Serving God's Purpose, part 1
Being Who God Made You to Be
Have you ever wondered why you were born when you were? Have you ever wished you had been born in a whole different time? Or better yet, have you ever wondered why you were born where you were? Why were you born in America? Some of you might not relate to that because you were born in another country, or maybe your parents were, or your grandparents. But regardless of all that, you are in America today… Why?
Acts 13:36 “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep.” Once David had completed what God wanted him to do, he died. From that, we can suppose that the fact that we are still living means we still have something God wants us to do. So this thought will either motivate you to get busy about the kingdom’s business or slow you way down not really wanting to go to heaven any time soon.
Let’s consider what it means to serve God’s purpose.
A few years ago, I heard a missionary speak at a conference. He was the son of a millionaire, so when he announced that God had called him into the mission field, many people were quite shocked that a young man - who had the potential of making millions of dollars if he had followed his father’s footsteps -was giving all of that up to work in Africa. But he did. And he worked there for many years.
As he was sharing about the church he pastored in Kenya (a church of about 3,000 people) and how they are reaching out to businessmen, dignitaries, and diplomats, I was struck with the thought that he was serving God’s purposes in his own generation. His entire upbringing, and the world of finances he was accustomed to, turned out to be training for God’s ultimate purpose for him.
I believe God puts within us all the desire to be something or to do something significant for our generation and for God. I remember reading a book by a man named Don Miller, I want to share a quote from him: “Everybody wants to be fancy and new. Nobody wants to be themself. I mean, maybe people want to be themselves, but they want to be different, with different clothes or shorter hair or less fat. It’s a fact. If there was a guy who just liked being himself and didn’t want to be anybody else, that guy would be the most different guy in the world and everybody would want to be him.”
Isn’t that an interesting point? Who is the one person in all of history that was content with who He was – never expressing the desire to be somebody else? Jesus! And now everybody wants to be Him, just like Don Miller said.
“There is a side of Christianity that promises to make us new.” That is one of the most appealing aspects of it. That is why most people get saved: they begin to realize that who they are is not the person they want to be. And they realize that what they are doing is not what they want to do in life. I don’t mean job wise. I mean influence wise, or significance wise. People want to influence other people, but often the only way to do that is to start being who God made you to be.
Continued tomorrow
