CHRISTIAN
LIVING, PURPOSE
VICTOR Frankenstein is known for bringing a lifeless creature to life. If you don’t know about Victor Frankenstein, you know about his creation because the monster became synonymous with his creator’s last name. The word Frankenstein conjures up thoughts of the monster, not his creator.
After going through a tragedy, Mr. Frankenstein desired to do something good. He decided to take lifeless items and make them come alive. He went to slaughterhouses, graveyards, and even coroner’s offices to steal what he needed for his creation. He then put all of his materials together and brought his creature to life. This lifeless, dead entity did come alive. His goal was to take this monster and give it life. Well, he did it. He created it, and these days we know it by his last name—Frankenstein. What he didn’t know is that he had created a beast.
The tragedy of Frankenstein is that after he was created, after he was given life, after he was nothing and then made into something, he turned on Victor and made his maker a victim of his own creation. Frankenstein became a monster because he took the life that was given him and used it for his own purpose.
You and I have been given life by our Creator. Yet many of our lives are nothing short of monstrous because we have taken the life that He has given us and used it for something other than the Creator had in mind.117
[Rebellion; Natural Man; Life, Emptiness of]
1 Cor. 6:19–20
MOST people have warranties on the major products they own in their homes. A warranty simply guarantees that the manufacturer will stand behind their product. It’s a guarantee that if there’s a defect, a fault, or a failure, that the manufacturer will stand behind the product. But all warranties have limitations. The warranty is not designed to cover abuse by the owner.
You can’t take your toaster, throw it up against the wall, jump on it, or run it over, and then claim the product warranty. Warranties are offered under the assumption that the product will be used for its intended purpose.
God’s got a warranty on your life as long as you’re using it for His purposes and existing for His glory.118
A BOXCAR on a train has no power to move down the tracks on its own. It isn’t going anywhere unless it’s hooked up. The life of a Christian is like a boxcar on a train. It should be hooked up to the engine of God’s purpose. If the boxcar of your life is not hooked up to the engine—the purpose for which God has you here—you are not going anywhere. You are stuck.119
A MIX MASTER is where a series of highways intersect. Normally, you can find a mix master near the downtown area of a city. At the point where the highways connect, you will find their purpose.
In a Christian’s life there are also highways that lead to the center of their lives and their purpose. The highways of experience, opportunities, passions, and abilities are all designed to lead us to the intersection of our purposes in God and our calling for our lives here on earth. Where these four things intersect—experience, opportunities, passions, and abilities—our purposes begin.120
[Calling]
SAND is cheap. In fact, at the beach, it’s free! Once it is bagged in order to put it on a playground, it costs to have access to it. Its value goes up. When sand is taken and bagged, what once was free on the beach now costs twenty-five dollars for a twenty-five-pound bag. Once this same sand is glued to a piece of paper to make sandpaper, its value has gone up again. Now it’s five dollars for a sheet. The value has increased with a change in its purpose.
Now, sand is silicon dioxide. When sand is taken, heated, and processed, it becomes an intricate part of a computer chip that is now worth five hundred dollars. So what was once free on the beach now has value because it is in a bag, because it is glued on a piece of paper, or because it is in a computer chip that you can hardly afford. The sand is the same, but it has now found increased value in a greater purpose.121
IF A person walks around with one hundred dollars in their pocket but never uses it for what it was intended for, that one hundred dollars is just a piece of paper. It’s valuable paper, but meaningless until utilized for its purchasing power.
Christians have value consigned by God. But until we live out our lives for the purposes intended, we walk around in a meaningless existence—valuable, but not useful. A Christian life not used for its purposes is a life not spent well.122
1 Thess. 2:10–12
MANY people today say they are trying to find themselves. These people are running around, trying to find themselves. This search is meaningless. If you don’t know who you are, how do you know what to look for? And how do you know when you have found it, since you don’t know what you are looking for?123
TOASTERS don’t find themselves. Refrigerators don’t find themselves. Appliances don’t find themselves because their purpose has been assigned by another. A toaster doesn’t have to find its reason for being; it’s just got to do what the manufacturer had in mind.
Christians don’t have to look for themselves. God has already consigned to us a divine reason for being. Our purpose is to fulfill it. If we are not fulfilling His purposes, days, weeks, and months go by as we watch more television, hook up with more friends, and try to get better jobs—and our lives still feel empty because we are disconnected from the purposes of God.124
[Chaos; Life, Emptiness of]
Eph. 2:11–13
YOU cannot discover your purpose until God is your reference point. Until and unless God becomes your reference point, you cannot discover your purpose in life.125
THE GREATEST example of purposelessness in the world is a dog. If you really want to see purposeless living, just watch a dog. If you really want to understand going through the motions, or just passing time, pay close attention to a dog.
First of all, a dog barks. Their bark can disturb and a dog will bark at just about anything. And you can’t figure out what a dog is saying because all it’s really doing is just making noise, desperately desiring to be noticed. One of the indications of purposeless living is a life that creates a lot of noise but doesn’t really make a clear statement about anything.
Another thing a dog does is run in circles. It’s not particularly going anywhere, but it’s moving constantly. The ultimate purposelessness of a dog is when it’s chasing its own tail, going around and around in a circle, and when it is finished moving, it’s in the same place it started. Many of us are looking for purpose in activities. We’ve got our cell phones, PDAs, televisions, computers, and e-mail, stuff to distract us and keep us busy, but at the end of the day we’re no further ahead with a sense of purpose than when we started.
Dogs function on the level of the external. They love to be petted and rubbed. They enjoy that good, momentary feeling. It’s just a good feeling for the moment on a nice external coat. There are a whole bunch of folks today who get up and daily “put on the dog,” hoping that someone will notice, and in some way make them feel valuable and significant.
Finally, dogs are consumers. Dogs don’t only eat when they are hungry, they eat because food is there. Dogs live for the fun of life, not for its meaning.
At the end of the day, living life in this way results in hollowness in your soul. God’s design and desire is to release you from that, but only on His terms.126
[Chaos; Life, Emptiness of; Natural Man]
Titus 3:3–5
WE’VE all watched the space shuttle lift off from planet Earth to go into outer space into the heavens. It sits there on the launchpad ready to move into a whole different realm. But that space shuttle is going absolutely nowhere until fire has been ignited, a blazing fire that takes it from the gravitational pull of Earth and delivers it to the glory of the heavens. No fire, no liftoff. No igniting, no destiny. The countdown begins. By the time they hit zero and the boosters are ignited, the ship is ready to take off into outer space.
Many of us have been earthbound too long. No matter how much we desire to lift off to accomplish our mission, we don’t seem to be able to get off the ground. What’s keeping us from getting off the ground and getting to the mission? The countdown is taking place. We’re getting older by the day. What keeps getting in the way?127
[Calling]
Ps. 90:12; Eph. 5:15–16
A PLAY-ACTION pass is where the quarterback receives the ball from the center. He turns and he fakes a handoff to the running back. The goal of the fake is to get the defense to trap the running back. The quarterback then tucks the ball and goes in the other direction to throw to a receiver. If he’s done his job well, the defense has been distracted for a moment, thinking that someone else has the ball so that the quarterback can throw it to a wide-open receiver.
Satan has run a play-action pass on us. He has faked us out with the wrong purpose and we keep chasing it so that he can distract us from the real play. Like a pickpocket who loves a crowd, Satan has been robbing you of your purpose, getting you distracted from God’s plan.128
[Satan, Strategy of]
John 10:9–10; 1 Peter 5:8–9
ONE of the ways that you know a bowler is serious about bowling is that they have custom-made balls. These are constructed to the appropriate weight and grip so that they fit the particular bowler’s uniqueness. To have your bowling ball custom-made is to increase the possibility of effective delivery so that you can hit the mark. God has constructed every member of His body in a customized way. God has uniquely crafted every one of us to hit the mark of His purpose and calling on our lives. We are not an assembly line of people with the same automated parts. We have been uniquely crafted for His purpose. You are, in fact, custommade.129
[Body of Christ; Spiritual Gifts, Use of; Calling]
1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4:11–13
WHEN I grew up, I had tennis shoes. Tennis shoes were also called sneakers back then, and you used one pair for everything. You played basketball in them and ran in them. Whatever you did, you did with your sneakers.
But then Nike came along. Nowadays, people have to have designer tennis shoes and you have to have a different kind of tennis shoe for every sport. You can’t just run and walk in the same shoe; you have to have a separate and different kind of shoe for each activity. How can there be a difference between a running shoe and a walking shoe?
The reason is that each shoe is specialized and crafted to fulfill the purpose for which it is being worn. Well, God is wearing you. He has crafted every single believer to wear based on where He wants to go or where He wants you to take Him and carry out His purposes.130
[Calling]
COMPANIES sometimes have staff audits. A staff audit is designed to analyze who is where, and whether they are producing at the level that they ought to be producing for the position that they occupy. The point is to make sure that the right people are in the right place, doing the right things in the right way. One of the questions on the floor during an audit is “Does each staff member’s job and productivity contribute to the goals of the company?”
This is the same question God wants answered. How does the life of every Christian contribute to His kingdom?131
[Kingdom of God; Servanthood]
YOGI BERRA, the great catcher for the New York Yankees, used to talk a lot of noise. I can appreciate that. When I played baseball I was a catcher. One of the jobs of the catcher is to distract the batter. Part of my job involved saying mean things, irritating things, and offending things to the player up to bat. I’d talk about their mother, make fun of their batting abilities, or tell them that they hit like a girl. The point was to mess with their minds in order to take the focus off of the ball.
One time, Yogi Berra was behind the plate, and Hank Aaron came up to bat. Yogi said on this one occasion, “All right, Hank is getting ready to bat.” Hank wouldn’t say anything to him. Yogi continued, “Hank, you’ve got the writing on the bat in the wrong place. The words should be facing you.” Yogi wanted to get Hank to look at the bat to make sure it was in the right place. Yogi kept going, “You better check it.” Hank didn’t budge. He didn’t say a word. The next pitch Hank hit over the center field fence. Hank rounded the bases, stepped on home plate, and began walking toward the dugout. He stopped, turned back, looked at Yogi Berra, and said, “I didn’t come here to read.”
It’s vital to know why you are here. Don’t let folk distract you from your calling.132
[Focus]
ONE OF the famous shows on television was Seinfeld. I watched about five minutes of it once, but it didn’t look worthy of my time. But obviously, the show was popular because Seinfeld, the star, made a hundred million dollars from it. I’ve since discovered the key to the show’s success. There is no plot. The episodes don’t really go anywhere. So it’s an aimless show that aimless people love.
Some folks are living their own Seinfeld show, because they wake up every day with no plot. They are not going anywhere. They are just existing day to day. There is no mission and no call of God on their lives.133
[Chaos; Life, Emptiness of; Natural Man]
APPLIANCES don’t serve themselves. Toasters don’t eat their own toast. Refrigerators don’t cool the food that they are going to eat. Stoves don’t eat the food that they cook. A microwave doesn’t digest the food that it radiates. Can openers don’t eat what is in the can they open. Appliances are there to serve somebody else. We benefit from their calling. God has assigned you a divine purpose and your fulfillment of that purpose should result in a benefit to others.134
[Servanthood]
Matt. 20:25–27; 1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4:11–13
THERE was a little boy who played on a football team who was something of a goof-off. He never really played hard, was always lazy, didn’t practice diligently, and so he never got to play.
On the last game of his senior year, the running backs in front of him all got hurt, so they had to put him in. His teammates and coaches couldn’t believe their eyes; he was playing like a wild man. They couldn’t believe this was the same kid. After the game, they came over to him to ask him why he played so well after all those years of goofing off.
“Oh,” he said, “it’s simple. My father was blind. He died yesterday, so this is the first day he’s ever gotten to see me play.”
See, when you know Daddy is watching, it makes you want to perform at a higher level. It makes you perform for a greater reason. God has called you for His kingdom, which is what you do even beyond the church. Everything you do, you should do as if He’s watching. You should do it for His glory.135
[Kingdom of God; God’s Glory]
1 Cor. 10:31
ONE of the reasons so many of us are unfulfilled is that we are driving in the wrong lane. We operate in lanes of life that were never designed for us. We operate in purposes that were never designed for us. All exits are good exits, but not all exits are your exits. We don’t get off at exits for no good reason when we are driving. We decide to get off at exits because they take us to our intended destination. We take exits that will lead us to where we are supposed to go.
Many people miss their purpose because they take any old exit where they see lights. We should only take exits that take us toward our destiny, our purpose, or our calling.136
[Calling; Focus]
2 Tim. 4:5
THE THING I loved most about the Lone Ranger was his horse, Silver. I loved to see Silver go up in the air at the end of the program. He was the perfectly trained companion for the Lone Ranger. Did you know Silver wasn’t always like that? If you didn’t see the first episode of the Lone Ranger, you can’t appreciate Silver. In fact, if you didn’t see the first episode of the Lone Ranger, you can’t appreciate the Lone Ranger. He started off as a ranger among a whole group of rangers. One day his band of rangers got ambushed and he was the lone survivor of the ambush. This is how he came to be known as the “lone” ranger. The Lone Ranger was left for dead, but he alone recovered.
When he began to get his strength back, he heard in a canyon below him the sound of a horse, the horse that would come to be known as Silver. He saw the horse and figured that it could provide him a way of escape out of his situation. The only problem was the horse was a wild stallion. The whole first episode was about Silver being brought under the control of the Lone Ranger. Silver would throw him off; the Lone Ranger would get back on, only to be thrown off again. The bottom line is that the Lone Ranger rode Silver until Silver got the message that he was no longer in charge. When the Lone Ranger took over the reins of Silver’s life, the horse could now do things that he would have never been able to do on his own—all because he was controlled by another.
God wants to ride you and me so we can do stuff that we could never do on our own. When the story of your life is written about how God rode you, what will He have accomplished? What will have happened in your life because you moved when God said “Giddy-up” and stopped when He said “Whoa”? What will God accomplish in your life because you yielded to His purposes?137