Archive for October, 2017

What Does God Want from Me?

Posted in God's Love on October 31, 2017| Leave a Comment »

My family and society trained me to perform my way into receiving their approval. Just being me was not good enough. I had to please and impress to receive what I wanted from others. This led to me being hard on myself and often demanding more than I could deliver.

These beliefs were then brought into my relationship with God. I believed God was demanding too. My focus became doing the right things and not on being the right person. I also tended to think knowing the Bible was the same as living the Bible. But it wasn’t. Much of what I knew had little impact on my heart.

But our hearts are what God is most interested in. He says, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it” (Proverbs 4:23). We can do right but for improper reasons. Our doing will be pleasing to God if our hearts are healthy. “First, wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too” Jesus tells us in Matthew 23:26.

A friend with significant financial problems has been recently serving our church in several capacities. At first church leadership was suspicious of the person’s motives. They thought the person may be doing the ministries to receive help from the church. But after several weeks of witnessing this persons’ behavior, the church concluded their behavior flowed from a healthy heart. They rewarded this person by loaning them a car.

Many of us believe we need to please and impress God in order to receive his approval and love. We don’t see them as gifts but as something to be earned. But he desires us to rely on his grace. We need to pay attention to what we depend on deep within to feel good about ourselves. Does it take a promotion, impressing the people at church, and being the best golfer in the foursome to regard ourselves as important? Or can we accept God’s gift of importance and be whatever he wants?

God desires us to be real with him. He wants us to know the truth about ourselves and to share it with him. “He desires truth in the innermost being and in the hidden part he will make me know wisdom” (Psalm 51:6).

He desires our love. Jesus says the greatest commandment is to “love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. We can only do this when we receive his gift of being loved with no strings attached. Then he wants us to love others in the same way. God tells us we “love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:9). This means treating people with patience, kindness, and always with their best interests at heart (1 Corinthians 13).

We also have to face the humbling truth we can’t do great things for God without him. He hopes we will depend on him. This week our church revealed a God-size vision for what he plans to do through our church. I was excited but puzzled about how insane these plans were and wondered what impossible things he planned to do through me?

God does not want us to turn away from what he asks of us. Instead, he wants us to rely on “”I am the LORD, the God of all the peoples of the world. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27). He hopes we will go beyond our human limitations and be bold enough to trust him for the impossible as he leads.

What does God want from us? He desires our hearts, love, honesty and dependence. May we keep these in focus as we fight the battles of everyday life.

 

 

 

 

 

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What’s Your Purpose in Life?

Posted in Vision on October 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »

When I was around twenty years old, I began searching for a purpose in life. I wasn’t satisfied with the reason handed me by my family and society. This purpose was to make a good living, get married, raise three kids, do some good in the community and die.  I was not excited.

Therefore, I searched for meaning for six long years. I sought career success, marriage, fun, popularity, and advanced education. Even though I did attain some success, I still wasn’t satisfied with a compelling reason for being alive. I felt frustrated! Maybe I was chasing fantasies and there was no satisfying reason for my existence?

Then, at twenty-six, I was challenged to consider finding purpose in a relationship with God. I got excited about being involved in a giant rescue mission to help people find meaning in life through following Jesus. Therefore, I gladly accepted the challenge of becoming his disciple. I have never regretted this decision. Living for God’s will has brought me purpose for the past forty-six years.

But living for God is vague and we need the details of how it looks in everyday life. For example, I am entering a new stage where I need a fresh vision. I sense I am drifting a bit and not clearly focused on specific goals God wants to do through me. To help me clarify my purpose, I am reading and applying Andy Stanley’s book Visioning.

I feel sad many of us live much of our lives without a satisfying reason to live. This is what happened to the wisest man who ever lived. Solomon had this to say about life, “It is all meaningless—like chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14) After pursuing every activity imaginable, he had this to say about purpose, “Fear God and obey his commandments, for this is everyone’s duty. God will judge us for everything we do, whether good or bad” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). Only when he connected his busyness to God’s purposes did he find meaning. Solomon was wise but did not practice wisdom for much of his life.

But how do we find God’s purposes for our lives?

First, we need to realize God had reasons for creating us. He says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared so that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10, NAS).

As we journey with God through life, he reveals step-by-step what these works are. My works several years ago included working for the County to support my family, being a godly husband, raising my kids to be what God wanted them to be, and serving the church as an elder. Today, except for being a godly husband, all the works have changed.

We need to be careful to not pursue activities just because they feel good or others are impressed. When we don’t receive positive feedback, we can be deceived into thinking we don’t have much purpose.

I have struggled with this in recent years. The works God has given me have not given the feedback from others and myself for me to feel consistently important, loved, and safe. I have trusted more in this feedback than in what God thinks, which is “You are precious to me. You are honored, and I love you” Isaiah 43:4).

Four years ago, I came close to dying from an aortic aneurism. But I didn’t die. In a vision, God told me why. He said, “You didn’t die because I am not through working in you and through you.” Wow! I am important.

As long as we are alive we have a purpose to God for being here. We just need to discover what it is and live it out. May we choose to follow him as he leads us to finish his purposes.

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