Getting Back On Track Pt 4. What's My Purpose

What Is My Purpose

GNLCC 7/22/12 Ecclesisastes 2:1-15 Ephesians 2:1-15

If I told you I could make you the richest, most famous, and wisest person in the world, would you be interested in my offer. But what if I told you, you could never use your money, your fame or your wisdom to help anyone that you truly loved or cared for, would you still be interested in my offer? The one thing that is lacking in the two situations is purpose. All the wealth, all the fame, and all the wisdom is of little value if they will not serve the purpose of what you need. A life without a purpose becomes a life without meaning.

We are in the final part of our series, “Getting Back On Track. We have looked at, “What Caught My Eye”, “How Did I Mess Up”, “How Do I Come Back”, and today “What is my purpose.” All of us are on a track running with our lives. As a matter of fact, the track is the decisions we make with our lives. All the tracks end at the same place, and that place is God. For the Scriptures tell us, it is appointed once for us to die and then comes the one on one, face to face appointment with God. All beliefs of all religions and of all atheist stop at the grave and then you check in with God to give an account of your life. The reason we are talking about getting back on track, is that there is an examination that is going to take place at the end of it all. There is a way that seems right to a person, but at the end of it is death.

God has already told us what is going to be covered at the exam in heaven. It will cover how we made choices to live our lives and whether we completed the purpose for which we were created. So it’s just not, did I make good choices, but did I do what God put me on this planet to do. When you got saved, God could have zapped you and taken you to heaven, before you had a chance to mess up, but God didn’t because there was something God still had for you to do. God had a purpose for creating you, and God had a purpose for saving you. If part 2 of the exam is “did I complete my purpose.”, then I ought to know what my purpose is so that I can be confident when I stand before God.

Suppose somebody was going to pay you big bucks for taking care of their garden for four months while they were on vacation. They gave you their address and paid you ½ up front and were going to pay you the other ½ at the end. Each day you went and took care of that garden and gave it your best attention. But, you also noticed that their neighbor’s garden was going downhill. At the end of the four months the garden you took care of looked great. But the neighbor’s garden had wilted away to nothing.

When the people came back, they demanded back their money. You said, but “why I did a great job”. They said, “come and see for yourself.” You know they are trying to rip you off so you get in your car and storm over there to get your money, after all your hard work. When you get there, you see them in front of the garden and it looks terrible. You had been taking care of their neighbor’s garden. How do you feel about it? Imagine feeling a 1,000 times worse than that when you discover before God, you’ve spent a lifetime on things that will not help you in the end. You dedicated your life to something that ultimately did not matter.

The Bible says this, in Eph. 2:20, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”. The word workmanship means we were designed and molded by God for a purpose. We were made to make a contribution in life. God made us to make a difference. How we live is much more important than how long we live.

Many people, who have the greatest impact on this world do not live to see their fiftieth birthday. Is there anybody here who wants to live to be a 100 and look back over their lives and say, after 100 years, I still have not made a difference for anybody. We’re all meant to give something back. We’re all meant to make a contribution. The Bible says we’re created to serve, we’re saved to serve, we’re gifted to serve, we’re shaped to serve. We’re commanded to serve God in response.