4 weeks helping students understand how God works in their story to make them more like Jesus. When you discover that there’s an all-loving, all-powerful God out there, you immediately think about how He’s going to help YOU live the happiest version of your life that you can imagine. We think of God as our Lyft driver who exists to take us to our preferred destination. And when He doesn’t, we give Him one star. But what if we’re thinking too small about what God can do in our lives? What if we need to elevate our expectations?

Video Messages Included

Week 1 (Ephesians 3:13-20 NLT)

Intro: For a lot of us, our frustrations with God come down to unmet expectations. We know how we want our lives to go, and we expect God to help us get there. But what if we need to elevate our expectations?

Truth: Paul’s life after Christ probably hadn’t gone the way He expected, but His focus was on what God was doing in Him throughout life’s twists and turns. He knew that getting his way in life wasn’t what would make him complete. That receiving the fullness of life and power in Christ was what would make him complete. Paul recognized that God was doing infinitely more in and through him than he could’ve ever imagined.

The Point: God wants more for you than you do.

Week 2 (Exodus 3:1-14 NLT)

Intro: It’s frustrating when you have things you want to do and places you want to go, and you’ve chosen God to be your wingman, but it feels like God is sabotaging you at every turn.

Truth: Moses probably felt that way too as God was calling him back to Egypt and the Israelite people. Moses wanted a quiet life away from his past. But God wanted to redeem his past. And, by the end of Moses’ life, he wouldn’t have had it any other way. We think we’re in the driver’s seat and God’s helping us get where we want to go, but when you pay attention to the gospel dynamic of why Jesus died for us, you’ll realize that’s simply not the case.

The Point: God is taking you to His destination, not the other way around.

Week 3 (Colossians 3:1-3 NLT)

Intro: We want things to be obvious and tangible, but a relationship with God often seems to be anything but. So many of us are left wondering if there’s some kind of secret code we’re missing out on in terms of what God wants for our lives.

Truth: Paul doesn’t mince words in Colossians 3 when he tells us to think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. Being resurrected with Jesus means we’ve died to this life and need to worry less about the earthly, obvious things and more about the heavenly, eternal things. Our real lives are hidden with Christ in God, and the pursuit of that hidden life is what God wants for us.

The Point: Eternal pursuits are better than obvious preferences.

Week 4 (Matthew 6:31-33 NLT)

Intro: There’s a difference between being loved and feeling loved, and the difference is found in experiencing the other person bend in our direction sometimes simply for our enjoyment.

Truth: For the Israelites living in the 1st century, they knew that God loved them, but often found themselves worrying about the earthly things they wanted and needed. Jesus reassured them (and us) that we don’t need to worry because #1, God knows what we need, and #2, when we seek first God’s kingdom, God will give us the desires of our heart.

The Point: You may get your way along the way.