Sermon Illustrations

FULFILLING YOUR PURPOSE

When we lived in Wiesbaden, some missionary friends bought a German toaster. When they got home, they plugged it in, placed some bread in it, and then waited for the toast to pop up a few minutes later. Well, the toast never did pop up from it because...well, it didn’t work. It just sat there, all nice and shiny. Oh, it was real pretty, all right, matching the decor of the kitchen perfectly. It had that brand new look about it...[PAUSE] but it wouldn’t toast bread.

Well, they packaged it back up to take it back, but since they couldn’t find their receipt, the German store wouldn’t exchange it, so they were stuck with it. So they brought it back home and tried to figure out what they could do with it.

Now let me ask you a question: What good is a toaster that doesn’t toast? Absolutely nothing! It’s too big for a paper weight; too ugly for a doorstop; and it would rust if you put it out as a law ornament. So they ended up throwing it in the trash and buying a new one that worked. It was USELESS because it didn’t fulfill the purpose for which it was made.

The same is true of the Christian who doesn’t fulfill the purpose for which HE was made. You see everything has a purpose, and it’s of little or no value if it’s not fulfilling that purpose. Now if we started living in a conscious and intentional way for the purpose for which God created and saved us, it would revolutionize our Christian lives.

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