Saying Yes! - Week Four : 11 Oct 2012 -TCC

==This message was given in 2012, but is listed here for better chronological presentation==

Can you imagine the frustration of having someone randomly place inappropriate stop signs throughout your city? At each one you would wonder, “Is this one for my safety or is it just keeping me from where I want to go?” We are dependent upon legitimate stops signs to keep us from plowing through dangerous intersections, but senseless ones keep traffic from moving as it should.

What is true for the road is true for the human heart. We are dependent upon legitimate stop signs to keep us from plowing through dangerous intersections.

But within our society, our own minds and even within our churches there are hundreds of stop signs. Places, ideas, activities that claim to be required stops necessary for our good. But in reality they are not all legitimate. Some are keeping us from going where God wants us to go.

It is hard to discern which stops are legitimate, keeping us from dangerous intersections, and which are renegade-keeping us from moving as we should.

We need someone to sort this out for us. And we have someone: Jesus. This is why Jesus came and what He came to do. In order to bring us back to God, Jesus came to identify all the renegade stop signs that are senseless, keeping us from entering into the life He has created us to live. And He has come to be the One stop that if we do observe, will allow us to enter into a life we never thought possible.

We will see this throughout Jesus earthly ministry, but possibly for us as women, no more profoundly then when God sent His Son to a significant well to a specific woman. There He identifies the renegade stop signs she is observing (places, ideas, activities) causing great injury and keeping her from entering into the life for which she was created.

 He has come to her to become the One stop that if she observes will allow her to enter into a life she never thought possible.

 Through her life’s account—beginning with where Jesus stopped—I believe Jesus desires to identify the renegade stops signs in our own lives, the places we are stopped that are keeping us from entering into the life we never thought possible.