DRIVEN BY PURPOSE

Your number two and three purpose in life is ..

We are called, not just to believe, but to belong.

While your relationship with Christ is personal, God never intended it to be private. In God’s family you are connected to every other believer and we will belong to each other for eternity.

Last week I applied this verse to the Sanctity of Life:

(Genesis 1:27) So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (NIV)

I don’t think we, including myself, have any idea how potent that one verse is meant to be. Everything God eventually does in history revolves around that one verse. When Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden the image and likeness of God in them (something God placed a huge value on) was marred and deformed. God’s image, in us, didn’t totally disappear, or none of would have been worth redeeming, but it became grossly deformed.

Jesus came to this earth to pay the price for our sins.. die in our place… defeat the enemy of our souls and rise from the dead to bring us new life….eternal new life; but at the heart of what Jesus came to this earth to do in you, and for you, was to re-establish the image and likeness of God, in you.

Image; tsalem - shading, resemblance

Jesus, when he came to redeem us, was said to be:

The exact likeness of God, the visible image of God, the exact representation of his being…

The reason the Bible is so lengthy and clear in the, (not one, but four gospels), is so that we can get a fairly clear picture of what a human being who is reflecting the likeness of God is supposed to act like. Jesus was the model of how God shining through a human being thinks and acts. The way He responded to others, to overwhelmingly difficult life circumstances, to the temptations of satan…. His responses are a clear picture of what the image and likeness of God looks like, when it is reflecting through the mirror of a totally committed human being.

But He didn’t just model “godliness”….He made very clear that that is what he wants to re-establish in us.

Ephesians 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (NIV)

If you have repented of your sins, embraced Jesus payment for your sins, accepted God’s gift of salvation and eternal life…that whole wonderful process called salvation is not the end of your dealing with God. Salvation happens at a moment in time in the history of your life…. Then begins a lifetime of a process the Bible calls: Sanctification.

Sanctification is the lifetime process of God remaking you back into his image and likeness.

I need to emphasize, and make sure you hear me emphasize those words lifetime..

process…. remaking….

There are theologies out there who try to convince you that God’s plan for your life is to get you to make a mental acceptance to his free gift of salvation, then open up your arms and watch out; because God then is going to pour out more and more gifts into your life until you are perfectly healthy, insanely wealthy, and deliriously happy. If the slightest negative blip shows up on your life radar and simple prayer of faith and claim of victory will bring you back to heaven on earth.

God is certainly a benevolent and generous father but that faulted theology misses the whole point of the process of your sanctification here on earth. God is far more interested in what is going on inside your soul than he is in what is happening in your business. He is far more focused on your character than he is your career.

God is interested in your business and your career but primarily from the standpoint of how those things are reshaping the character of Christ in you. When the stock market goes up and your 401K increases in value God is not standing in front of the great video monitor in heaven clapping his hands in glee.

God gets very excited when the old sinful ways in us begin to drop off and the new godly character begins to emerge. None of our earthly financial or career successes will carry any weight once this life is over…. Our renewed image of God will still be part of our lives millions of years from now in eternity.

So what’s to be the primary emphasis of this life:

Ephesians 4:22-24 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness. (NIV)

-Put off the old self

-Being made new in the attitude of your mind

-Putting on the new self

-Being re-created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness

Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice--the kind he will accept. When you think of what he has done for you, is this too much to ask? 2 Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do, and you will know how good and pleasing and perfect his will really is. (NLT)

Transform- metamorphoo- metamorphosis (like the caterpillar turned butterfly) Changed from the inside out into something God originally designed us to be. Shedding the old self…spreading the new wings.

This is one of the primary reason you were put on this earth!

If your making gazillions of dollars or making a huge name for yourself… and this transformation is not happening you’re just running in place.

If you have perfect health and a 7% body fat content, and you eat only tofu and wheat grass and you are not morfing into Christ-likeness you’re just beating empty air.

If your life influences hundreds or thousands and those thousands are not seeing the increasing image of God shining out through your life, attitudes, and actions, your life-grade will be an “F.”

Romans 12:2 Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well- formed maturity in you. (MSG)

The process of taking anything in this world and shaping it into something new means that the old form is going to have to be melted or beat up, or cut or stretched, or have holes poked in it…. And the reshaping of our lives is no different.

God likens our new spiritual life to a new birth. Growing in God’s grace (sanctification) is no easier than the process of spiritual growth. A baby is completely self-consumed.. so is a spiritual baby. A baby wants every event in life and every action of other people to center around them….so does a spiritual baby.

A baby has to be “trained” to be an adult. Some of the training process is very difficult. Sometimes the baby endures crippling hits in the gut, which if handled correctly eventually make the baby a more mature adult. So it is with the spiritual baby growing to adulthood. If some TV preacher assures you that God’s plan for his children is that they live problem free with every need instantly met by a doting Father…. They are lying to you!!!

What nonsense!… What happens to a child when the parents protects them from every blow of life and always makes sure their environment is pleasant and friendly?_______

1 Corinthians 14:20 Christian brothers, do not be like children in your thinking. Be full-grown…. (NLV)

You know what a child acts like… selfish, whiny, demanding, lacking in understanding, unable to see the big picture, wanting everything to revolve around bringing, happiness and pleasure into their lives… Christian children act the same way…even if they have been believers for 40 years.

Romans 8:5 Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. (NIV)

God is insistent that he move us from lives lived by our natural desires to a live moved along by what the God’s Spirit implants in us. To the degree that is happening in me today, I am accomplishing my reason for being put on this earth. God is preparing me here for an eternity spent with him “there”. It would be insanely childish for me to use this life focusing on my own selfish desires, rather than allowing God to “sanctify my character” in preparation for the first billion years I will spend in eternity! (And that will only be the beginning)

Every once in a while I am kind of awakened to the lack of reality in this life and reawakened to the reality of eternal life. This week we were at the hospital with Susan and Jeff Brogan, and they were dealing with the seriousness of life issues and in the waiting room I noticed a magazine cover with a famous face and an article about her various homes in exotic places and the headline read; “The Well Lived Life.” It kind of shocked me: How absurd it was to think that a “well-lived life” had anything to do with the blocks and mortar one slept in at night. I came out yesterday as I was finishing off this message and heard “Forbes on Fox” placing great emphasis on retiring rich… I know many of us think about those things… but where is the emphasis on giving ones primary attention to the real reality that if you retire rich at 65, then die of a heart attack at 73... Those nine years aren’t going to mean much lined up alongside 50 billion years of eternity.

By all means, if you can, invest wisely and retire rich!… but please don’t do so at the expense of your eternal soul! I’m often reminded that many of God’s choice servants in this world, right now, don’t own a home… don’t have any money in a bank account, don’t own a car…some have never even seen fine cars like we have. Yet some of those people in “emerging” countries have an intensity in their understanding of the necessity of preparing for eternity that is beyond our comprehension.

We want God to “fix” our sinfulness in an instant… he won’t! Sometimes he takes away a habit, or a destructive trait so we don’t kill ourselves before sanctification can take place…. More often than not the process of sanctification is just that…a process.

I’ve often quoted this verse:

Philippians 2:12-13 Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed— not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, 13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. (NIV)

Warren points out something I never really noticed. I’ve often emphasized the “God works in you both to will and to act. (God gives you both the desire and the power to do his will).

God works in you… God’s Role

Work out your own salvation… Your Responsibility (not work for your salvation)

Have all puzzle pieces, have picture on box top. Must put effort into final outcome.

And working out doesn’t come fast or easy!

Where you are, in the process of sanctification will show itself in what you habitually do in your life.