Top Gun with Paul McDonald and Britt Mooney

Paul McDonald and Britt Mooney kick off our summer blockbuster series, starting with Top Gun. Like Pete Mitchell, we struggle with an orphan spirit-we don’t know who we are, and we work really hard to make life work. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work when what we fear the most actually happens. We must hear our identity and choose to walk in that to become who we were meant to be-the adopted sons of God.

Join us as we discover our stories in this movie!

Quotes

• This generation is the most orphaned generation we’ve ever had in the history of the world.  We feel more orphaned and abandoned than we ever have before. 

• If you are an orphan, you won’t let yourself fail, because that means all the lies are true. 

• The problem with the orphan spirit is it’s a lie.  That’s not how God feels about you. 

• When the orphan spirit gets a hold of your life, you self-destruct because you’re living out of fear. 

• If you act out of fear, you will get what you are afraid of eventually. You think you’re protecting yourself, but in the end, you kicking the one thing you need out of your life. 

• Legally, she was his daughter; but relationally, she had to become his daughter. 

• We are both born and adopted. 

• You don’t adopt by accident. 

• If you adopted a child, you couldn’t disinherit them. 

• “My greatest fears have become real.” –Job 3:25 

• Men don’t really want a woman who will roll over and do whatever they say.  Men want an equal, someone who will call them to their purpose, and call them out when they are off track. 

• God won’t waste our pain—it is a refiner’s fire to burn out all that is false so that only what is true remains. 

• It’s not love to tell someone they don’t have a choice.  That’s fear. 

• When we expose the real enemy, we can find the connection that we long for. 

• We are called to act from love, not to try to get it. 

• When who we are is based externally, we will always live in the orphan state. 

• Seek your identity as a child of God, and you wake up knowing that your every need is already provided for. 

• We’re competitive because we think we can lose it.  But God says, “I love you and no one can take that away from you.” 

• Fear shuts down your brain.  What reactivates your brain is questions. 

• You can live in God’s house and still believe a lie, and think you have to earn your way in. 

 Themes

• The contrast between Pete Mitchell (orphan) and Maverick (son) 

• Orphans are competitive and NEED to stand out (picking up the girl, winning the volleyball game, being the best at Top Gun) 

• Orphans choose isolation and independence, “I can do it on my own.” (Pete saying, “If I wanted your help, I would've asked for it.”) 

• Orphans have fear and insecurity, which leads to the need for attention and competition. You need to have someone else’s validation because you don’t have the security of love. 

• Goose affirmed Pete, while also being able to point him to the truth—because he’s the one guy who will never leave. 

• Orphans are performance driven, not just with themselves, but with everyone. 

• Orphans are desperate to be chosen (even when they deny that inner craving). 

• Orphans hoard things. They don’t have much, but what they do have, they will kill to keep. 

• Connection is what we need. 

• When orphans encounter tragedy, we push people away and we lose our purpose. 

• When we listen to the orphan spirit, we need someone to remind us who we are. 

• The difference between legally being a son or daughter of God, and relationally calling Him, “Daddy.” 

• What changes Pete’s response is knowing who his father really was. Then he was offered a choice. And the choice empowers him. 

• If he quits, that’s his choice.  If he continues, it’s his choice.  He takes responsibility for what comes next. 

• We can minimize our pain or blow it up into something we can’t get past. 

• It’s when others call us to help that we have to choose to engage. 

• He doesn’t get the girl until he learns who he really is. 

• We have to lose everything before we can find the answer to who am I really. 

• When we feel stuck, the most important thing we can do is ask questions.  And the most important question to ask is, “What’s true?” 

 Resources

• Save the Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need, by Blake Snyder

• The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family, by Kathleen Purvis, David Cross, and Wendy Lyons Sunshine

• So my counsel is: Don’t worry about things—food, drink, and clothes. For you already have life and a body—and they are far more important than what to eat and wear. Look at the birds! They don’t worry about what to eat—they don’t need to sow or reap or store up food—for your heavenly Father feeds them. And you are far more valuable to him than they are. Will all your worries add a single moment to your life?

  “And why worry about your clothes? Look at the field lilies! They don’t worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you, O men of little faith?

  “So don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing. Why be like the heathen? For they take pride in all these things and are deeply concerned about them. But your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, and he will give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to.

  “So don’t be anxious about tomorrow. God will take care of your tomorrow too. Live one day at a time.”

• Matthew 6:25-34 (TLB)

Questions

• Who is the enemy? 

• Who is Pete Mitchell? 

• How do you handle feedback? Critique? Criticism? 

• When do you feel like an orphan? Competition validates you? Desperate to gather things, protect them at all costs?  Drive to feel superior? 

• Who is Goose for you? Who are you connected to? 

• Do you believe that God’s happy that you are his child? Or are you still earning, striving, competing to earn his approval? 

• Where do you find yourself taking the question of your identity, of who am I really?  Women? Work? Hobbies? Activities? 

• How much do you feel like life is up to you? 

• What is your greatest fear?  What result or situation do you fear most? 

• What will you do when what you fear most actually happens?  Where will you go?  To whom will you turn? 

• Where do you feel, “If I don’t do it, no one will.”? 

• What do you think your Father thinks of you? What does He really say about you?