More Than Enough: Purpose
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Happy Father’s Day!
“The obviously well kept secret of the ‘ordinary’ is that it is that it is made to be a receptacle of the divine, a place where the life of God flows.”
-Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy
Focus: God, the giver of life, is also the giver of purpose which brings our sense of value, meaning and fulfillment in life through Christ.
Value Shopping
Looking for Meaning
Found in Christ
Value Shopping
God is the author and giver of value for all human life.
Jeremiah 3:19-23 NIV
““I myself said, “ ‘How gladly would I treat you like my children and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’ I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me. But like a woman unfaithful to her husband, so you, Israel, have been unfaithful to me,” declares the Lord. A cry is heard on the barren heights, the weeping and pleading of the people of Israel, because they have perverted their ways and have forgotten the Lord their God. “Return, faithless people; I will cure you of backsliding.” “Yes, we will come to you, for you are the Lord our God. Surely the idolatrous commotion on the hills and mountains is a deception; surely in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.”
There is no other objective measure for life giving value but God.
It is the same for any type of measure of ethics.
There must be an uncreated plumb line.
“Brother John, why is there such value and mystery to your existence? The really deep reason is because of this tiny, fragile, vulnerable, precious thing about you called your soul. You are not just a self; you are a soul. ‘The LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.’ You’re a soul made by God, made for God, and made to need God, which means you were not made to be self-sufficient.” In one of his books, Dallas (Willard) further explained,
What is running your life at any given moment is your soul. Not external circumstances, not your thoughts, not your intentions, not even your feelings, but your soul. The soul is that aspect of your whole being that correlates, integrates, and enlivens everything going on in the various dimensions of the self. The soul is the life center of human beings.
We all have two worlds, an outer world that is visible and public and obvious, and an inner world that may be chaotic and dark or may be gloriously beautiful. In the end, the outer world fades. We are left with the inner world. It is what we will take with us. I am an unceasing spiritual being with an eternal destiny in God’s glorious universe.”
-John Ortberg in Soul Keeping
Everyone desires to be valued.
Our value is found in being image bearers of God.
“The modern self is exceptionally fragile. While having the freedom to define and validate oneself is superficially liberating, it is also exhausting: You and you alone must create and sustain your identity. This has contributed to unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety and never-satisfied longings for affirmation. The modern self is also fragmenting, as Bellah argued, its individualism leading to the erosion of family, community, and unity of shared values in the nation. The breakdown of neighborhoods and communities means that, more and more, our lives are run by faceless, massive bureaucracies and inhumane technologies aimed solely at economic efficiency.
-Timothy Keller
Looking for Meaning
God desires to be a Father to you who gives meaning to your life.
Everyone is searching for meaning in life.
We find meaning in God’s story of creation, the Fall and his redemption in Jesus.
Our greatest question heading into retirement should not just be,
“How much did I make?” or “How will I be remembered?” but, “How will I be judged and held accountable by the living God?”
https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/401216/global-rise-unhappiness.aspx
“In 2006, Gallup began conducting global research on subjective wellbeing, which is used interchangeably with "happiness." The goal of the research was to definitively report -- by country -- how people's lives were going from their perspective. Was the world getting more stressed? Were people more hopeful? Were they getting angrier?
…
You might think that income inequality explains wellbeing inequality and, therefore, rising unhappiness. That is certainly part of it. But a great life is more than just money. After studying the 20% of people who report having a great life, Gallup finds they have five things in common: They are fulfilled by their work, have little financial stress, live in great communities, have good physical health, and have loved ones they can turn to for help.
The 20% of people who rate their lives the worst have very little of any of those things. They don't have a quality job, their income is not enough to get by, they live in broken communities, they are hungry or malnourished, and they don't have anyone in their life they can count on for help. And the 20% who rate their lives this low are getting sadder, more stressed and angrier than ever before.”
Your purpose is not just to “get yours” - consuming the infinite supply of deceptive, temporary pleasures and empty, falsely advertised experiences in life.
“God is not glorified when we keep for ourselves (no matter how thankfully) what we ought to be using to alleviate the misery of unevangelized, uneducated, unmedicated, and unfed millions. The evidence that many professing Christians have been deceived by this doctrine is how little they give and how much they own. God has prospered them. And by an almost irresistible law of consumer culture (baptized by a doctrine of health, wealth, and prosperity) they have bought bigger (and more) houses, newer (and more) cars, fancier (and more) clothes, better (and more) meat, and all manner of trinkets and gadgets and containers and devices and equipment to make life more fun. They will object: Does not the Old Testament promise that God will prosper his people? Indeed! God increases our yield, so that by giving we can prove our yield is not our god. God does not prosper a man's business so that he can move from a Ford to a Cadillac. God prospers a business so that 17,000 unreached people can be reached with the gospel. He prospers the business so that 12 percent of the world's population can move a step back from the precipice of starvation.”
-John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
Isaiah 31:1 ESV
“Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many and in horsemen because they are very strong, but do not look to the Holy One of Israel or consult the Lord!”
*Things inevitably break down when we don’t seek the Lord first to lean on his direction, wisdom and strength (in our personal health, mental well being, families, relationships, careers and pursuits).
We are to seek first the Kingdom of God.
This does not mean that we are all called to be monastic.
What this means is that all of your work is not only worship, but is the field and people that you are called to cultivate for the Kingdom of God.
Matthew 6:19-34 ESV
“"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. "The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
We find meaning in life when we realize that there was a perfect example of humanity found in the sinless life of Christ, that the wrath of God directed against the evil in the world was taken at the cross with the substitutionary death of Jesus (for your sins and mine) and that eternal hope was revealed to the world by Christ’s resurrection from the dead offering us the promise of eternal life in him.
Found in Christ
God the Father gives both purpose and true eternal fulfillment in Jesus and his gospel.
When we are found by Christ, we are reunited to our Creator and his purpose for our lives.
The sin of greed and selfish ambition are continually crucified at the cross of Christ when we seek his face to accomplish his will.
All of the suffering of life finds context in the cross of Christ and God’s redemption in him.
Psalm 92:12-15 ESV
“The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him.”
“As we grow older and our bodies weaken, we must learn from the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (who died in 1691) to redouble our efforts to find strength from spiritual joy, not natural supplies.”
-John Piper, Desiring God, Revised Edition: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
There is purpose in Christ from the cradle to the grave when we repent of our sin, come to know Jesus as Lord and live in the light of the resurrection.
“God is calling us to live for the sake of Christ and to do that through suffering. Christ chose suffering; it didn’t just happen to Him. He chose it as the way to create and perfect the church. Now He calls us to choose suffering. That is, He calls us to take up our cross and follow Him on the Calvary road and deny ourselves and make sacrifices for the sake of ministering to the church and presenting His sufferings to the world.”
-John Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist
As you live in this posture, the God who owns cattle on thousand hills, opens doors that no man can shut and shuts for us doors that no man can open, provides abundantly for our every need as we do his Kingdom will.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher