“A few years ago I tried to take up mountain biking,” Francis Chan told Momentum participants Monday morning, July 23 in Reed Green Coliseum on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
“I hated it,” he recalled. “The worst part was I kept falling down,” he added.
“My friend said, ‘are you looking where you don’t want to go? Do you see a rock and say I don’t want to go there?’” Chan recalled, realizing that was the problem. “Your body is going to go where you are looking. Your body naturally follows your eyes.”
Chan, the teaching pastor at Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, Calif., compared the experience to life as he addressed the topic of discipline during his last session of the conference.
“Guess what happens when you focus on things you don’t want to do?” he said. “You are going to naturally go there.”
He noted that if we spend too much time talking about our past, we’ll get depressed.
“Jesus hasn’t called us to do that,” he said as he discussed Galatians 6:7. “He wants us to fix our eyes on Him.”
“Do not be deceived. God cannot be mocked,” he stressed. “You are never going to fool God,” he added. “You’re going to fool me. You’re going to fool your youth pastor. You’re going to fool your mom and dad.”
He noted that one reaps what one sows. “Have you ever planted an avocado seed hoping to grow corn? You won’t be able to do it. It’s a law. It will never work that way.”
He observed that no one in history has ever been blessed for sinning. “We’re blessed by following God, by pursuing faith, by going after Him,” he said.
As closed the session, he encouraged the students to do good.
“Don’t get tired of serving Jesus,” he said. “Don’t get tired of doing good.”
Tonight, Shawn McBride takes the stage in the coliseum to encourage students to live a life of integrity. The conference continues in Hattiesburg through July 27.