INTRO & WRAP-UP Hacked Week 2: The Five Biggest Choices You Can Make Right Now The Point Make wise choices in the five main areas of your life right now. Intro Last week we talked about how to make wise choices. This week we’re gonna look at the five biggest choices you can make in your life right now. As we talk about that, let’s see how our main character Charlie continues to make choices that lead him deeper in the secrets of the Bitemob. So let’s go to this week’s episode of Hacked. Play this week’s video message. Close Charlie’s making some big choices. He keeps choosing to go deeper and deeper into this Bitemob stuff, and it’s drastically changing his life. As we continue to watch this series over the next few weeks, you’ll see that the choices he’s making right now will change the trajectory of his life forever. I remember one of the biggest decisions I made that changed everything for me was … Tell about one of the biggest choices you’ve made in your life and how it changed things for you. I know it can be easy to think that your choices and decisions don’t really matter or they’re just small things. After all, you’re still young. You’re not making big adult choices in your life yet, right? Wrong! There are big choices that you have to make every day. Here are the five biggest choices that you need to pay attention to right now: Feel free to elaborate on these points … 1. Your relationships Choosing who you hang out with and the people you surround yourself with will shape who you become. You’ll either choose to surround yourself with people who’ll make you better or people who’ll tear you down—or just have no impact in your life. And that also includes, if you’re allowed to, who you choose to date. 2. School One of my friends always says that one of his biggest regrets in his adult life is not trying in school. He said that he doesn’t know simple stuff that everyone else does because he chose not to learn in school. He actually says that he feels like everyone else is smarter than him. INTRO & WRAP-UP You have a big choice now on how you choose to apply yourself in school. Are you going to choose to get smarter and involve yourself with a lot of different things in school, or are you going to choose to waste your time and these years that you’re in now? 3. Actions How you act and respond to things is a big choice you need to make now. How you choose to act and respond to situations is how people will view you and relate to you. 4. View yourself How you choose to view yourself is a huge choice you have to make on a daily basis. When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Who do you see? Will you choose to view yourself as someone that has worth and value and can make a difference in this world? Or, do you choose to have a low view of yourself and therefore cower away from relationships and opportunities. People who choose to have a higher view of themselves and see themselves how God made them live with more confidence. And people with confidence have a greater impact. 5. Beliefs And probably the biggest choice you have to make in your life right now is what you choose to believe. What you choose to believe determines how you act and who you become. What you choose to believe becomes the core of who you are. This isn’t just choosing to believe what the world tells you—or even what your parents tell you what to believe. You need to know what YOU believe and why you believe it. Matthew 7:24-27 NIV “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” These five big choices you have to make right now are the foundation on which everything else will be built on. If you choose to make wise choices in these five areas, you’ll be building your foundation on a rock. And when things get hard, you’ll be able to stand strong. (Eyes closed/heads bowed. Elaborate on these points below. These are just the general flow.) Some of you are thinking about those five areas, and you know you need to make some better decisions in at least one of those. If that’s you, and you know it’s time to make some better decisions, then raise your hand right now and let me pray for you … (Have them raise their hand and pray for them.) There are others of you in the room that need to focus on number five: what you believe. You’ve maybe believed in God but you haven’t really followed Him or even taken that belief too seriously. But today is the day when you choose to make that decision to solidify your belief in God. If that’s you and you want to put your trust, hope, and faith in God for the first time by accepting that He sent His Son Jesus to die for you—if that’s you then raise your hand right now and repeat this prayer after me. Everyone together … (Have them raise their hand and repeat prayer after you.)