How do you live? Are you really living or are you existing? Are you living your life fully, passionately, purposefully, and expectantly? Or are you wasting your life living far beneath what God created and redeemed you for? Why are you alive? Why were you made? What kind of purpose did God have for you and me as He designed the universe and the part that you and I play in His eternal design?
Oh friend, God has made you with the highest creaturely purposes in mind : To see His glory, to savor his glory, and to show His glory. God says in Isaiah 43:7, "Everyone who is called by My name…I have created for My glory..." God has purposed for us to fully enjoy and display the His glory. Paul caught this vision and said in 1 Cor. 10:31, "So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." This means that your life is radically and wonderfully significant. God has planned for a very substantial life both here on earth and for eternity.
This is why we were made:"All things were created by him and for him" (Colossians 1:16).
This is why our bodies were redeemed: "You are not your own; you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body"( 1 Corinthians 18-20).
This is why we bear fruit: "By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit" (John 15:8)
This is why we pray: "Whatever you ask the Father in my name I will do it that the Father may be glorified in the Son" (John 14:13).
This is why we do all good deeds: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).
That is why we exist - to show and display the glory of God. The apostle Paul passionately pursued this purpose. In one of the the apostle Paul's purpose statements he says in Philippians 1:20, "It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. "
To magnify or glorify God, in common language means to make God look as He truly is. We may think, “Christ is the Almighty God, Creator of the universe. How can I possibly magnify, exalt or glorify Him?” Think of Him as being a distant star. It may be more brilliant than our own sun, but to the human eye, it is just a dim speck in the night sky. To many in this world, Christ is that way. He is the very splendor of God, brighter than a billion suns. But the world doesn’t see Him that way. So God has purposed that the believer is to be a telescope to bring the truth about Christ into view for the unbeliever. Through us, Christ is magnified to a skeptical, unbelieving world. The calling of those who love God is to make his greatness begin to look as great as it really is. The whole duty of the Christian can be summed up in this: feel, think, and act in a way in your life and in your death that will make God look as great as he really is. Be a telescope for the world of the infinite starry wealth of the glory of God. Led us catch this purpose and it will revolutionize the kind of questions we ask in our daily lives.
Your life is all about God. That is the meaning of being human. It is our created nature to make much of God. It is our glory to worship the glory of God. When we fulfill this reason for being, we have substance; we have purpose; our lives have meaning. There is weight and significance in our existence. In short, we don't waste our purpose, we don't waste our lives!
To not to fulfill this purpose for our lives is as John Piper puts it "to be a mere shadow of the substance we were created to have. Not to display God's worth by enjoying him above all things is to be a mere echo of the music we were created to make. It is to be a mere residue of the impact we were created to have."
There is no greater tragedy than this. this is a meaningless, empty, utterly wasted life! Piper says,
"Humans are not made to be mere shadows and echoes and residues. We were made to have God-like substance and make God-like music and have God-like impact...when humans forsake their Maker and love other things more, they become like the things they love - small, insignificant, weightless, inconsequential, and God-diminishing."
Psalmist 135;15-18 says, "The idols of the nations are but silver and gold, the work of man's hands. They have mouths, but they do not speak; they have eyes, but they do not see; they have ears, but they do not hear, nor is there any breath at all in their mouths. Those who make them will be like them, Yes, everyone who trusts in them".
This is radical! This is the kind of truth that can awaken us from our shadow like/echo like existence and bring us to be the light and beautiful music to a blind and deaf world we were made to be.
Or, as John Piper says, it can do this:
"Think and tremble. You become like the man made things that you trust: can't speak; can't see; can't hear. This is a shadow existence. It is an echo and residue of what you were meant to be. It is an empty mime on the stage of history with much movement and no meaning."
Piper challenges us all to "be not shadows and echoes and residue."
Oh reader, be not mere shadows and echoes and residue; be the light and the music and the substance of the worth, the beauty, the preciousness, the treasure, the supreme value of the glory of God! You were made for this and you were redeemed for this. I pray this for all of you who say from the heart, “Jesus is Lord.” Whether you realize it or not, when you confess Jesus as the Lord of the universe, you sign up for significance beyond all your dreams. I mean businessmen, homemakers, students. To belong to Jesus is meant for you to live in such a way as to bring honor to Christ, to boldly proclaim Christ, and to magnify and worship Christ. This is your purpose ordained by God for His glory and your soul’s satisfaction and delight!
There will always be a serious or mild sickness in your soul until you embrace this calling. Listen to J. Campbell White, the first secretary of the Layman’s Missionary Movement in the early 1900’s. This movement was born among businessmen who were captured by a holy ambition to get behind what God was doing in the massive Student Volunteer Movement. Here is what the main leader among laymen said: “Most men are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and riches are but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding joy of working with God for the fulfillment of his eternal plans. The men who are putting everything into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most priceless rewards."
What is the purpose for which God has eternally planned for you and me? The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That is the only life worth living.
"Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24) .
May you fulfill Christ's desire to see His glory, so that you might savor His glory, in order to fully live your created and redeemed and called purpose, to show His glory among the nations,
Pastor Bill
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