One of my favorite little books is, Children’s Letters To God. It’s a compilation of actual letters that children have written to God, compiled by Eric Marshall and Stuart Hample. Here’s some excerpts:
Dear God,
I read the Bible. What does ‘BEGAT’ mean? Nobody will tell me.
Love,
Alison
Dear God,
Is it true my father won’t get in Heaven if he uses his bowling words in the house?
Anita
Dear God,
Did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?
Norma
Dear God,
Instead of letting people die and having to make new ones, why don’t You just keep the ones you got now?
Jane
Dear God,
In Bible times did they really talk that fancy?
Jennifer
Dear God,
Is Reverend Coe a friend of Yours or do you just know him through business?
Donny
Dear God,
My grandpa says You were around when he was a little boy. How far back do You go?
Love,
Dennis
Now, this little book is very popular with adults. In fact, it’s sold over a million copies. And the main reason so many people buy it, read it, and quote it has nothing to do with the fact that these little letters are so cute. They certainly are-but there’s more to it than that. I think adults are drawn to this little book because like these children, they have questions about life that they would like to ask God. And there is nothing wrong with asking God questions. He invites us to bring Him our honest inquiries. Do you remember Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount? “Ask and it will be given you. Seek and you will find…” (Matthew 7:7) Well, this morning that is what I would like us to do-seek the answers to what you might call: life’s three GREATEST questions and here they are:
- The Question of existence: “Why am I alive?”
- The Question of significance: “Does My Life Matter?” and…
- The Question of intention: “What is my purpose?”
Now, these questions SHOULD be familiar to all of us because Rick Warren deals with them in the first seven chapters of his book-which we are studying as a church family during these 40 days of purpose. And before we proceed to the next chapter I think we should take time to review what we have learned to this point and dealing with these questions will help us to do that so, let’s get started.
1. As I said, the first question…the question of EXISTENCE is this, “Why Am I Alive?”
…why am I here? Why was I born? Now, the hit TV show, Everybody Loves Raymond recently aired an episode in which they touch on these questions and I want to show you three clips this morning as sort of a running illustration for each one. In this first scene Ray knocks on the door of his daughter Ally’s bedroom, thinking that she wants to talk to him about the birds and the bees. He’s spent a lot of time studying, preparing himself to answer those difficult questions that deal with human sexuality-the ones all parents dread dealing with but he discovers that his little girl want’s to talk about something much more profound.
RAYMOND SEGMENT ONE – 5:00 to 9:00
Well, Ray may have been shocked at his daughter’s question but it is not a NEW one for the human race. I mean, for thousands of years people have been asking, “Why am I here? Why did God make me?” In fact, the prophet Jeremiah himself once asked God, “Why was I born? Was it only to have trouble and sorrow, to end my life in disgrace?” (Jeremiah 20:18) And the truth is, young and old, we’ve all felt like Jeremiah at times-we’ve all wondered why we exist-why we are here-especially when life seems like nothing more than a series of trials and tribulations. Well, the answer to this question is found in the Bible-this “owners manual for life” that God has given us. Look at Proverbs 16:4,
“The Lord has made EVERYTHING-why?-FOR HIS OWN PURPOSES.”
In other words we have been born for ONE reason: to fulfill the purposes of God-and as we’ll learn in the next five weeks of this study, God has FIVE purposes for every human life. So we could tell Raymond’s daughter that we are not here to alleviate the over-crowding of heaven. No, there are five specific reasons God has put each of us on this planet. Those people out there who advocate pure evolutionary theory are wrong. We are not an accident of nature. As Einstein said, “God doesn’t play dice.” He doesn’t make mistakes. He does nothing accidentally. No, God has a reason-a purpose-for everything He creates-especially Human beings like you and me. Warren writes, “Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It was not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you.”
So each of us have a God-given purpose. We can all say with the Psalmist, “The Lord will fulfill His purpose FOR ME.” (Psalm 138:8) I’ve asked our own David and Becky McGaffin to share a personal testimony to help us grasp this important truth.
TESTIMONY-David and Becky McGaffin
Thank you David and Becky. Now, as I said, in coming weeks as we continue to study Warren’s book we are going to look very closely at each of the five purposes for every human life…one purpose per week. but this morning I want us to focus on God’s basic MOTIVE behind making each of us in the first place, and its found in Ephesians 1:4 where it says,
“Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, God had us in mind, and He settled on us as the focus of HIS LOVE, to be made whole and holy by HIS LOVE. (MSG)”
In other words, the MOTIVE behind God making you is love. He made you to love you! Now, if you don’t get anything else as we start this 40 days, I want you to understand this, God says He made you, to love you. Write that in the blank provided in your outline: “I WAS CREATED TO BE LOVED BY GOD.” As Warren says, “God didn’t NEED you. He wasn’t lonely. He made you in order to love you. He didn’t need you, He WANTED you.” And before we can proceed we have to understand that THIS is WHAT ON EARTH WE’RE HERE FOR – we’re here to be loved by God-to experience the love of our Creator. I don’t know about you but to me this knowledge is wonderful! In fact, I can’t conceive of any better reason to exist-to be LOVED by God.”
Okay…let’s move on to our second question…
2. … the QUESTION of significance, which is: “Does my life matter?”
In other words, does our personal contribution to God’s purposes really make a difference? Are my actions significant in the big scheme of things? And this is not a NEW question either. Thousands of years ago, the prophet Isaiah said, “My work all seems so USELESS. I’ve spent my strength for nothing and for no purpose at all.” (Isaiah 49:4a) Well, like Isaiah all of us have an inborn need to know that we are not useless-that what we do really counts. Like the minimum daily requirement of a certain vitamin-each of us needs our daily allotment of meaningful, purposeful actions.
During World War II, there were prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp in Hungary, who were given the job of working in a factory that processed human sewage. Well, allied bombers came along and destroyed the factory which left the prisoners with nothing to do. The morning after the bombing the Nazi soldiers had them take all the rubble of that factory and move it to another field. Then, the next day, they had them take that same rubble and move it back to where the factory once stood. The next day, they had to take that stuff and move it back to the field again. And in the weeks to come this is all they did-move this same rubble back and forth…back and forth.
Well, after a while 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. In fact, many of them began to throw themselves in front of the guards trying to get shot…in essence, trying to commit suicide. And they did this because, they weren’t getting their minimum daily requirement of meaningful labor. You see, the truth is many people would rather die than live lives that don’t matter because we were designed with an inborn need to know that our actions DO make a difference. I think this is what Proverbs 29:18 means when it says, “Without vision the people perish.” We NEED vision…we need to know that the things we do matter in the long run. I want to show a second Raymond clip to help illustrate this point. It takes place in his living room as Raymond’s family joins in helping him know how to answer his daughter’s question.
RAYMOND SEGMENT TWO – 16:33 to 17:30
Well Debra is right in pointing out to Robert that we are much more than fruit flies! I mean, they’re just bugs-they don’t question the reason behind their brief life span. They aren’t aware of eternal things because they are not made in the image of God and we are. And one thing that it means to be made in God’s image is that we can conceive of eternity. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says our eternal God has, “…planted eternity in the hearts of men.”
Well SINCE God has done this we all have an inborn need to know that our lives not only matter-but matter ETERNALLY. All people want to do things that last after they are gone. This is why people endow chairs at universities…or why they build huge monuments…this is why we name buildings after people.
Now, as most of you know our webmaster, Dean Peters, puts my sermons on our church web page each week. Well, the other day I got a phone call from a youth pastor up in the Hagerstown area who said he just wanted to let me know that he had used a sermon I preached several years ago on what it means to be a Christian. I think it was one of the “essential belief sermons” I preached back in 1997 and it was structured to very simply tell what salvation is and what it is not. This youth pastor said, “Mark, we’ve never met but I thought you would want to know that I preached your sermon and several people responded that day by accepting Jesus.” Let me tell you that felt so good! The thought that some of my flawed words-could be used to lead someone to Jesus-nothing is more satisfying! Nothing is more fulfilling. I could die now and be happy!
I can relate to Bill Wehunt when he referred to the Turkey Fry that we had on the New Hampshire Mission trip to attract the community to their VBS and said, “I’ll fry turkeys all day if it will bring someone to Jesus.” I know why Bill would do that-because nothing is more thrilling than doing things that get people into Heaven! And, I’ll study all day and preach every chance I get until the day I die if it will bring people to my Lord because doing that answers this second question for me. It tells me that my life DOES matter-and yours does as well! In fact, to say our lives MATTER is an understatement because God has designed us such that what we do here MATTERS SO MUCH that it can impact eternity.
I think that is why so many people are frustrated in their search for meaning. You see they try to find fulfilment in the temporary things of this world and when they do they always come up empty…because we are not wired for this world. We are wired for the next. As 2 Corinthians 5:1 says, “When this tent we live in-our body here on earth-is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home He Himself has made, which will last forever.” 2 Cor. 5:1 (TEV)
We are eternal beings living in temporary bodies-TENTS-so write this in the next blank: I was made, “to last forever.” That’s how much you matter! God’s plans for us are eternal ones. Psalm 33:11 says, “His plans endure (How long?) FOREVER; His purposes last (How long?) ETERNALLY.” So the question of existence – why am I alive? Well, God answers it by saying, “I made you to love you, that’s why you’re alive.” And the question of Significance – does my life matter? God says, “Yes, it does. In fact your life can make an ETERNAL difference as you join Me in accomplishing My purposes.”
3. Okay, we’ve come to the third question – the question of intention, which is this: “What is MY purpose?”
And I think a better way of wording what Warren is saying here would be to put it like this, “How do I find MY purpose…How do I find MY part in God’s eternal plan?” Well to illustrate the answer to this question, let’s tune in once more to RAYMOND…same episode…same living room!
RAYMOND SEGMENT THREE: 12:51 – 15:11
Now, Marie was correct on a couple things.
A. First, she was right to go to the Bible and she even started with the right verse – Genesis 1:1, the first verse in the Bible, “In beginning, God (not in the beginning, you-in the beginning GOD) created.” I say this was he right verse because if THOSE words hadn’t been there, we wouldn’t be discussing the purpose of life this morning would we? No, it all STARTS with God; it CONTINUES with God; it ENDS with God. “In the beginning, GOD created.” So, to find OUR part in God’s plan-we must begin with God. As Proverbs 9:10 says, “Knowing God results in every other kind of understanding.” If we want to understand our part in God’s purposes we must get to know God. Write that in the final blank. I FIND MY PURPOSE BY GETTING TO KNOW GOD.
Okay, let’s follow Marie’s example and look at a couple other verses from the Bible to help us understand this truth. Colossians 1:16 says, “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible…everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.”
Ephesians 1:11 says, “It is in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for…part of the overall purpose He (God) is working out in everything and everyone.” So, if you want to know your purpose in life, start getting to know God. The more you get to know God, the more you’re going to understand the ways and the wisdom of God and the more you’re going to understand the meaning and purpose of YOUR life. It all starts with God, because it’s all about God. “In the beginning, God.” It’s all about God.
B. Now the second thing that Marie said correctly was in her line “This may take a while…”
…because understanding God’s purposes for your life does take time. And that’s why we have set aside a big chunk of time-40 DAYS-for this campaign. You may be asking, why 40 Days? Why not 50 or 60? Well, as Warren says in the introduction of His book, the Bible is very clear that God considers “40 days” to be a spiritually significant time period. In fact, in the Bible, any time God wanted to prepare people for His purposes, He took 40 days. For instance:
- Noah’s life was transformed by 40 days of rain
- Moses’ life was transformed by 40 days on Mount Sinai
- The Hebrew spies were transformed by 40 days in the Promise Land
- David was transformed by Goliath’s 40-day challenge
- The city of Nineveh was transformed in 40 days
- Jesus was empowered for ministry by spending 40 days in the desert and the disciples were transformed by the 40 days they spent with Jesus after the resurrection.
Well, I believe the next 40 days are going to transform your life-if you set time aside every day to study and to pray. Another thing-I remember reading somewhere that psychologists say it takes on the average 40 days to gain a habit. That’s how long it takes for us to automatically do something. And I think if we discipline ourselves to spend 30 minutes a day with our Creator and Redeemer for forty days-well it will become a habit for us. We’ll just automatically start to spend time every day asking God what it is that He has called us to BE and DO.
Now, in closing I would like to refer to DAY THREE in our study. You may remember that on that day Warren reminded us that we were put here on earth-not to be remembered-but rather to prepare to face eternity. He pointed out that the Bible says that one day we will all stand before God and when we do, He will do an audit of our life-think of it as sort of a final exam before we enter eternity. Romans 14 says, “Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God…yes each of us will have to give a personal account to God.”
Well, God wants us to be ready to pass this test so He has given us the questions in advance and in His Word He tells us there will be two. The first is this:
1 – What did you do with Jesus Christ?
That day when we face Him, God won’t care about our religious background or your understanding of complex doctrinal views. No, He will only be concerned with whether or not you accepted what Jesus did for you on the cross. Remember, in John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am THE Way, THE Truth, and THE Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”
The second question will be this:
2 – What did you do with what I gave you?
We’ll have to give an accounting for what we did with our lives-all the gifts, talents, opportunities, energy, relationships and resources God gave us. We’ll have to tell whether or not we spent them on ourselves or used them to further God’s purposes and make an eternal difference. The way you answer the first question determines WHERE you spend eternity. The way you answer the second determines WHAT YOU DO in eternity. This morning how would you answer these questions?
Let’s look back at the first one. Let me ask each of you: Are you a Christian? Have you ever prayed to God and said something like this? “I am a sinner in need of Your grace. I believe Jesus Christ is Your Son and that He died for me on the cross and then rose from the dead on the third day. Forgive me. Cleanse me. And use my life as You see fit.”
If you haven’t prayed something like that, then pray it now! And then come and share that decision with us all. Tell us how you’ve answered this first question! And then, those of you who are Christians already. What about question two? If you died right now, would you be able to say that you have been working to make an eternal difference? Would you be able to say that God’s will has been first in every area of your life? If not, then you should spend some time in prayer as well…recommitting your life to Jesus’ Lordship. For some of you that could mean, joining this church….following the Lord’s will by coming forward and committing to serve God here with us at Redland. We sing to give you a chance to respond publically to either of these questions. Won’t you come now as God leads?