Getting a Grip Finding Balance in Your Daily Life

Getting a Grip Copyright © 1998 by Willow Creek Association Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 ISBN-10: 0-310-26605-X ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26605-1 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means-electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other- except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Interior design by Rick Devon and Michelle Espinoza Printed in the United States of America 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 /?DCI/ 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 11 S E S S I O N 1 GETTING A GRIP GETTING A GRIP ON YOUR LIFE T H E B I G P I C T U R E A mother stopped at her parents' home for just a few moments to pick something up. While she went into the house with her two little children, she left her car running in the driveway. As they were coming back out, her four-yearold boy ran to the car, opened the door, climbed in the driver's seat and accidentally hit the gearshift lever. He put the car into drive and it ran right through the garage door of her parents' house. The mother stood in stunned amazement as she watched the car crash through the door. There was nothing she could do. It was out of her control. Thankfully, no one was injured. Not many days later the woman's husband was driving the same car. He was dropping off a friend at home and his fouryear- old son was sitting in the backseat. As the father was driving up the driveway approaching his friend's garage, he realized that he was on glare ice. He put his foot on the brake but realized it wasn't going to do any good. As the car slid closer to the closed garage door, he said to his friend, "I think we're in big trouble." A moment later they crashed through the garage door. His little boy in the backseat quietly said, "It's okay, Dad, the same thing happened to me last week." I remember the father saying to me, "Bill, it is hard to describe how helpless I felt when I realized I was on ice and that there was nothing I could do to stop my car from crashing through my friend's garage door. It was a horrible feeling. I was utterly out of control." A W I D E A N G L E V I E W 1. Describe in detail a time you experienced being out of control. What feelings gripped your heart at that moment? A B I B L I C A L P O R T R A I T Read Genesis 1:1-27 2. How do you see God creating order out of chaos in the account of creation? What do you learn about the character of God in this passage? 3. Genesis 1:26 says, "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.'" If human beings are created in the image of God, and God is a God of order, what do you learn about humanity from this passage? S H A R P E N I N G T H E F O C U S Read Snapshot "An Honest Look at Your Life" Look closely at a few examples of what some lives might look like: AN HONEST LOOK AT YOUR LIFE If you took an honest inventory of your life, you might have to admit that some things are not the way they should be. It is a rare experience to find a person who feels they have a good grip on every area of their life. Most of us struggle with feeling that parts of our life are out of control. If we portrayed our life on a pie graph and were to honestly plot each areaHybels, Bill is the author of 'Getting a Grip Finding Balance in Your Daily Life', published 2005 under ISBN 9780310266051 and ISBN 031026605X.