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I unexpectingly got the chance to speak during the closing session of our Community Student Retreat this past weekend. Kam Hunt, one of the youth pastor’s at Gateway Church in Dallas, Texas, did an incredible job as the primary communicator for the retreat. However, due to ministry responsibilities he had to be back at Gateway on Sunday morning. Luckily, God gave me a clear word to share with the teenagers. 

In fact, God put this video clip from this classic movie on my heart. (WARNING: this clip does have a curse word in it. However, this curse word is found in the King James Version of the Bible.)

Here’s the question I asked following this clip: WHAT IF THESE WARRIORS DECIDED TO SIMPLY WALK AWAY AND GO HOME INSTEAD OF FIGHTING AFTER THIS IMPRESSIVE, MOTIVATIONAL TALK BY WILLIAM WALLACE?

That would be terrible. That would be disappointing. That would be a crappy movie. Nobody would want to see that.

But that’s what happens too often at retreats, camps, mission trips, and spiritual mountaintop moments of our lives. We gather all together, listen to some great communicators, get emotionally and spiritually charged up ready to conquer the world, only to go back home to the same problems, same situations, same temptations, same sins, and same results as before the spiritual mountaintop. We too often get caught up in the “yelling and screaming” mountaintop, pump up moments that we forget we still have to fight in a battle.

I challenged the teenagers to go home and make a difference. To not simply experience God in a real way on a weekend retreat, only to go back home unchanged in normal day-to-day life. To do whatever it took to completely surrender everything to God.

I’m asking you the same thing today. What will it take for you to jump off the sidelines and into the battlefield? What will it take to make significant life changes and surrender everything to Jesus? Maybe that specifically looks like you needing to ask for forgiveness or forgive another person? Maybe you need to get rid of something that is consistently taking your attention away from God? Maybe you need to finally share Jesus with that person God keeps laying on your heart? Maybe that means you start treating mom, dad, brother, sister, son, daughter, etc better?

Whatever God is whispering in your ear to change, let me encourage you to do it. When we start crossing the line from having thoughts about doing something to actually acting on those thoughts, true change can happen.