Introduction
If I said, “Describe your life in one word,” what word would you use? Would it be fun? Busy? How many would use the word focused? Purposeful? Yet the secret of effectiveness in life is having a focus and having a purpose.
That’s why we’re looking at The Purpose-Driven Life in an extended series of sermons. We have said that Step One was - first, you need to clarify your values – know what’s really important, that’s the base, the foundation. Step Two was - analyze your strengths and see what you’re good at. How has God shaped me? What are the gifts, the talents, the experiences that God has given me? You look at those. Those are part of your life purpose. Step Three then was - to commit your life to God and make that commitment where you say, “God, I don’t even know Your purpose for my life yet but in advance, by faith, I want to say, I want to do what You put me here on earth to do. I know it will bring me satisfaction and significance.” So you commit in advance.
Today we take the fourth step in the Purpose Driven Life – to prayerfully establish a life mission statement that expresses my values, SHAPE and commitment to God’s purpose for my life.
Today I want to help you develop a personal life mission statement. We’re going to give you some ideas and then give you some homework, because you can’t do a life mission statement in a church service. You’ve got to go home and on your own do this.
The Example of Jesus
Jesus was a purpose-driven person. He said in our Gospel reading this afternoon “I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do.” At the end of His life He said, 'I’ve completed the work You gave me to do'. I want to be able to say that and I want you to be able to say that about your life. Notice it says “I brought You glory by completing the work You gave me to do.” If you’re a Christian, you want to bring glory to God. How do you do that? You do that by completing the work God gave you to do. Jesus was a purpose-driven person - he had a mission for his life.
What Is A Life Mission? - There are four or five things:
It is a description of what I believe God wants me to do with my life. That’s what we want you to end up with – a description of what you believe God wants you to do with your life.
1. It is more than a goal. People often confuse a Life Mission Statement with goals. Modern people are great at goals; they’re lousy at doing life missions and purposes. You ask somebody, “What’s your purpose in life?” and they’ll give you a goal. “I want to graduate… I want to make a million pounds… I want to retire … I want to buy a big house.” Those are great goals, nothing wrong with those. But they’re not a life mission. You can have many, many goals and not have a life purpose.
When I was a child we used to have a circus on the television on almost every bank holiday. One of the acts I liked to watch on these circuses was the person who would spin plates on sticks? He’d get them going, by the time he’d get to number ten, what happens to number one? It starts wobbling, so he’d run back down and get that one. That’s the way many of us live life. We pay attention to one area and we get it going real good, then another area is falling apart. So we run down and get it going. Then another is falling apart. That is a life without purpose, without an overarching direction.
2. It defines success for me. A life purpose defines success for me. Remember I said, success is living by our own godly values. Never let anybody else define success for you. Success is knowing what’s important to you and living by those values.
3. It’s based on God’s purpose for me. It’s what I was made to do. Your life mission is the practical expression of God’s purpose for your life. When you figure out God’s purpose for your life, your reason for existence, why God put you on this earth, when you figure that out, then you’ll have a clearly defined life mission to head out on for the rest of your life. It doesn’t come automatically. It comes as you grow. It comes as you develop. It’s a practical expression of God’s purpose.
4. It expresses my SHAPE. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Why would God give you certain talents and certain abilities and gifts and background and experiences and not use them? That would be an incredible waste of your life. So God has given you certain interests and passion and heart and abilities and background. He wants to use those and they will all be a part of your life mission. One of the ways you know what your life mission is, is by looking at your SHAPE – your spiritual gifts, heart, ability, personality and experiences. They all factor in.
5. It clarifies my roles in life. You must define your roles before you set goals. In your life, your life mission gives meaning to your roles and at different stages in your life you’re going to have different roles in life. For instance, at some stage in life you have the role of a student. Another stage in your life you may have the role of either being a lover or spouse or being a single adult. Some of you will have the role of being a parent. You will have the role of being a professional in the job that you do. I have a role of being a minister.
We have different roles at different stages in life. They change; your life mission doesn’t. Your roles are part of your life but they’re not your whole life. Don’t ever define yourself as simply, “I’m a mother,” or “I’m a student,” or “I’m a doctor.” Those are part of your life mission but that’s not all to it.
Your life is greater and much more complex than one single role. If you are a parent, it’s very obvious that your life mission at this stage of your life is to raise those kids. At this stage of your life, part of your life mission is to raise kids if you’ve got kids. But you’re not going to have them all your life. Your life mission is more than simply just being a parent. Your life mission also includes your career but it is greater than your career. A lot of people make their entire identity based around their job. We say, “Who are you?” or “What do you do?” as if that’s the most important identifying factor in your life. You meet a stranger and it’s first “What’s your name?” then “What do you do?”
Your job is included in your life mission but your life mission is far greater than that. Why? Because you’re not going to take your career into heaven but you are going to take your character. So your career is just something you do here on earth and you may change careers many times. But hopefully you’ll get a job that compliments your life mission, rather than conflicts with it. If you get a job that conflicts with your life mission you’re going to be very frustrated in your life. Your job is part of your life mission but it’s more than that.
How do I discover my life mission?
You have two options: speculation or revelation. In other words, I can just guess about it or I can ask God about it.
The first is speculation. And this is the way most people think about life. In speculating on the purpose of your life you guess about it, you conjecture, you theorize, you debate it. There’s a problem with speculation – you’re just guessing. Your guess is as good as mine. So if you want to sit around and debate the meaning of life – “I think the meaning of life is…” who made you an authority? And if I say, “I think…” who made me an authority? Speculation can be dead wrong. I once read a book by a guy who had written to 150 of the most famous people in the world and asked them one question: “What is the meaning of life?” Then he got back all their letters and published them in a book. I read the book and it was depressing. Nobody had a clue! And some of these were brilliant, intelligent people.
So rather than going to speculation we can go by revelation. We can ask God, “What is the purpose in life? What is my personal life mission?” The more you study and read the Bible, the more you pray, the more you seek God's will in worship, the more it’s going to become clear to you.
Don’t act thoughtlessly. Discover God’s life mission for your life. I wish I could stand up here today as your pastor and friend and tell you what your life mission is. But I can’t. I wish I could. I cannot get up here and tell you your individual personal life mission. I don’t know it. You’re going to have to discover it. And you’re going to have to discover it over time.
But, I can tell you four universal principles, purposes, that God has for every human being. I can give you the four questions you need to ask in order to discover your purpose. If you are interested, they are on the note sheet.
1. What will be the centre of my life?
In other words, who or what am I going to live for? You have to start with this. What am I going to centre my life around? That’s the starting point. There are a lot of options. You can centre your life around your job, your career. You can centre your life around your family. You could centre your life around making money. You could centre your life around a hobby. You could centre your life around a sport. You could centre your life around collecting things. None of these things are wrong, it’s just that they don’t belong at the centre. If any one of these things are at the centre of your life, you don’t have enough glue to hold yourself together when the rubbish in life comes at you and you start spinning apart. You need a stronger centre than that. But there are many options that you could put at the centre of your life and say this is going to be the most important thing in my life.
When you become a believer, the centre of your life changes. In fact, that’s one of the greatest definitions of being a Christian. Sometimes we don't quite take that step of putting Jesus at the center of our lives. Maybe you are here this afternoon as a seeker and this is a place for seekers. This is a place to seriously consider, "What am I going to do with my life?" And, "What is my relationship to God?"
However, at some point in our lives we all need to decide to step across that line, and say, “I’m going to be a follower of Jesus,” what that means is the centre of your life changes from whatever it was – however good it was – to Jesus.
Here’s the first purpose that God has for every individual that’s alive today. God says that God made me to know and love God. When I was a child I learned a series of questions and answers about the Christian faith, called the catechism. The first question was "who made you?" And the answer, of course, was "God made me". The second question was "Why did God make you" and the answer is "God made me to know God, love God and serve God in this world and to be happy with God in the next." We were made by God to know and love God. We were created as an object of God’s love. The Bible says, “God is love.” And God made you simply to love you. The reason you’re alive, the Bible teaches, is that God made you, God created you to love you. That’s amazing in itself because a lot of times I’m pretty unlovable. But more than that, God wants me to know God back and love God back. That’s amazing. God wants me to have a relationship with God's own self. I know a lot of people who don’t want to have a relationship with me. But God says God wants to have a relationship with me. God wants me to know God and God wants me to love God back as much as God loves me. God loves me even though God knows everything about me.
So our first question is: What’s going to be the centre of my life?
2. What will be the character of my life?
What am I going to be? God is far more interested in what you are than what you do. There could be a half dozen different careers and they’d all be within the circle of God’s will for you. But God’s more interested in what you’re becoming than what you’re doing. Why? Because you’re going to take your character into heaven. You’re not going to take your career into heaven. God wants to know what kind of person are you becoming on earth. You need to understand that this life is a test. This life is preparation for eternity. You’re only going to spend 60, 70, 80, maybe 90 years here on earth. You’re going to spend billions and billions of years in eternity – far more on that side of death than on this side of death. This is the nursery, the kindergarten, the warm-up act, the trial run, the dress rehearsal. This is God getting you ready for the big time. The only thing you’re going to take onto that side is your character. So you better be working on it here because you’re not taking anything else.
The second purpose for any individual – God says God made me to become like Jesus. In character. Romans 8:28 says “For from the very beginning God decided that those who came to God should become like the Son.” God wants you to learn to think like Jesus, talk like Jesus, act like Jesus – have the character of Jesus. That’s the kind of character God wants you to have in eternity. Philippians tells us “Your attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ.” God sent Jesus to earth to become a human being so we could see the kind of character that God has. Godly character. And that’s what God wants you to have.
If God is going to make you like Jesus Christ in your life then God is going to take you through the same circumstances and situations that Jesus Christ went through. Do you think there was ever a time when Jesus was lonely? Without a doubt. Do you think there were times when Jesus was criticized? Yep! Do you think there were times when Jesus was misunderstood by other people? Yes. Do you think there were times when Jesus was tempted? Absolutely, we know that. Do you think there were times when Jesus was fatigued and tired? Yep. How about times when He was tempted to get discouraged and give up? Sure.
What makes you think you’re going to be any different? God is going to take you through those circumstances of life in order to build Christlike character in your life. The question then becomes, What was Jesus like?
One of the good pictures of Jesus is in a book of the Bible called Galatians. This gives a picture of Jesus. It lists there nine character qualities that God wants to build in all of our lives. Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, kindness, self-control. God wants to build those in your life. In your life God’s going to work on those character qualities.
How does God do that? God builds character in our lives by putting us in the exact opposite situation of that character quality. Think about this. How does God build love in your life? By putting you around a bunch of people just like you who are wonderful and lovely? It’s easy to get along with people just like you. But if God’s going to teach you real love, God’s going to put you around some unlovely people. Jerks. Goofy people. You may consider them heavenly sandpaper in your life. But God will teach you real love by putting you around un-lovely people.
How about joy? How does God teach you real joy? Not by putting you with everything going your way but in times of sadness and sorrow and grief. You will go through times of grief in your life so you will learn inner joy. Joy isn’t based upon circumstances.
How about peace? How does God teach you peace? By letting you win the lottery and saying, “It doesn’t get any better than this!” Anybody can be peaceful in that kind of situation. God will teach you real peace by putting you in absolute chaos! The dog is barking and the food is burning and the phone rings and its your mother on the phone who is yelling at you for forgetting something and the doorbell rings with some Jehovah's Witnesses – all at the same time. You’re going, “I give up! I can’t do this!” You only learn peace in the midst of the storm.
Patience. How does God teach you patience? Simple. God puts you in long, long queues - in the bank, in the supermarket, in the post office!. You only learn patience by having to wait. Not by having things instantly.
So God will build character in your life by putting you in the exact opposite. You can’t say that you’re pure unless you’ve ever been tempted to be impure. You can’t say you’re honest unless you’ve been in a situation where you were tempted to be dishonest. That’s where the test comes and the steel is strengthened when it’s tested, tempered, when it goes through the fire. So you ask yourself, “What kind of character qualities do I want to see in my life?” You need to make a list – specific character qualities I want to see in my life by the time I die. How am I going to be different five years from now, ten years from now?
So the second question is "what will be the character of my life?" knowing that God made me to become like Jesus.
3. What will be the contribution of my life?
In other words, what am I going to do with my God-given talents. You weren’t put here just to waste your talents on yourself. You are here to make a difference with your life. You were put here to leave the world a better place, to make some kind of contribution. You have no idea how sometimes a seemingly insignificant contribution will make a major different in a person’s life.
I read a story recently about an usher at a church meeting in a tent. Now many people consider those who do simple jobs like being a greeter or an usher to have poor jobs, or jobs which don't bring much glory. But I read that at this meeting two teenage boys came to the meeting and they nearly left because they couldn’t find a seat. The usher said, “Wait a minute, guys. I’ll find you a seat.” He brought the two boys in and found them seats down toward the middle. One of those men was Billy Graham. He accepted Jesus Christ into his life and made Him the centre of his life that night. Because of what that usher did. Do you think that usher will get any credit in heaven? Yes. You never know when a seemingly insignificant event has a major impact simply because you’ve helped somebody. What’s going to be the contribution of my life?
God says the third purpose of every human being is God made me to use my shape to help others – my gifts, my talents, my abilities. God made me to use my shape to help others. We’re here to help each other. That’s why we’re on this earth. We’re here to help each other. One of the key questions you have to ask in life is, who do I want to help? Because you can’t help everybody. I can’t meet everybody’s needs. And neither can you. That doesn’t mean you don’t meet people’s needs when they come in your normal pattern of life. Somebody needs help in the moment and you help them. But as a general principle, who have you targeted? Who do you really want to help in life? Figure that out. Have you ever done that? What kind of contribution do I want to leave on this earth? What kind of difference do I want to make? What’s going to be my legacy? You need to ask yourself, Where can I make the greatest contribution?
The way you know where you can make your greatest contribution is look at your shape. Because if you’re gifted at it, you’ll be good at it. Where you’re gifted, what you like to do, God wants to use your desires, your gifts, your talents, to bless other people.
I need to give you a little warning here. Just because you love to do something doesn’t mean you’re gifted at it. I love to sing. But nobody wants to hear it. You look at not only what you love to do but what you’re good at it and you figure that’s what my contribution can be. And that’s going to be part of your life mission. We asked this question of people in the church. God wants us to help others. What contribution do you want to make in life?
I hope this week you’ll spend some serious time considering this question: What is going to be the contribution of my life? Because when you boil it all down there are really only two types of people in life. There are givers and there are takers. You’re either a giver or you’re a taker. You live selfishly or you live unselfishly. Abundant giving is the key to abundant living. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give away. They never build statues to people who got things all their life. We remember people who spent their lives giving themselves away. That’s who they build statues to – people who gave themselves away not who hoarded and hoarded and said, 'Look how much I acquired in my life'. They don’t build a statue to that kind of person. They build statues to people who gave their lives away and lived not as takers but as givers.
There’s a fourth question…
4. What will be the communication of my life?
That means your life message. You probably have never thought about this. Did you know that God wants to speak to the world through you? I’m not talking about being a pastor. I’m saying that God has a message for the world through you. That is what we call your life message.
There’s a general message that God has for every Christian to share with the world. But there’s also a specific message that’s based on your personal shape, your personal background and how God made you and wired you up. The general message is this: God made me to tell others about God. If you know about God, then it’s your duty to tell other people. God made me to tell others about God. We are to share the good news. We’re to pass it on. The Bible calls us ambassadors for Christ. An ambassador is somebody who represents a king or a government or whatever and God says you are an ambassador for Jesus Christ. God wants you to share that word. That’s your duty.
But in addition to that, God has a unique message God wants you to share based on your particular background, the way God wired you up and based on your values and based on the interests God gave you.
God wants all of us to communicate to the world that we are Christ’s ambassadors. It’s our job here and whatever we do, wherever we go to be His ambassadors. Our actions, our character, our commitment should reflect Christ in our everyday life.
Homework
Here’s your homework. I want you to take these four questions that we’ve just reviewed: - What will be the center of your life? What will be the character of your life? What will be the contribution of your life, and What will be the communication of your life. Get alone with God sometime this week and start on writing out a rough draft of your life mission. You’re not going to do it all in one sitting. You will be revising it the rest of your life. This is one of the most important things you can do. And as a pastor, I believe that it is our job as a church to help you figure out your life mission.
A couple of suggestions: First, I said don’t try to write it all out at one sitting. It’s going to take time. Don’t aim for perfection. Just get it down. Write a rough draft. It’s always easier to edit than it is to create. Don’t worry about wording, if it’s long, if the sentences make sense or they’re incomplete. Just start writing stuff down. I would encourage you to write fast. Don’t worry about spelling. Just let the thoughts flow out. It’s easier to edit than to create.
Why am I asking you to do this?
1. It will force you to think about your life. Socrates said, “Know thyself.” Plato said, “The unexamined life isn’t worth living.” Psalms and Proverbs tell us, "Ponder the path of your feet".
2. It will force you to be specific. Writing things down help you become specific. Thoughts disentangle themselves when they pass through the lips and the fingertips - when you write it down. If the rest of your life is where you’re going to spend your time, it’s worth spending a little bit of time thinking it through. Because all the rest of your life is going to be in the future.
3. It will give you a standard by which to evaluate decisions. You can look at your life mission and when a decision comes up you can say, “Does this match my life mission.” If it does, you do it. If it doesn’t, you don’t.
You could do that. That’s a starting point. But it doesn’t go far enough. Ultimately, at the end of your life, it isn’t going to matter a hill of beans what other people say about you. What matters is what God is going to say about you. You will stand before God one day and give an account of whether you wasted your life, lived a selfish life, or knew Jesus personally, developed a relationship, put Him at the centre, developed His character, served by contributing your life to others, communicated His message to the world. That’s what is going to matter.
In closing:
What is at the center of your life right now? If it’s not Jesus, you don’t have anything hard enough to hold it together when the storms hit. I know some of you are thinking, “I don’t have time to do this. My life’s in chaos.” Then you really need to do it. You say, “You don’t understand all the problems I’ve got in my life. You don’t understand all the headaches and heartaches and pain and crises and problems.” Did you know that even the unexpected problems in your life are there for a reason? God can even use the unexpected problems in your life for the divine purpose and plan. God can use the very heartache you’re going through right now to cause Jesus to become more of the centre, to develop His character in your life, and God can give you the ability to make a contribution because you can help other people who have gone through the same problem. It can even become a part of your life message by saying, “This is how God helped me deal with this.” Even your problems are part of God’s purpose for your life.
Prayer:
Jesus, as much as
I know how I want to get to know You.
I want You to be at the center of
my life.
I don’t understand it all but I want to fulfill Your purpose
and plan for my life.
Jesus, teach me to love You with my heart and soul and
mind.
As I get to know You, You’re going to help me figure everything
else out.
Lord, I want You to build character in my life of love and
joy and peace
and patience and all of those other things.
Help me to
become like You.
I want to make a contribution with my life.
I
want to use the background and abilities that You’ve given me to help people and
not just think of myself.
Help me to understand and communicate the
life message You want me to share with this world.
Help me to tell
others the good news about Your love.
And help me to share those unique
expressions and emphases that You have just for me to share.
Amen.
This sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester. Click here for further information.