XP3 High School Students Collide Session 3: Totaled Bottom Line: Nothing in Your Life Will Ever Change Unless You Collide with God

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XP3 High School Students Collide Session 3: Totaled Bottom Line: Nothing in your life will ever change unless you collide with God.

Are you a safety boy/girl? Do you like the predictable? Do you like to know the outcome before you dive into something? Do you like to keep things the way they are—predictable? Isn’t that, well, a little boring? Maybe you need to collide with God. Maybe you need to place yourself in His path so that something in your life will change. It’s a collision that will leave you different than the status quo—and that’s a very good thing.

CREATING THE ENVIRONMENT We believe that the set, stage, music and everything in your room communicates a message—without you saying a word. That’s why we put together a list of production ideas to help you set the stage for the session and the series. From the music you play when students come in to the room to the worship set your band plays, we want to make sure that your room conveys “Collide” in a multi-sensory way. There is a downloadable checklist available in your series downloads that will give you all the elements for this session (and the entire series).

BACKGROUND PLAYLIST FOR THE “COLLIDE” SERIES: “A Beautiful Collision” by David Crowder Band (from A Collision (or 3+4=7)) “Lucky One” by Vertical Horizon (from Burning The Days) “Hello Seattle” by Owl City (from Ocean Eyes) “Closer to Love” by Mat Kearney (from City of Black & White) “Before We Come Undone” by Kris Allen (from Kris Allen) “Waiting for the End” by Linkin Park (from A Thousand Suns) “My Own Little World” by Matthew West (from The Story of Your Life) “The Sound of Sunshine” by Michael Frenti & Spearhead (from The Sound of Sunshine) “Halfway Gone” by Lifehouse (from Smoke & Mirrors) “Crashing Down” by Mat Kearney (from Nothing Left to Lose) “How In The World” by Family Force 5 (from Dance or Die)

WORSHIP PLAYLIST FOR “COLLIDE” SESSION 3: “Awesome Is The Lord Most High” by Chris Tomlin (from See the Morning) “God Of This City” by Chris Tomlin (from Hello Love) “From The Inside Out” by Hillsong Live (from Mighty To Save, Live) “We Will Worship You” by Carlos Whittaker (from Ragamuffin Soul)

THE SET: If possible, go to a local junkyard or auto body shop and ask to borrow some bumpers, dented doors, smashed headlights, etc. Place the items on both sides of the stage and if you are able, position the car as if it’s coming out from a wall behind you. And if you don’t have access to the smashed car pieces but you have some amazing artists around, then you may want to consider creating those pieces out of foam. For a backdrop, use a white piece of foam board or a white sheet and draw an outline of a person in the middle of the sheet, to appear as if someone ran into the wall.

SERIES ART: Art for PowerPoint backgrounds and for series promotional ads is available as a free download with every series. Visit the XP3 website, log on to your account and download the images to use in your presentation, newsletters and website.

VIDEO: There are four videos available for the Collide series—three video communicator videos and one bumper video. The three video communicator videos can be used in each session of this three-week series in place of a live communicator. The bumper video was created to be used as an intro for all three sessions of the Collide series. Collide Session 3: Totaled

TEACHING SCRIPT The teaching script is divided into five sections.

INTRODUCTION: The introduction is intended to connect you, the communicator, to the audience, usually through a personal story or observation. We’ve included our stories, but you may want to substitute your own story in this section.

TENSION: The tension moves the message from the “me” mentality of the introduction to a “we” mentality. For example, a transition statement might be, “At some point in our lives, we have all been jealous of someone over something.”

TRUTH: Once the tension builds, the next logical step is to uncover the truth of what the Bible says about the topic.

APPLICATION: At this point, the message moves to a “you” mentality in order to teach the application. The “you” is the student. Take God’s truth and unpack how it relates to each student so that he or she can apply it to everyday life.

LANDING: Here it is important to land the message on what each student needs to know and do with what they’ve heard. Just as the message began with a personal story or observation, the message also ends with a “me” mentality. For example, one possible landing statement might be, “I have a greater sense of purpose knowing that God created me in His image.” Leave the students with a clear sense of what all of you should do with what you’ve heard. Unless otherwise noted, the landing will always set up the small group dialog and give students an opportunity to process and internalize what they’ve heard.

Collide Session 3: Totaled Bottom Line: Nothing in your life will ever change unless you collide with God.

TEACHING OUTLINE

INTRODUCTION When it comes to colliding with God, He will win every time.

Status quo = the way things are

TENSION There are things you do when you call yourself a Christian that are just “normal.”

The status quo of Christianity isn’t necessarily the most satisfying, faith-building place to be.

What if colliding in our faith means more than doing the right things and believing the right things? What if it has a lot more to do with the God who is calling us to collide in the first place?

TRUTH The Pharisees set the precedent for the status quo.

Jesus didn’t speak kindly about this super-religious group. “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. . . . You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:27-28, 33 NIV).

Why was Jesus frustrated with this group when it seemed like they did everything right and believed all the right things?

As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him. Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him (Matthew 4:18-22 NIV).

These men dropped everything and did exactly what they needed to do to join ranks with the Son of God.

They left in order to collide with Jesus.

They wanted a life walking with Jesus, and doing that is anything but normal, anything but routine, anything but predictable. It is a life spent colliding.

APPLICATION Collision is questioning the way things are—the status quo. Collision is proactive and not reactive. Collision is placing hope in the bigness of God—in His ability to show up and do something in a way you couldn’t do on your own. Ultimately, colliding, at its core, is an act of trust.

You can spend your whole life believing in God, but not believing God for who He says He is. You can spend your whole life believing in God but not following Him. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian. Going to a Christian concert, on a mission trip or volunteering in the nursery doesn’t make you a Christian. These are great things, but these things don’t make you a follower of Jesus.

Living life without colliding is easy. It is safe. It is predictable. It is popular. It is the status quo.

Living a life where we collide with God means putting more hope and confidence in Him than in anything or anyone else—including ourselves.

LANDING Where does a collision need to happen? Where do we need to intersect with God so that He can do something big—bigger than what we can do on our own?

What can God do in you? Where can you invite God to do something that only He can? And what is keeping you from inviting God into your life now? What’s preventing you from wanting Him to interrupt your life? Not all of us are colliding with God, but all of us could be. Collide Session 3: Totaled Teaching Script Bottom Line: Nothing in your life will ever change unless you collide with God.

INTRODUCTION A. The past couple of weeks we have been talking about this idea of colliding. We have said that colliding is essentially change. Like we said the first week, it is putting ourselves in positions where change can happen. It’s putting ourselves in the right place where we can collide in order to get the right kind of change we desire and need in our lives—the kind of change that leads us to become the sort of people we want to be.

B. Then last week we talked about this idea of colliding with others. We talked about how oftentimes we are afraid to collide, to intersect with people who are different. And “different” can refer to people who go to different churches and people who share none of our beliefs. But we said that even if we lack a commonality with people, we can still collide with them, still learn from them, still get a glimpse of God we may not have had otherwise. So colliding with others is a good thing.

C. This week we are going to talk about what colliding looks like in our faith—or to put it another way, what happens when we collide with God. Kind of a crazy idea, right? Because I think you and I both know that when it comes to colliding with God, He will win every time. But we are going to start looking at what colliding with God really means and what that even looks like.

D. Have you ever heard of the phrase “status quo”? It is a Latin phrase we use to simply mean “the way things are.” If you say someone is living the status quo, they are living the norm, doing things as they have always been done.

The status quo for a lot of teenagers is having their own cell phone, getting their own car when they get their license, graduating from high school at 18 and for most, heading to college in the fall. This is the status quo.

E. Essentially, our lives don’t look all that different from each other—especially the first 18 years or so. I mean we all tracked along the same kind of path starting from birth. We went to preschool. We started kindergarten. We played Little League, peewee soccer, learned to play the recorder and dreaded dodgeball in P.E.. This is normal. This is where our lives have tended to take us. This is, for most of us, for a lot of us, the status quo.

TENSION A. This may not be a new thought for a lot of you, but have you ever thought about the idea that there is a status quo when it comes to being a Christian too? There are things you do when you call yourself a Christian that are just “normal.” You go to church for example—Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, Wednesday nights. You go on a mission trip at least one time in high school. You have memorized John 3:16: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (NIV). And like this verse suggests, we believe the right things. We believe Jesus was God’s Son. We believe Jesus died for our sins. We believe He was raised from the dead. We believe we will go to heaven when we die. End of story. There may be a lot of different churches that can’t agree on much beyond those simple statements, but for most Christians, this is the norm. These beliefs are expected.

B. But you know what I have noticed? People who are living the status quo aren’t typically the happiest people. I think this is true for adults and for students. The people who are doing things just like they “should” or as is expected aren’t necessarily content, excited or passionate about where life has found them.

C. The people who are at church all of the time, the people who do the right things by going on the mission trips and retreats, it might seem like they are doing everything right, but I wouldn’t necessarily say that they are living in a way that catches people’s attention. Maybe some are, but not everyone. Something about the status quo does not translate into a life that is so contagious that everyone wants to be a part of it. Even in doing everything right, it would seem that something can still be missing from life. In other words, the status quo of Christianity isn’t necessarily the most satisfying, faith-building place to be. And it could be because the status quo has nothing to do with colliding.

D. I know this sounds crazy because a lot of the things that make up the status quo of Christianity are good. They even appear to be about colliding. Like a mission trip—talk about colliding with people who are different from you, right?

But what if there is more to Christianity, more to our faith than just what is normal, what is expected, what is typical? What if colliding in our faith means much more than doing these right things, believing these right things? What if it has a lot more to do with the God who is calling us to collide in the first place?

TRUTH A. One of the things we have to be careful about when we read Scripture is learning what the Bible is, and what it is not. A lot of us have the tendency to simply read the Bible at face value. We figure out what it tells us to do and what not to do and stop there—maybe even make it a checklist of sorts, simplify it so that it is easier to figure out what exactly is expected of us. This is a tempting trap to fall into, and one that will lead us exactly to where we are—living the status quo. And doing this isn’t exactly a new idea. It is an old one.

B. In fact, in Jesus’ day, this was the temptation as well. And the people who were most likely to be seen doing this were the Pharisees—the religious elite. It can be crazy to hear because we typically view the Pharisees in a negative way, but they were very religious. They were very concerned about doing the right things, the things that were expected of them. They had the Ten Commandments—the obvious list of dos and don’ts—and then some. Lots more rules, lots more guidelines, lots more stuff to follow. You could say that they set the precedent for the status quo. If you wanted to be in God’s good graces, there were certain expectations to meet, and it seemed to the people of the day that the Pharisees were a good example of what God was after. In the world of the religious, they were the goal.

C. Funny, but the Bible doesn’t really present them that way, does it? I mean, when I hear the word Pharisee my mind usually jumps ahead to, “Don’t be like them!” Why? To put it simply, Jesus doesn’t speak too kindly about this super-religious group. Okay, I may be holding back a little. There is one time in Scripture where Jesus says this to them:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. . . . You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?” (Matthew 23:27-28, 33 NIV).

D. Right, so this is a little awkward, because this isn’t exactly how one would talk to their friends, to people who have it right and who are setting an example worth following. I mean, yes, culture was different in the Middle East two thousand years ago, but not that different. Calling someone a snake then meant the same thing it does now. It’s not exactly a term of endearment.

E. So where is the disconnect? Why was Jesus so frustrated with this group when it seemed like they did everything right and believed everything right? They had it together, so why was Jesus’ harshest rebuke saved for them? Maybe we can have a better idea of what Jesus would have for us if we look at the people who did do it right, the people who Jesus said made some good and right decisions.

Let’s look in Matthew, where Jesus calls the first disciples. Look at what happens:

F. So what is the big deal about this passage? What happens here that makes the disciples different from the Pharisees? These verses say one thing about these four disciples—Scripture tells us that when Jesus asked these men to join Him, they immediately left what they were doing. They dropped everything, abandoned their jobs, left their families and did exactly what they needed to do to join ranks with the Son of God.

And this is where the Pharisees got it wrong. The Pharisees talked a good talk and followed all sorts of rules, but when it came down to it, they weren’t really colliding with God. They weren’t doing anything that required radical action from their tightly held beliefs.

The disciples, on the other hand, were doing exactly that. They left it all in order to collide with Jesus. They abandoned it all for the sake of faith.

G. The Pharisees were living the life of the status quo—a life that was expected, tame and just pretty average—even if it appeared right and “by the book.” But the disciples weren’t satisfied with that. They wanted something more than just a life spent doing the same old thing. They wanted a life walking with Jesus, and doing that is anything but normal, anything but routine, anything but predictable. It is a life spent colliding.

APPLICATION A. We have talked about the necessity to collide when it comes to accomplishing the change we want and need in our lives. We have talked about the importance of colliding with others, even when they are different from us—especially when they are different from us. But in order to do that more effectively, we need to understand what a real collision looks like. Collision is questioning the way things are—the status quo. Collision is proactive and not reactive. Collision is placing hope in the bigness of God—in His ability to show up and do something in a way you couldn’t do on your own. Ultimately, colliding, at its core, is an act of trust.

That is what the disciples had that the Pharisees didn’t.

B. The Pharisees trusted a system. The disciples trusted God. The Pharisees trusted their ability. The disciples trusted in the Savior they knew they needed. To live a life where you collide with God, with others and with the world means trusting in a big God when He calls you to drop your nets, when He calls you to lead a larger, and maybe even a little more dangerous life than the status quo offers.

C. You can do all of the right things, believe all of the right things and still spend your whole life insulated—not anywhere near having a real collision with God. You can spend your whole life believing in God, but not believing God for who He says He is. You can spend your whole life believing in God but not following Him. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian. Going to a Christian concert, on a mission trip or volunteering in the nursery doesn’t make you a Christian. These are great things, but these things don’t make you a follower of Jesus.

D. Here is the thing: Being a follower of Jesus means doing things that others might consider crazy. It means drawing some attention to yourself. It means maybe being whispered about behind your back. It means maybe being told you are taking this Christianity thing too seriously. It means others thinking you may have lost your mind. It means living so certainly and with so much passion and conviction, so much belief and love for God, that everything else pales in comparison. It means valuing nothing, literally nothing, more than Jesus.

E. Living life without colliding is easy. It is safe. It is predictable. It is popular. It is the status quo. But this isn’t exactly what Jesus had in mind when He invited the disciples to drop their nets and follow Him. He wanted these men to collide with God—to abandon what was expected of them, what was normal and what was secure. He wanted them to invite Him into their lives in a way that maybe felt risky and potentially even crazy, but it allowed them to get a picture of just how big God was—a picture you can’t get without colliding.

F. The truth is, when we claim to be Christians but aren’t living lives where we collide with God, we are actually hurting ourselves more than helping. The point isn’t to be safe. The point isn’t to be comfortable. The point is to take the lives we have and collide. To change in the way we need to, to interact with people who may be different from us but have more to teach us than we could ever imagine. To collide with a God so big, so unlike us, so full of possibility and potential, that our lives can’t help but reflect even the smallest facet of who He is.

G. Living a life where we collide with God means putting more hope and confidence in Him than in anything or anyone else—including ourselves. It means opening yourself up to possibilities you may have never dreamed of that only God can make happen. Colliding with God leaves you changed—but it also leaves you smaller. You are not the point, and becoming a real follower of Jesus, one who is willing to go against the status quo, is a daily lesson in that.

[Note for communicator: Find some teens to share one thing they do to shake up the status quo in their lives, something that pulled them out of their comfort zones and changed them forever.]

LANDING A. After listening to and talking about this idea of colliding, we must ask ourselves what needs to change in our own lives. Where does a collision need to happen? Where do we need to intersect with God so that He can do something big—bigger than what we can do on our own? Do we believe in a God big enough and powerful enough that it’s worth the risk to leave the familiar, to drop our nets, abandon the status quo and wholeheartedly pursue a real and living God?

B. As we move into groups this week, think about this: What can God do in you? Where can you invite God to do something that only He can? And what is keeping you from inviting God into your life now? What’s preventing you from wanting Him to interrupt your life? Not all of us are colliding with God, but all of us could be. And now is as good a time as any to get started.

[TRANSITION INTO SMALL GROUPS]

XP3 Students COLLIDE SESSION 3: Totaled High School Small Group Dialog

Bottom Line: Nothing in your life will change unless you collide with God. Scripture References: Matthew 23:27-28, 33; Matthew 4:18-22

You probably have students who think they have this whole “following Jesus” thing figured out. They know what you’re supposed to say, what you’re supposed to do, what you’re supposed to know. And they may be completely fine with that. But faith is more than a checklist or a better way to live. Faith is a collision with God. A divine collision that consistently messes us up. It messes with the way we relate to God, to others, even with the way we see ourselves. But we’ll never change unless we’re intentional about colliding with God. We have to put ourselves in the path of that collision. It’s personal. It’s crazy. And totals our status quo—if we let Him.

Create meaningful conversation. Adjust questions as needed, and don’t feel like you need to answer all of them.

1. How would you describe the normal teenage life? Do you think you are living the normal teenage life?

2. What would you say are the normal things that are part of the Christian life?

3. Do you think living the status quo Christian life means you are colliding with God? Why or why not?

4. How would you describe what a collision with God looks like?

5. How do you think living the status quo Christian life could actually keep you from having a collision with God?

6. Read Matthew 4:18-22. These first disciples acted radically in order to follow Jesus— they left their families and their jobs to be with Him. They stepped away from the comfort of a familiar life. What would a radical action for the sake of following Jesus look like in your world? What is one thing you could do to follow Christ that is uncomfortable and unfamiliar for you personally? (Keep in mind this will be different for different people.)

7. How would you define a collision with God in your life right now?

8. What is the biggest obstacle keeping you from colliding right now?

9. How would your life look different if you allowed this collision to happen?

10. Colliding with God is more than just something that happens once and then is done. What can you do to continue to collide with God on a regular basis?

NEXT STEP: Remind students about the details of where you’re going and when for the XP. And if you’ve already taken your road trip, take some time for additional comments and feedback. Also, there are devotionals available that correspond to each of the three sessions of this series. Use these devotionals to continue the discussion from the small group dialogs. If your leader has posted the devotionals to your youth group’s website, direct your students to the site this week. Or you can get the devotionals and email them directly to your students as a way of connecting with each student during the week.