What Have We Learned?

Week 7: The Purpose-Driven Life

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

I have been asked many times over the years, “How do you think of stuff to say every Sunday morning?” I have to make a confession. Often I answer, when I’m asked that question, “I just say the same thing over and over again.” Is that an exaggeration? Probably, but there is some truth to it. You see, the way we human beings are gives preachers and politicians and pundits job security because we tend to forget a lot. We tend to not remember things we should. I began talking about the 40 Days of Purpose, saying that what we are going to learn during this time is not rocket science; in fact, it is things we already know. It is just that they are said in a different way and we need to remember these things again. The Bible says, “Remember today what you have learned about the Lord through your experience with Him.” We have to learn these things again and again because we do tend to forget. We need to circle that word “remember” so that we might remember to remember. In fact, remembering is a lot of what faith is. I tend to think of faith as looking backward and we look back at our lives, especially when things are not going very well. We remember what God has done; we can look back at our lives and say that God did certain things in our lives. We can look at the Bible and see its history and when God did particular things. This helps us get through those harder times. Hope, if you will, is future faith. We are told to have faith and hope and love. Love has to do with the present. Faith is remembering. So we have to question, “What have we learned over the last 40 days?”

First, what have we learned about God? Well, it’s all about God and not about me. The first words in Rick Warren’s book; “It’s not about me.” It’s not about us. “God is the One who made all things. All things are for His glory. He wanted to have many children share His glory. Everything started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.” You talk about basic doctrine, here you are; these are things that we already know. Yet, we need to be reminded of this truth because it’s so important. As human beings, we tend to be exactly the opposite. Yes, we are made in God’s image, capable of great good. But we all have a problem and it’s called sin. We have it in our hearts, it is not just something that we do but it’s something that we are. We have a problem with our nature. Primarily that problem is not only doing what is bad but it is egocentricity or good old self-centeredness. We tend to think of ourselves first; we want the biggest of pie or cake, we want our agenda fulfilled, we want to be happy, we want ourselves to be taken care of. It’s just the way it is. Those feelings, those things that we are, tend to drive out, not only love of others but remembering that it’s not about us. We started the 40 Days saying that the purpose of our lives is far greater than our happiness. It’s far greater than our personal fulfillment or our success or our dreams or ambitions. We were made for God and we were made by God. Everything got started in Him. If we can all learn that more, it’s surprising how profound that is in our lives; how we actually will understand what life is all about if we can get this particular truth. When we don’t do these things we become profoundly unhappy. God is loving, it’s true, but God is a bit devious; He has made it work this way. He has rigged the world and He has rigged you and me to never be happy unless we are serving Him. We are never truly fulfilled until we put Him first. He doesn’t do it just to get us; He just knows it is true. We find happiness in Him.

Rick Warren quoted an email he got from someone about this very thing. He says, “Pastor Rick, my life was changed on that first day of 40 Days of Purpose with the first sentence of the book. The book begins, “It’s not about you.” I can’t tell you how much those four words have altered my outlook on life. During 40 Days, my eyes have been opened to see how much of my emotional pain and problems in relationships have been caused by ignoring this basic truth. Since I have learned it, I have noticed that whenever I act like it is all about me, I lose my happiness. I start worrying about problems and I get angry and resentful when people like my husband let me down. I feel insecure when I am criticized, jealous when I am overlooked and guilty when I think about my short-comings. I also become impatient with my kids and stubborn when I don’t get my way. The root of all of these negative emotions has been my focus on me. For the last five weeks, I have been trying to switch my focus off of me and on to God and throughout the day I repeat, “It’s not about me, it’s all about God.” What a difference this has made.” Indeed, what a difference it can make.

Hopefully we have also learned that not only is it not about us, but God does miracles. You know I think that sometimes we become cynical in our lives, especially in our scientific world that we live in, that God really doesn’t do miracles anymore. It is a part of modern life to believe this. In fact there are Biblical scholars that have PhDs who work everyday when they read the Bible, they isolate pieces of the Bible that talk about miracles and they don’t feel that they could have been original so they take them out. That’s nothing new. Thomas Jefferson wrote a book called “Jefferson’s Extracts from the Bible.” Do you know what he extracted? He extracted any mention of miracles and supernatural. God does do miracles. But you know the biggest miracle that God does is a changed life. It is a changed life. People whose heart changes. I hope that you have seen that in yourself and in some of the people around you in your small groups. That doesn’t always mean some big bright-light experience or something dramatic happening. I think most change happens gradually. We will come out of this 40 Days, even if we have been changed, needing to be changed some more over our lifetime. That is just a given. But I hope you’ve seen change. And if you have, it is a sign of God’s work, God’s miracles.

We’ve not only learned about God, we’ve also learned about life. We’ve learned that life is preparation for eternity. But we need to be careful of that statement a little bit. Sometimes when we say that life is preparation for eternity, we don’t want to say that this life means nothing; it means everything. There is an old saying that a certain man thinks about Heaven so much, he’s no earthly good. There are people like that. On the other side of it, if we don’t think about Heaven at all, perhaps we are good for nothing. You see, the lesson is that if we don’t have a purpose or have an end in mind, we don’t know where we are going. We don’t know how to act. And a lot of us live our lives as if we only have sixty-five or seventy-five years or less. We have an endpoint, but that’s not the end we are thinking about. If we only live for this life, we’ve got the wrong message. Steven Colby says, “We begin with the end in mind.” The Bible tells us that God has planted eternity in the human heart. I told you that God rigged it. God has planted eternity in your heart. Have you ever wondered why nothing really satisfies? Even your best relationship…even the greatest marriage on earth…there are times when those don’t satisfy. Or when you have the best job or the best situation or when things are so wonderful and you’ve laughed until you can’t laugh anymore, but the next day, you wonder, “Is this all there is?” The point is that that is not all there is. God has put eternity in your heart. He has made it so that you will never be totally happy until you get there. He’s put eternity in the heart of every human being.

We’ve also learned that we have five purposes. I hope you can name them now. You know one of my goals out of all of this is not only that you can name five of these purposes – I’m not saying that these purposes are exhaustive, they are not everything, but they are certainly the five basic purposes – these are also purposes for our church as well. One of the things that I am hoping for is that as we’ve gone over this enough that if someone were to ask you at the coffee shop, “What does your church do?” in a broad description you could tell that person what we do and what the purpose of our church is. Over the next few months or year, I want to organize our church according to these purposes. I’m not sure what that is going to look like yet, but you will see some of these things coming. Not that we will become like Saddleback Church in California; I don’t see us doing that, but I find that it is a good framework to work with. It’s a good framework to think about for our lives and our church. What are these purposes? We were made for God’s pleasure; not as God’s playthings but for His pleasure. God takes enjoyment in us and we do in Him. We call that worship. We were formed for God’s family and the Bible calls that fellowship – not just having cookies and coffee together though that is part of it, but deep fellowship where we know and support one another and we love one another. We were made for this koinonia. We were also created to become like Jesus Christ; that is God’s goal for our lives, it is part of what God has made from the beginning of the world. The Bible word for that is discipleship or growing in maturing in the faith. We are not created to just stand around and be there. We are created to grow. We were shaped to serve God and the Bible calls that ministry or serving. One of the wonderful things about being in the church is that everybody has different gifts, different outlooks, different things about them that make them who they are. I was talking to the person who was doing the artwork, if you come over to the Family Life Center, in back of the stage there is a beautiful mural, and I was so amazed at what was being drawn so easily on the canvas. From someone who can’t draw a straight line, it was wonderful (that’s me). I can do other things. Some of us are detail-oriented, some are not. Some people can draw and others can’t. We saw some gifts in the choir today; some of us couldn’t sing if they put a barrel over heads – no offense. We all have different gifts. We are made for a mission. The Bible calls that evangelism. Here’s where I part a little bit of company from Rick Warren. You see “mission” is not just about evangelism, though we as Presbyterians need to hear this word more. We just don’t do that very well. But we also believe that we are to take care of people in this world and to help make things as good as we can. Calvin used to call that the “cultural mandate.” That’s just simply a fancy term for saying that we need to change the way things are to make them better. We’re pretty good at that, but we are not very good at the evangelism piece. The fact is that there are people out there who don’t know Christ and are lost. Because we are found, we need to be out there sharing what we believe with those who don’t know.

We’ve also learned that we grow by making commitments. Again, this is not rocket science. I think sometimes in churches we have this tendency to put a notch in our belts; “Oh, I’ve read this book. I’ve attended that class. I have done this spiritual emphasis. Isn’t that great?” but then we fail to take what we have learned and do anything with it. We need to make commitments. One of the things I know about life is that it is busy. One of the reasons that we have trouble making commitments is that we have so many other commitments. It’s difficult, I know that. Sometimes in periods of our lives, all we can do is feed the baby and get them to sleep and take them to school. There are parts of our life just like that. But you know we can do most anything that we really want to. We usually do. I just want to encourage you that if God has been putting something in your heart that you should do, you should do it. If you need to learn more about your faith, make the commitment to do that. If you need to serve out in the community, you need to do that. If there’s a ministry in the church that God is calling you to do, make the commitment – jump in – you need to do that. Please don’t have the attitude that you’ve done it before in the past and that you’ve done your turn so that you can do your life now. God’s calling lasts from birth to death. Find out what God wants you to do and do it. We also grow by fellowship. As I’ve said many times, it’s not just about coming on Sunday mornings – though that is a great start – but it takes more than that to grow. We need one another to grow. God again has rigged it so that we generally by ourselves don’t grow in the faith very much. Some people can, some people are called to that but most are not. We need to be in a group where we are hearing someone say something. Maybe they say something that we haven’t thought of before. Sometimes we need to be accountable to someone else. Sometimes we just need to love someone who isn’t that lovable. It’s part of learning to grow up, what God is trying to teach us is how to love one another. We can’t do that unless we are with one another. Now I know, sometimes we don’t like other people in the church. I guess that is what makes us kind of like a family; we all have people in our families that we don’t much like and we are just stuck with them. We ask why we should voluntarily subject ourselves to someone we don’t like; part of it is learning how to love, part of it is learning how to take care of one another and being with one another. I hope that you have been a part of a small group. And I hope you will continue to do that some time in your life. As iron sharpens iron, people can improve each other. “We should keep on doing the things we have learned and received and heard and the God of peace will be with you.” “We should not stop gathering together; instead we must continue to encourage each other even more.”

I hope that we’ve also learned that people are hungry for spiritual truth. Sometimes we think that some people don’t want to hear about this; everybody is hungry. Again, God has made us this way. You know, I want to confess something to you. Do you know what keeps me coming back as a minister? Do you know what I am kind of addicted to in the church? It’s when I see people change, when I see people grow in the faith, when I see people know Jesus just a little bit more. That’s what makes it worthwhile to me. I want to say that the same should be for you. If you’ve ever seen it, if you’ve ever been kind of the instrument of somebody’s life being changed or if you’ve had a part in it, it’s the greatest feeling. It is what keeps you coming back. People are hungry for spiritual truth. Jesus says, “Look around you. Vast fields of human souls are ripening all around us and are ready now for reaping.” God has done that and He’s given us the gift of being able to help.

Start living what you have learned. Last but not least, if we don’t live what we have learned it means nothing. Again, I will just say, live your life seeking what God will have you do with all of this. We have done a program – 40 Days of Purpose – and I think it’s a great program but it is just a program if we don’t do anything with it. I want to ask again that you would seek what God would have you do. Live what you have learned and then pass it on.