There was a song by The Costers called “Life Can be a Dream.” We tend to make our lives, not allowing God to make our lives. By doing so, we run into a lot of problems; problems with us, not with what God says.

Do you remember when you got out of High School, and began to look for your first job? Then you started making plans for your future. You started imagining, seriously, what your life would be like. You’re out of school now, and you have nothing left but to ponder what you’ll do for the rest of your life. Some would say, I’m going to fall in love, get married, have a family and have 1.5 kids. The future is not always what we perceive it to be. As we go on, as young adults, we always have a tendency to set up things in our minds ahead of time. You’re taught throughout school to have money so you can live you life, have the nice, car, clothing, home and significant other, then your life can move forward. You try to make the right decision, whether or not to complete you schooling, or get a better job. You’ve already calculated how your life will be. In your life you try to reach a certain thing at a certain time, so at the time frame you’ll have what your goal was. You have a goal that at the age of 27, you have your career, money in your pocket, and eventually have someone by your side.

Then life happens.

The chain of random or unpredictable and unforeseen events that throw you off balance. When you are going along in your life, you’ve got your savings, you set ways of what you’ll do, then all of a sudden life hits you. Life hurts doesn’t it? When it hits, it seems like life doesn’t care about you. You have a whole plan, and now its been ruined. As a man, these are the type of tings you run into in life: you get laid off, you don’t get accepted into the college you wanted, you start hanging around the wrong influences, you get in a car accident, or your girlfriend gets pregnant. Now your life stops, for a moment. How many unwanted kids are out there who are fatherless, and in some ways motherless, due to the mother trying to get her own life together? Here are the things a woman goes through: getting stuck in a dead end job, getting a lot of debt, under pressure to live according to a peer group; you get pregnant by the wrong guy due to overwhelming emotions, with not enough finances to take care of yourself or the baby.

You need to face the fact that your life has taken another change. Its too late in your life to go back and try to correct a decision, because once its done, its done. How many have every looked back over their lives and said “I wish…I should have…I could have?” Isn’t it amazing how God rearranges our lives, though we make mistakes—He changes our whole scheme of things about our selves and our walk–so we still will do what He wants us to do. We made the wrong step, we should have gone left, but we went right. He’s already planned that if they go left, then they’ll run into this person that will jack then up, but I’ll help them through it. You have a purpose in your life to do what God says. If it will take you going through Egypt instead of going through Ohio, then guess what, you’re going through Egypt, because you don’t listen to what He says. How many have heard the term “put it on the back burner?” When you put off to do something for another day, doesn’t mean you aren’t suppose to do it. Our biggest problem is we try to go ahead of ourselves and make plans and goals. I’m not speaking negatively about planning. Planning is good, but you need to handle the things of today, for today. The Bible says tomorrow is not promised to you. So live everyday as though it were your last. Would have, should have, and could have makes matters even worse. What do you do now? You handle the things of today, sufficient for today. Get your mind right, get your heart right, get you right. Then you can build from that point on.

³⁰ Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? ³¹ Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? ³² (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. ³³ But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. ³⁴ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

Matthew 6:30-34

No one knows what the future holds–no one. The steps of a righteous man or woman are ordered by God. What leads and guides you? The Holy Ghost, into all truth. You shouldn’t be trying to figure out what to do because God has already worked it out. A lot of time, we don’t need to see what God has planned, because we’ll try to alter what He has planned. You try to situate yourself in a better way, but the trials and test you go through now are for this now. Handle them, deal with them, work them out, get it in you, and learn from the lessons. You’re establishing your foundation for your future.

Life is like a huge puzzle. There is a big board, and there are only 2 puzzle pieces on the board. You have one puzzle piece in your hand. So you try to fit the one in your hand with the 2 on the board, and they don’t go together. Sufficient for the day is the work thereof. Every time you go through life and trials, another puzzle piece is placed in your hands, and you can slowly piece together the pieces on the board. The pieces that go on the board of life, come from experiencing and going through different aspects of life. You can’t take puzzle pieces and with a pair of scissors try to shape them on your own. You don’t know what the shape of the next pieces will be. This is where we make the mistake of trying to out think God. Trials teach you how to appreciate things, how to be satisfied, how to have love, to be strong, to which you acquire the puzzle pieces of life. But if you go out of the realms of trials and try to control what you go through in your own life, then you won’t get the pieces that will form the life for you.

²³ The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. ²⁴ Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. ²⁵ I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

Psalm 37:23-25

Why is my life like this? I’m tired! Because you created that for yourself because you stepped out of the trial and test that would have given you the perfect structure. If you don’t appreciate something, what will you do with it? You’ll abuse it. What do you mean? Picture the proverbial guy who couldn’t afford to buy a car, spent years working hard, to get himself a car. Now when he gets his car, he misses every bump in the road, cleans it often; but if you give a car to someone who never had the opportunity to work hard to get it, how would they treat it? They would drive it erratically, and not take care of it. You have to be taught the principles in order to move on. The only way to do that is to live in the now, experience the tests and life of now in order to be what you should be, not what you want to be. If you don’t allow God to mold you, you can’t be whom you should be. He who began a good work in you, won’t stop until He’s completed it in you. If you don’t have a certain quality in you that a Child of God needs, you’ll go through many trials. He needs to work out in you a trial to get you to understand what caring, loving, and understanding are. If God needs you to understand what love is, He will take you through something like that.

The title of the puzzle is Christian Behaviour, and you’ve been given 3 puzzle pieces. The first puzzle peace you’ve been given is God, the second is His son. Now you have to walk out your Christian walk to see what it means to be a Child of God. But in the process, the world is interjecting what it is to love or care; people have many options about things; about you, where you should live, when not to talk, when to listen; People have that all broken down for you, and if their message is incomplete, then your message is incomplete.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.⁵ I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.

Psalm 37:23-25

God knows what you have need of.

4 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? ² Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. ³ Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts. ⁴ Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. ⁵ Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? ⁶ But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he saith, God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.

James 4:1-6

If you’re a Child of God, why ask the world for help? You’ll never get that puzzle piece up there on the board of life if you’re constantly comparing God with world. You can’t serve 2 masters—you’ll love the one and hate the other. Can you say yes and no at the same time? No! Neither can you serve two different masters. Either you serve God or serve Satan. You can’t have one foot in the Church and one in the World. The scriptures says the Lord wants us to be either hot or cold, because if we’re lukewarm, He’ll spew us out of His mouth. That is why sometimes people go to ministries that endorse wordily things, or don’t care to point out their wrongs.

⁷ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. ⁸ Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded. ⁹ Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep: let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness. ¹⁰ Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up. ¹¹ Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. ¹² There is one lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy: who art thou that judgest another? ¹³ Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:

James 4:7-13

You can’t get to 100 unless you start with 1, then progress to 2, then three and so forth. Lets care about the number one thing in our lives today. This is where we start, then we can move onto the second thing, until we can reach our goal in Him, doing what He says to do, and not what we want.