Living the Life You Were Meant to Live
-God has a plan for your life-
Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the thoughts I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”
Do you have a life plan? Do you have a life plan that takes you from where you are right now to your retirement years?
#Lucy in a Charlie Brown Peanuts cartoon comic strip said that life is like a deck chair. Some place it so they can see where they are going; some place it so they can see where they have been; and some place it so they can see where they are at present. Charlie Brown replies: “I can’t even get mine unfolded.”
Maybe like Charlie Brown you are waiting to get your LifePlan unfolded.
Another great philosopher on life is Garfield. In one of the Garfield Comic strips
The owner of Garfield says: “I gotta do something with my life.”
Garfield – “Why start now?”
Owner: “I don’t know what to do.”
Garfield – “Do what I do.”
Owner: “I guess I’ll raise my standards”
Garfield – “I’ve lowered my standards.”
Owner: “I’ll be tougher on myself!”
Garfield – “Now I’m easier on myself.”
Owner: “I’ll take on the world.”
Garfield – “I got out of bed this morning.”
Owner: “Who am I kidding?
Garfield – “How do I do it?”
A common questions asked by most people. Why on earth was I born? What am I here for?
I remember thinking those questions when growing up in small town, Gypsum, Kansas -- A metropolitan town of 600 people. As a boy growing up in Gypsum I often wondered why I was having such a hard life. So many people were much better off then we were. We had no indoor plumbing – out bathroom was an outhouse, we had to pump water out of a cistern, when during dry weather carry water from a neighbor’s house, we took a bath once a week in a tub with a few kettles of hot water. Other people in town had indoor bathrooms, hot water and nice cars.
My greatest fun in those days was playing guns. We would cut out a gun from wood and then cut thin round strips of rubber from car tire inner tubes. We would take a wooden clothes pin and wrap the pin on the end of the gun handle with the cut rubber. We would then put a knot in the rubber and put one end in the clothes pen and stretch it over the end of the gun and you have a ready weapon. Open the pin and your shot zings off toward your target. What we had was a former model of today’s paint gun warfare.
For many years I grew up on a small world – Gypsum – population 600 with infrequent travels to Salina, 25,000, McPherson 10,000 population and Abilene for Rodeos population 5,000. When we took a trip to visit my mother’s parents in Kansas City I was over whelmed by the size of the city. On one trip to Dodge City to see my mother grandparents and my great grandparents I was thrilled to visit Boot Hill. My entire world for many years was confined to the state of Kansas.
In discovering your LifePlan there are several questions about life you need to answer.
I. Does My Life Matter?
Do I matter to God? God answers from His Word with a resounding “Yes.” Yes, you matter to me. God made you in the image of His Son, Jesus. God’s plan is that you grow into the likeness of Jesus. God has a plan and purpose for your life on earth.
As a created person you are unique. There has never been another you. There will never be another you. You are one of a kind in the history of the world. The Psalmist sang out in Psalm 139:14 “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.” God created you for a purpose. God wants your life to have meaning.
A life without purpose is a meaningless life. Solomon with all his wealth, a multi billionaire wrote: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure, my heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:10-11.
Only in God’s Word and in the person of Jesus do we find meaning to life.
Proverbs 16:4a “The Lord has made everything for His own Purpose.
The prophet Isaiah asked this question: “Isaiah 49:4a “My work all seems so useless. I’ve spent my strength for nothing and for no purpose at all.” (New Living Translation)
To not know why God created you doesn’t make sense at all. God wants you to live the life He created you to live.
During World War II, there were prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp in Hungary. They were processing human sewage in a factory. The allies came along, bombed that factory and blew it apart. So the prisoners had nothing to do. The Nazi soldiers had the prisoners take all the rubble of that factory and move it to another field. The next day, they had them take that same rubble and move it back in reverse. The next day, they had to take that stuff and move it back and day after day they had no meaning, no purpose. It was just work doing the same thing over and over with no meaning and no purpose. Then something strange began to happen. The prisoners began to go crazy. They began to lose their will to live because there was no meaning, no purpose in their work. They were just moving bricks back and forth, back and forth. Many of them began to throw themselves in front of the guards trying to get shot. In essence they were trying to commit suicide.
When people have no purpose or meaning they have no reason to live. God so created us that we don’t have to remain stuck in meaningless living. God gave each of us gift of free will. We have the freedom to choose our destiny.
# Dr. Viktor Frankl grew up in Vienna, Austria. He earned a doctor of medicine degree. He survived four Nazi death camps including Auschwitz from 1942-1945, but his parents and other members of his family died in the concentrations camps. The Nazis took every earthly possession away from him, his clothes, his watch, even his wedding ring.
He was destitute but he came to the conclusion that he had something that no one could take away from him. He realized that he still had the power to choose his own attitude.
You and you alone make the choice wheather you will have a
Positive or negative attitude
Healthy or unhealthy attitude
Cooperative or uncooperative attitude
Grateful or ungrateful attitude
Sweet or bitter attitude
In 1994 I met with Dr. Tom Patterson at his home in Bear Lake, CA. Bear Lake is located in the mountains North and East of LA. For two days I was coached by Tom Patterson to develop my LifePlan. He helped me identify the level of life I was living on. He suggested there are four levels in life.
II. Four Levels of Life
• Survival
• Success
• Surrender
• Significance
1. The lowest level is survival. A person on this level would say, “I’m living day -to – day without purpose. This level is living hand to mouth. You go to work get paid, spend your money, go to work, get paid, and spend your money, day after day. Simmering underneath this person’s life is anger, fear, worry, chaos, depression, despair, and unhappiness.
2. The second level is success. By the standards of this world this person has made it. You have a job, you have a place to live, and you have food to eat. You are successful. But simmering underneath this person suffers from boredom, emptiness, unfulfilled frustrations and meaninglessness.
3. The third level is surrender. Surrender happen when a person turns his life over to Christ. The Apostle Paul outlines the call to surrender in Romans 12:2, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, - His good, pleasing and perfect will.” The surrendered life is a life transformed from self-centeredness to Christ centeredness. It is a life filled with joy, hope, meaning and peace of soul.
Have you surrendered your life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you agree with the hymn writer who wrote: “All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give; I will ever love and trust Him, In His presence daily live. I surrender all, I surrender all. All to Thee my blessed Savior, I surrender all.
4. The fourth level is significance. On this level the person is making a positive difference in the world.
On this level you know the meaning of life and that gives you significance.
You know how much you matter to God and that gives you significance.
You know God’s purposes for your life and you are living them out and that gives you significance.
When you are living on the level of significance you have passion, vision, balance in your life, strategy, dreams, mission, direction, purpose, focus and are making a contribution.
Developing your LifePlan helps you move to the level of significance.
III. Five Life Domains
When I met with Tom Patterson in 1994 he coached me in looking at four domains in my life. As a Pastor I have four domains whereas a Lay Leader in the church has five. My four domains of life include:
Personal
Family – Vocation/ Church (Vocation and Church are the same of Pastors) -
Community
The Five domains for Laypeople include:
Personal– domain of the self
Family - this domain includes parents, spouse,
children and influential family members
Vocation – domain of work or career, including
areas of volunteer service for which one has responsibility
Church – local church and church at large
Community – involvement in the community, neighborhood, town or city
Each domain impacts all the others. The goal is to have a balance in the five domains of your life.
We all go through four seasons of life:
Winter – early youth
Spring – education and preparation years
Summer-work years
Harvest –later years
If you have interest in working on your personal life plan I suggest three books:
“Living the Life You Were Meant to Live” by Tom Patterson
“Half Time” by Bob Buford
“Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren
I spent two days with Tom Patterson coaching me on the development of my personal life plan. In 1995 I updated my Life Plan and took a week of training to coach others in doing their life plans. I didn’t realize at the time that two years later in 1997 I would be challenged to put my life plan into practice when my job at the Free Methodist World Ministry Center was eliminated. Having a life plan in place helped me to transition to a new ministry opportunity.
In the development of your LifePlan there are several questions to ask yourself.
IV. How has God gifted me? How am I wired?
The Psalm writer in Psalm 139:15-16 says:
“My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.”
To try to function in a role for which you aren’t wired leads to distress and frustration. Tom Patterson draws a “Thinking Wavelength Construct” to help a person identify their own thinking wavelength.
Grinders – get the job done – detailed – minded doer – deliver working drawings
• Administrative assistant
• Software programmer
• Book keeper
Minders – manage a unit team
- manage people in their area of expertise
• Teachers
• Supervisors
• Section Leaders
Keepers – manage the whole store
- ability to do both concrete and abstract thinking
- handle details and see the broad vision
- Are organized
- Are good with people
• Personnel managers
• Executive assistants
• Executive pastor
• Staff Associate
Finders – ability to open up new territory
- entrepreneurs
- Innovators
- Creators
- Love new challenges
- Follow through is not their strength
• Church Planters
• Advanced development engineer
Theorists are bright, articulate and persuasive
- welcome change
- embrace risk
- are strategic
- have a high tolerance for ambiguity
• University professors
• Work in pure research laboratories
• Seminary professors
• Cult Leaders
Questions to ask:
• Where does my current job description fall on the thinking wavelength spectrum?
• Does my current job description match my thinking wavelength?
Thinking Wave-Length
Concrete Thinker Intermediate Abstract Thinker
Grinders Minders Keepers Finders
1 3 5 7 10
Abraham Isaac Luke Barnabas Paul Solomon
Cannot Envision Embrace Risk
Risk Adverse Opportunity People
Pragmatic Many Variables
Linear Thinker Synthesize
Few Variables Visionary
Don’t Like Change Little Sketches
Dot Is and Ts Finders
Document Quantum Leap
Problem Focused Strategic Thinkers
Working Drawings
*Accountants *General Manager
*Salesperson *CFO
*CEO
*Marketing
*Basket Case Church
*Pastoral Leadership *Pastoral Leadership
Needed
*Church on the Grow
*Pastor Leading Church
Prime Equipping Zone
4-6
V. Have You Really Trusted Jesus With Your Life?
To live the live God meant you to live you first of all need to trust Jesus with the rest of you r life.
Pastor and Theologian F.B. Myer has written:
“Do not be afraid to trust God utterly. As you go down the long corridor you may find that He has preceded you, and locked many doors which you would fain have entered; but be sure that beyond these there is one which He has left unlocked. Open it and enter, and you will find yourself face to face with a bend of the river of opportunities, broader and deeper than anything you had dared to imagine in your sunniest dreams. Launch forth on it; it conducts to the open sea.”
Don’t be afraid to trust Christ. He will open to you the fullness of your life, now and into eternity. The Christ-centered life is in direct opposition to the enemy of your soul. Satan’s devices are aimed at you on a daily basis to tempt you to pursue your life plan rather than God’s LifePlan.
The most important decision you make in life is to trust Jesus as the Lord of your life. You can say with the Apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20
Jesus came to give you an abundant life so you might live life to the full. John 10:10b
As you find God’s LifePlan you will move from survival, to success to surrender to significance.
Jesus is waiting for you to make that decision to move into a life of significance.
