submitted by LARRY WESTFALL
Introduction
1) All of us have an image of the person that we want to be.
If you are a mom you have an image of how you want your children to see you, how your husband sees you in this role, how other moms view you, how your mother will view you, how your grand mother will view you, how you want the pastor to view you, etc…
If you are a dad its the same thing. You have an image of the man that you want everyone to see when they picture you in that roll. Your wife, your children, your dad, your grandfather, other dads, etc…
COMMON ROLES FOR ADULTS
Mother, Father, Son, Daughter, Co-worker, Boss, Leader, Church Member, Volunteer, Husband, Wife, Grandmother, Grandfather, Civic Leader, Activist, Neighbor, Friend, Mentor, Role Model, Brother, Sister, Facebook (MySpace, or other social network) Friend, etc...
COMMON ROLES FOR CHILDREN & TEENAGERS
Son, Daughter, Brother, Sister, Grandson, Granddaughter, Classmate, Friend, Leader, Student, Athlete, Facebook (MySpace, or other social network) Friend, Member of Church Youth Ministry, Role Model to Younger Children, etc...
Choose a couple of the roles above and give a brief description of how someone might want others to view them in that area - or - Choose a couple of the roles above and have the participants describe how they would want to be perceived in that particular area.
The Problem
2) Sometimes there is a gap between our preferred image and who we really are. The person I put out to everyone else isn't the "real me."
Read Acts 5:1-11
Choose a couple of the roles above and draw some similarities between the choice that Ananias and Sapphira made to the choice(s) any one of us could be making today. (i.e. Dad is never at home because he works two jobs – he tells the people that he is working with that he is trying to help provide a better future for his children than he had when he was growing up, but in reality he has a gambling problem and is deeply in debt and is on the verge of losing everything he owns and his family – or – a teenage girl that is in the habit of coming home late from school because she is over at her friend’s house studying, her mother is pleased because her math grade is an A compared to the C- that she carried last year. What mom doesn’t know is that she is paying someone else to do her homework and she is spending her time at her boyfriend’s house.)
The Truth
3) We can spend our time doing image management or character development.
Image Management- covering up the person that we are in hopes that everyone else will believe that we are the person that we know we should be.
4) King David spent some time doing image management.
Read 2 Samuel 11:1 – 27
Read through this passage of Scripture and discuss all of the people that are behind the scenes that David cannot do image management with.
Even when we expend our energy doing image management there are still those that see what others do not. We are never really able to hide who we are from everyone.
Conclusion
5) The “Real Me”
If you can answer yes to any of these questions will you let us pray with you?
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