Greater Purpose Series

A man named William Barclay once observed that “There are two great days in a person’s life. The day we are born and the day we discover WHY.”

Hmmm. the day we discover WHY we were born! Well, that’s interesting. Lots of people never even consider why they were born. I mean, they kind of drift through life without a purpose or goal.

ILLUS: But there was a man who did set a goal for his life. One man who refused to “drift through life. His name was Douglas Engelbart, and back in 1950, he was driving to his job at the Ames Research Center (which later became NASA). Just the day before, he’d asked his fiancée to marry him, and as he was driving along, a realization struck him: his dream of “getting married and living happily ever after was the last of my goals.”

(Pause) Now, being a 25-year-old engineer, he decided to calculate how many minutes of working life he had left in him, and came up with about 5 1/2 million minutes. And he decided to use those minutes to do something valuable in his life. And he did - he reshaped the entire computer industry. He became the inventor of the computer mouse, the Word Processor and the concept of “Windows”. His creative genius made it possible to use computers as we do today, all because he refused to just “get by” with his life. He had 5 ½ million minutes to do something with… and he made them count.

In our text today we have Jesus telling us that WE can make our lives count! “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”

What Jesus was saying is this: I’m going to give you a purpose; a reason to live; a reason to get up in the morning. But you’ve got to understand that in order to accept this purpose you have to be willing to TAKE UP YOUR CROSS and FOLLOW ME. You need to be willing to sacrifice your will/ your agenda/ even your life, so that you can live MY life and make a difference in your world.

Having Christ’s purpose in your life is THAT important!

So Jesus offers us purpose for our lives. And Rick Warren once (rightly) said: “Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope. … The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.” The problem is, a lot of Christians don’t start with the idea of having a purpose in their lives. The very idea that they might DO something for Jesus just never occurs to them. And part of that is the fault of modern churches. We talk to people about becoming Christians, and then we feed them, and coddle them and coax them along. And even then, all that many churches expect of folks is that they show up on Sunday mornings and sing... pray… listen… behave themselves. That’s all that’s expected. That’s how low the bar has been set. And then (because of that) when Christians don’t feel “fed” or catered to they go looking for another church where their needs can be satisfied and they can feel … “comfortable.” For many people, church exists to satisfy them.

Francis Chan wrote a book called “Letters to the Church” where he told about church leaders wanting him to talk to them about how to grow. “There is a simple exercise I walk through with (them). First, I have them list all the things that people expect from their church. They usually list obvious things like a really good service, strong age-specific ministries, a certain style/volume/length of singing, a well-communicated sermon, conveniences such as parking, a clean church building, coffee, childcare, etc. Then I have them list the commands that God asked the Church to do in Scripture. Usually they mention commands like “Love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12), “visit orphans and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27), “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19), “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), etc. And then I ask them… what would upset their people more – if the church didn’t provide the things from the first list (that people expected) or if the church didn’t obey the commands in the second list (that God expected).

Too many Churches, and too many Christians settle for the first list (what people expect). And I suspect we may be as guilty as the next church in not expecting more. But this sermon is all about doing “CATCH UP” - catching up with what Jesus would want us at Logansport to do.