DRIVEN BY PURPOSE

(What  is my purpose?)

Ask yourself these questions:

Our day’s activities should be guided by this question: “ Does this activity help me fulfill God’s purposes for my life?”

Does it really matter what I do with each day of my life… you ask?

T or F Life on earth is the dressing room for what will happen later, on the stage of eternity.

Some of you made fun of my analogy of Wednesday evening but I like it so here goes:

If you were going to stop at the store on your way to an evening out, would you spend your time getting ready for the evening out or the stop at the store

If you answer that question with something, on this earth, that you physically do, your vocation, your job, your career, the use of some great personal talent….

You will have failed the test! What you do is very important… particularly if it is part of God’s plan for your life, but what you do is not your number one reason for being born.

I heard a news commentator say this week about a great football player: “He was born to play football!” ….. Perhaps…… but playing football, in and of itself was not his number one reason for being born. What is?________________________

If you answer the question with some deeply, mature response about loving and caring relationships with your family and friends… you, also, just failed the test. As important as your relationships in this life are,… as critical as it is to learn how to relate to others in this life…. Once you get done with “the practice workout on this earth” and move on to the “main event” in eternity… you will no longer relate to those same people in heaven, like you did here on this earth. They were put here with you, to help get you ready for eternity!

If you come up with some super spiritual response like; “I want to give my life to help other people come to know God and get ready for heaven” … that’s good, real good…. It’s the wrong answer to the question, but it’s a good goal.

What is the right answer to the question: What is your number one reason for being born? _______________________________________________________________

A) Westminster Catechism (quoted around the world)

That’s too simple… to theological…. To churchy. One of those stuffed, white, shirt answers that really doesn’t mean anything practical….. Right?

No.. not right. In fact, that statement; if you understand it… is potent and if you can get hold of if… it might just change your perspective on all of life.

We as a church… developed an acrostic to define our collective mission to the world. It spells the name of the church: G R A C E

The “G” of GRACE in our church’s purpose statement, on the coffee cups you get when you visit for the first time, on T-shirts around here, on caps that some of you wear is:

The biggest problem with that as our number one goal is that most people don’t know what that means. I did a computer search, yesterday and found all kinds of churches, all over the world, use that phrase to describe what they are all about. However if you were to get those church members individually aside and ask them to define what “glorifying God means, I doubt too many people could actually tell you….

However; Glorifying God is first on our list because it must be first in our lives…let me try to explain: ( It’s going to take a little while so make yourself comfortable.)

We started Wednesday evening exploring the subject of your “eternality“. The day you were born this earth was, of course, blessed beyond belief…. And that blessing will last forever. Try to imagine the fact the you will now, never cease to exist. A million years from now, your eternal will not only not be over but you eternal existence will have just begun. You… you will still be living 100 million years from now!

If you actually believe that you are going to live forever, it would be, and is, short sighted to live this life in any kind of a way that does not prepare you for eternity. I had a cousin who lived his life purely for his own sinful enjoyment. His mother is a Christian,… and I’m sure he thought that one day he would clear up his rebellion against God but he didn’t get the chance. A few months ago he left a party… drunk… on his motorcycle, missed the corner and obliterated himself on the side of a cliff. Now, he has the rest of eternity to think how misguided it was to spend these few short years on this earth living for himself.

You are eternal…. You will never die…. You need to make that a guiding thought each day as you prepare for your eternal life, once you leave this practice game here on earth.

…but that’s not the point of this message…. God is eternal, He, also, will exist on forever. But unlike you, he already has been existing eternally….forever!

Psalm 90:2 Before the mountains were born, or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (NIV)

It’s virtually impossible to imagine ourselves, or God, as never ceasing to exist, it’s just as hard to imagine that God never had a beginning. Just try to wrap your mind around that! God did not ever have a beginning…. He has always existed…. 500 million years before He created this world…. God is! What was he doing all that time?… Don’t know….something huge. It will be interesting to get to heaven and find out what mind, numbing things God has been up to for all of eternity past.

…but that, also, is not the point of this message…

At some point, just a few thousand years ago, he began the process of creation, as we know it. He created time… so all of creation would have beginnings and focused points to build their life around. God, Himself, exists outside of time. He is already existing a billion years from now.

Why did God, then, create this vast universe? We had a speaker here in the past named, Bill Mills. He said, God is wasteful!…. In a good way, of course. When God prepared the universe for man to inhabit, he could have made 17 stars. He made millions, just so you could look up a see the glory of God!

Psalm 19:1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

What’s that mean?… Is God an all powerful, eternal being who is also a cosmic showoff? God exists alone for billions of years with nobody to impress with his great power so he creates the universe, and then mankind, so someone would say….Wow, God you did a good job?

Hardly, He didn’t need to create the universe, He didn’t need to create Adam and Eve, especially since he knew they were going to reject him and need to be redeemed.

There has to be something more to this “glory of God” than him just showing off. He did create the universe so it would be impressive to mankind… but not to show-off: He wanted the awe of creation to generate a special attitude in the heart of mankind.

David: Psalm 8:3-4 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him? (NIV)

The universe wasn’t designed to show us what God can do…It was designed to reveal to us, who God is!

I don’t know what God has been doing for billions of years but I’ve got to believe that the creation of Mankind, in his image, who would, then, spend all of eternity with him… was the capstone of what God had done.

The fact that He loved His creation… us….. so much that he would eventually become one of us, take the penalty for our rebellion against him, on himself, and die; to assure us an eternity with him says, to me, that we were a (the) centerpiece of God’s creating power.

When God gets ready to create us, his masterpiece, He first creates a universe to house us, a universe filled with amazing scientific marvels. He’s not showing us what he is capable of…. The complexities of Creation were just an explosion, into matter, of what God is. The fact that we are surrounded by the most astounding organization and vast intricate detail is supposed to expose to us, who our God is. The fact that God made thousands of species of birds, instead of just four is simply an expression of who God is. His vast creation, to house mankind in, was simply God painting a huge interactive picture so mankind could come to know him.

God only had to utter the words “Let there be” and out of his nature flowed millions of miles of awe-inspiring creation, millions of massive stars with enormous inner power, millions of species of life, amounts of energy so vast that it still keeps every aspect of hundreds of solar systems running like clockwork. God wasn’t showing off… there was no one here, yet, to show off to. It’s just what happens when God turns loose his massive inner power.

Romans 11:36 For everything comes from him; everything exists by his power and is intended for his glory. To him be glory evermore. Amen. (NLT)

You understand what I’m saying? You need to understand this… in order to understand what I’m getting ready to say next.

The glory of God in Creation is simply the nature of God reflected in what he has created!

Everything, in all God’s creation, is marching in step with God’s glory…. It is reflecting God. It is an expression of the very nature of God himself.

But God isn’t done creating yet. Out of Himself he creates a being far beyond the others.

This being is the most perfect expression of the character, personality, intelligence of God himself of any creature on the planet. All the rest of creation was an explosion of the very insides of God coming out, but in this one, and this one only God plants his image, his likeness, patterns them exactly after Himself.

I shared with you a couple weeks ago that I think it was at this point that the archangel Lucifer rebelled against God. God had made something so advanced, so perfectly reflecting his glory,…. that all the amazing species of life, and all the order and perfection of the universe, even the beauty of Lucifer himself paled in comparison.

God created man as his ultimate masterpiece, the most perfect replica of his likeness, the most accurate reflection of his glory.

You know what happened but let me restate it. When man rebelled against God it was like a dozen huge cracks splintered the mirror through which we were designed to reflect God’s image to the rest of creation.

Romans 3:23 … all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, (NIV)

Our desire to be in charge of our lives destroyed the primary reason we were created.

Satan convinced Adam and Eve that having freedom from God, somehow, would give them greater personal freedom. It did the opposite! It shattered the reflection of God’s likeness (which is the very heart of what mankind was created for) and left them searching for some other meaning to life.

What irony;

God’s perfect design for us was to make us like Him…

Sin brought a desire to be independent from God. Because we were made to reflect God’s image we are most miserable when we are resisting the renewing of God’s image in us. We are most fulfilled in this life, when we are submitting to God’s attempts to realign us into his likeness and image. (I’m not making this up)

Colossians 3:9-10 … you have taken off your old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator. (NIV)

2 Corinthians 3:18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord. (NKJV)

2 Corinthians 3:18 And all of us have had that veil removed so that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory of the Lord. And as the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more. (NLT)