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Purpose Driven Life #1
Sermon on Purpose
January 16~/18, 2004
Jeff Jones, Senior Pastor
Welcome to the 40 Days of Purpose.
We are now ready to start on this journey that we’ve been planning a long time.
Today we are going to look at one of life’s greatest and biggest questions, “Why on earth am I here?”
A few weeks ago I went to Little Rock Arkansas, where I was involved with a group of church planters around the Southeast.
I drove with a couple of pastors from Little Rock to the place in rural Arkansas where the meetings actually were being held.
We were having a great time talking, three senior pastors in the car—all telling stories and exaggerating like sr. pastor are prone to do—and we didn’t notice how lost we were getting.
The good news is we were going there fast…we were making great time.
The bad news is the further we got the more lost we were.
We finally realized it, and pulled in this little RV park.
There was only one rusted out old RV there, and a little store front.
When we stopped, this old man came out that was very stereotypical for rural Arkansas.
It’s actually fun to pick on Arkansas since I’m from Alabama.
He was probably 400 years old, and he was giving his false teeth a break I guess.
His mouth was puckered in.
When we asked how to get to the resort, he said, “Oh, you’re a long way from there.
How did you get way over here?
Let’s see if I can get you there or not.
Yep.
Go down this road a ways and you’ll get to another road a lot like this one.
Turn left.
And you’ll go down that road a pretty long ways until you get to a bigger one and cross over that but then you want to take the next one to the right.
Stay on that and you’ll go through this little town.
I don’t remember the name, but it’s a town—so you’ll recognize that.
After you go through the town, you’ll see another road and you want to take that road to the right.
Then you’ll see where to turn in to where you want go.”
By that point, I was just trying to submerge my laughter, and I was looking away at an old Coke machine.
I put my money in, and he said, “Oh, that thing hadn’t worked in years.”
Then I noticed it was unplugged.
So, the joke was on me.
We got back on the road to find another place to ask directions.
We were going fast, we just didn’t know where we were going—which is a pretty important thing to know.
A lot of people live life that way.
They are going through life fast—a lot of activity—but not necessarily a life of purpose.
They are moving through life fast, but where are they headed?
That may be true of most of us, but it doesn’t have to be.
You and I were created with a purpose.
We were made to be purposeful, to make a difference.
You and I were created with a God-given drive to be significant, to matter.
On that same trip I talked with a pastor who had screened Mel Gibson’s film on Jesus.
He had a conversation with Mel and asked him what drove him to do the movie.
He said, “Well, one day I was looking out my window in a high rise building and everything in me just wanted to jump.
I realized that for all I was doing I wasn’t going any where.
I had no purpose, no meaning.
I just wanted to jump.
Some time later I came back around to a relationship with Jesus Christ, and that changed everything.
I had purpose and meaning.
That’s why I had to do this movie, regardless of what it would do to my career.”
We were made to live with a purpose, and we will in fact begin to self-destruct with out understanding that.
Purposelessness is the #1 reason sociologists give for the suicide rate steadily increasing among teenagers in this country.
It is now the #2 killer of teenage students.
You can go into any bookstore and find hundreds of books that talk about discovering your life purpose.
They all basically say the same thing, “You’ve got to invent your life purpose.”
And they tell you some good platitudes to help: Discover your dreams.
Go after your goals.
Aim high.
Believe to achieve.
Never give up.”
Those are good statements and might even help you be successful, but they are not the same as knowing your purpose in life.
You can look within yourself, make sure you belly button is clean, but you won’t find life’s purpose there.
It takes more than looking within.
You have to look up.
It only makes sense to look at the creator.
It’s kind of like those pictures your kids or grandkids or nieces or nephews draw for you, and you say, “Oh’ that’s great!
Tell me what it is?”
It only makes sense to ask the creator.
You were made by God and you were made for God and you were put here for his purposes.
Until you understand that, life will never make sense.
And the best news of all is that we don’t have to guess about God’s purposes.
We don’t have to grope around in the dark.
God has revealed what they are, and he asks that we build our lives around them.
He wants our lives to be significant and to make an impact.
So, how do we do so?
How do we find God’s purposes for our lives?
1) Realize it is not about you.
It is about God—his glory.
The greatest sentence in the whole /Purpose Driven Life/ book that we will be reading together is the first one.
It is not about you.
In fact, look at someone right now and say that.
Go ahead.
Isn’t that fun.
It’s not about you.
But notice that someone is saying the same thing to you.
So, let’s all say this together, “it’s not about me.”
Let’s say it.
The search for purpose and meaning has puzzled people for thousands of years largely because people begin with the wrong starting point—themselves.
All of us tend to do so.
We ask self-centered questions like, “What do I want to be?
What should I do with my life?
What are my goals?
What do I want to accomplish?”
The problem with that is that we will never reveal our true life purpose by focusing on ourselves.
We did not create ourselves, so there is no way we can just tell ourselves why we were created.
The purpose of your life and mine is far more than your own personal fulfillment, your own peace of mind, or even your own happiness.
It’s far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions.
If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God.
He is the one who created you, and he created you with a purpose.
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