idealistic idea of what this night and tomorrow should look like. BUT when the presents are unwrapped, the meal is eaten, how do you feel?

Yep, it is the midst of this season called Christmas. Our time gets occupied with parties, shopping, decorating, getting ready for it, and worrying about it. But so we really let the moment move into us? Do we allow it to occupy us? Let’s this Christmas be different. Occupy Worship this season!

Part three of my Christmas series, Occupy Christmas: Get our if rut, out of the regular Christmas stuff and find your groove this Christmas Season.

Black Friday. Small Business Saturday. Cyber Monday. And on and it goes. All this places are trying to occupy something. Will you let’s them? To get the most out of this season, let’s look at how we can do something more that gives our life purpose and meaning.