On Sunday 21st July, I had a privilege to speak at my home Kerith Community Church. I’ve been asked as a follow up to write a blog entry with some of what I shared. This may help some of us to revisit what was raised, revisit what God spoke to us about and maybe shift our thoughts into action.

Click here if you didn’t hear the message, or want to hear it again 🙂

All of us have our Default Settings. In the same way that our phones, TV’s and laptops have natural settings they are made with, we too have Default Settings. These thought patterns or behaviours that we are born with, or naturally seem to flow or end up in. These patterns of thought and behaviours are in our nature, as we try to live independently of God. In the Bible this is called sin.

With this, I define a Default Setting in our lives as

In the Bible, Simon Peter (also known as Peter) had a default setting. In John 21, as we see Pete

r is unsure of what to do, at the end of the 3 year experience he had with Jesus as his disciple, he returned to his Default Setting: Fishing.

Fishing wasn’t Peter’s hobby. It wasn’t an ‘extra curricular’ thing for Peter. Fishing was his job, his career, his livelihood. Before he met Jesus, fishing was what Peter would have been known for, what he was good at, what he did each day, what he was comfortable with. But as we read in the Bible, Jesus called him from fishing to become a ‘fisher of men’. Jesus called Peter from his Default Setting, to follow Him. The next 3 years of Peter’s life would have been incredible, challenging, exciting, difficult, fulfilling, inspiring and empowering.

Following Jesus isn’t always easy, but it is always best.

At times in your life, whether the end of a season, or when you are in transition in your life, what do you do next? When your job contract ends? When the children all move out of home? When you finish school or university? What’s next? Sometimes, in these times when we are unsure and don’t know what’s next, our tendency can be to lean into our Default Settings.

What are your Default Settings? Anger? Isolation? Comfort Eating? Anxiety? Impulse Buying? Escapism? They can be different for all of us.

You are a new creation in Christ, the old has gone and the new has come. Lets not return to our Default Settings, remember:

Don’t go back to what Jesus has rescued you from.

If you are anything like me, you fall into your Default Settings at times, whether you know Jesus or not.

How does Jesus react to us when we do find ourselves in our default settings?

I’ll answer that in another blog entry 🙂