Today,
our Spiritual Growth Campaign or 40 Days of Purpose begins. Today, we begin a
40 day spiritual journey to bigger and better things.
Many
months of praying and planning have gone into this campaign and today it kicks
into high gear.
We will be
challenged, over these next 40 days to go to new heights and to dig deep roots
in our relationship with God.
I’m
hoping that many of you are prayed up and prepared for what God will do in your
life over the next 6 weeks.
If
you recall, last week’s message focused on the three basic questions of life. What Does God
want? (My life); What does it take?
(Discipline)
and Why
should I give my all to God? (Because of the
Cross)
If
those are the three basic questions of life, I would like for us today to look
at the 3
Greatest Questions of Life.
-PRAY-
The
first of life’s greatest questions is The Question of Existence: Why am I alive?
This question is one that
people have been asking for centuries.
The prophet
Jeremiah asked: “Why
was I ever born? My entire life has been filled with trouble, sorrow, and
shame.” (Jeremiah 20:18, NLT2)
Jeremiah
wrestled with the question of existenceàhe wondered why he was alive.
Carl Jung, the
famous psychiatrist, once said: “I don’t know the meaning, the purpose of life, but it
looks as if something were meant by it”
Rap artist Ice T
once wrote: “The
only reason we’re here is to reproduce. Just chill out and reproduce. Keep the
species alive.”
People all over
the world have tried to come up with an answer to the question of existenceà
why am I here?
Self-help books
are a billion dollar a year industry. People all over the world are drawn to
them to find the answer to the question of existence.
But to answer
the question of existence, we must move beyond ourselves. As Rick Warren has
said: “You
didn’t create yourself, so there is no way you can tell yourself what you were
created for.” (Warren,
2003, 18)
To answer the question of
existence, we must look to Someone greater than us. We must look to God.
The
Bible says: “The
Lord has made everything for his
own purposes…”
(Pr. 16:4a, NLT2)
The
Bible says that God has a purpose for everything. Every rock has a purpose.
Every plant has a purpose. Every animal has a purpose, and if you are still
breathing, you have a purpose.
We
will spend the next 40 days looking at what those purposes are, but suffice it
to say that for now, God has put us here for a reason; for a purpose.
The
Bible says: “Even
before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and
without fault in his eyes.
5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by
bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and
it gave him great pleasure.” (Eph. 1:4-5, NLT2)
The Bible tells
me that created us for His purpose. It gave Him pleasure; He wanted to create
you, and He wants you to come to Him and find your life’s purpose.
Notice that we are
not an accident; nor are we an afterthought. The Bible is crystal clear when it
says: “Even
before he made the world, God loved us and chose us…” (Eph. 1:4a,
NLT2)
Long before any
of this “stuff” was ever made, God decided in advance to create you and to love
you.
You see church,
God created us to love us. Not because He needed
something to love… remember the
Bible tells us that “…God is love.” (1
John 4:8, NIV)
God created us
because He wanted to. We were created to be loved by God. We were created to
love God. The Bible says: “We love Him because He first loved us.” (1Jo 4:19, NIV)
So what is the
answer to the first Great Question of life, the question of existence: why am I
here? I was
created to be loved by God.
The second
question is The
Question of Significance: does my life matter?
ILLUSTRATION- The story is told that during
WWII, prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp in Hungary were processing human
sewage in a factory.
One
day the Allies came along and bombed the factory and blew it apart, leaving the
prisoners with nothing to do.
The
Nazi soldiers had the prisoners take all the rubble of the factory and move it
to another field.
The next day
they had the prisoners take that same rubble and move it back in reverse.
The
next day, they had to take the stuff and move it back; and day after day they
had no meaning, no purpose.
It was just
work doing the same thing over and over with no meaning and
no purpose.
Then
something strange began to happen; the prisoners began to go crazy.
They began to
lose their will to live because there was no meaning, no purpose in their work.
They were just moving bricks back and forth, back and forth.
Many of them
began to throw themselves in front of the guards trying to get shot. In
essence, they were trying to commit suicide.
(Warren, PDL week 1
sermon. Pg5)
Why did these
prisoners try to get themselves killed? Because they were made for a purpose,
and when life has no purpose, there’s no point in living.
The Bible says
that there is a reason to live; there is a purpose to life.
“This is what the Lord says, who made you, who formed you
in your mother's body, who will help you: "People of Jacob, my servants,
don't be afraid. Israel, I chose you.” (Is.
44:2, NCV)
Jesus told us in
John 15: “You
did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit--
fruit that will last.” (John 15:16,
NIV)
And David
reminds us in Psalm 139: “For you (God) created my inmost being; you knit me together
in my mother's womb.”
“All the days
ordained for me were written in your book before one of
them came to be.” (Psalm 139:13, 16, NIV)
The Bible reminds us that God created;
chose; and has planned our days.
He paid so much
attention to your life that He has not left anything out. He is with you each
and every step of the way.
Over the next 40
days, we are going to examine in detail, how much our life matters; we are
going to look at what and why God created us, and how so much of this life is
preparation for eternity.
You see dear
church, God made us to last forever. He didn’t just create us for the here and
nowà He
created us to live with Him forever.
Jesus said: “In my Father's
house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going
there to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and
prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you
also may be where I am.” (John
14:2-3, NIV)
Jesus is
preparing your eternal home; and what you do on this earth is preparation for
your eternal home.
The
Bible says: “When
this tent we live in--- our body here on earth—is torn down, God will have a
house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last
forever.” (2 Cor. 5:1, TEV)
This
life is preparation for the life to come.
In
response to the Question of Significance: Does our life on this earth matter? The answer is: Absolutely! It matters to God.
The third great
question of Life is The Question of Intention: What is my purpose?
“What on earth
am I here for” is the question that we are going to spend the next
40 days looking at.
In Psalm 89,
David asked the question: “Why did you create us? For nothing?” (Psalm 89:47b, NCV)
David wasn’t
asking himself that question; he was asking God “what
on earth am I here for?” “What is my purpose”?
David asked a
question of purpose; I’ve asked a question of purpose, and chances are pretty
good that you have asked a question of purpose.
ILLUSTRATION- I have a collection of power
tools in my man cave in the basement of our house. Each tool has a specific
purpose, and unless I have that specific tool, I am unable to finish my work.
Whenever
I purchase a new tool, one of the first things I do, is reach for the
instruction manual. I want to know the proper way to use my new power tool, and
how not to lose a finger.
Friends,
if you don’t know something’s purpose; it will likely end up getting
abused and will not work correctly.
The only want that you will ever
know your real purpose in this life is by looking at the Creator and by looking
at the Owner’s Manuel, the Bible.
The
Bible says: “In
the beginning God created…” (Gen.
1:1, NIV). If we want to understand what our purpose is, we must look to the
One who created it all; we must start with God.
The
Bible says: “…understanding
begins with knowing the Holy One.” (Pr.
9:10b, NCV)
We find our purpose in this life
by getting to know God.
Colossians
1:16 says: “For
everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and
invisible…everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.”(The
Message)
We
are not going to learn our purpose in life by watching Oprah, Dr. Oz, or even
the new season of survivor.
If we want to
know what we
are on this earth for, we’ve got to look at the One who created all
things.
The
Bible says: “He
(Jesus) is
before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:17,
NIV)
ILLUSTRATION- Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish
philosopher, once told a story
about a goose who was wounded and who
landed in a barnyard with some chickens.
He
played with the chickens and ate with the chickens. After a while that goose
thought he was a chicken.
One
day a flight of geese came over, migrating to their new home. They gave a honk
up there in the sky, and the goose heard it.
Kierkegaard
said, “Something stirred within the breast of this goose. Something called him
to the skies. He began to flap the wings he hadn’t used, and he rose a few feet
in the air.
Then
he stopped, and he settled back again into the mud of the barnyard. He heard
the cry, but he settled for less.” (my files)
You,
friend, are hearing that God has a plan for you; you are hearing that God has a
purpose for your life.
Will you rise up
to the challenge, or will you sink deep into the mud?
The
choice is up to you, will you draw near to God, or will you push God away?
God
invites us to seek him “…while he may be found; (to)
call on him
while he is near.” (Is. 55:6b, NIV).
God
invites us to use these next 40 days to teach us how to fly.
I’m
going to ask you to take out the commitment card that should have been placed
in the bulletin. Many of you responded to the challenge last Sunday night, but
some did not.
If
you want to get involved in this 40 day Spiritual journey, I am going to ask
you to fill out your area of commitment:
·
hearing all 7 messages in the campaign;
·
reading the PDL book, and
·
Joining a Small Group for the duration of the campaign.
I
would then ask you to sign your name to the bottom of this card, and be sure to
give it to me on, and pick up your packet on your way out.
Those
of you who responded last week, I’m going to ask you to respond again, only
this time I’m going to ask you to stick your response to your refrigerator…
Let this be your
reminder that you are going to take these 40 days and seek God’s will for your
life.
Church,
I know that each one of us is at a different stage in our spiritual journey;
but we are going to do this 40 DOP together, because the Bible says that: “Two are better than
one, because they have a good return for their work...”
(Ecc. 4:9, NIV)
We are going to
commit, together, the next 40 days of our lives—out of an approximate 25,550
days—to seek out God’s plan and purpose for our life.
What are the
three Great Questions of Life?
·
A Question of existence: Why am I alive? (I am
alive to Love God)
·
A Question of Significance: Does my Life matter (Yes! It matters to God)
And
·
A Question of Intention: What is my purpose: (to
know Christ and to make Him known)
God tells us in
Jeremiah 29:11: “For
I know the plans I have for you…plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans
to give you hope and a future.” (NIV)
God has a
purpose and a plan for our life. May each one of us take the next 40 days and
figure out “what
on earth we are here for.”
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