Discovering Your God-given Purpose

1. Discovering Your God-given Purpose

2. The last time I was with you all, I talked about practicing the presence of God as a lifestyle of active faith, seeking to maintain a constant, ongoing relationship with the Lord. • As we discovered previously, practicing the presence of God not only enables us to experience the Lord continually, but it also helps us live a meaningful life, one that fulfills the will of God. Recap

3. Questioning Our Purpose Today, I want to talk about something that I believe is essential to living this type of active, ongoing faith: Understanding our God-given purpose!

4. Questioning Our Purpose • Have you ever found yourself asking: • Why am I here? • What’s my significance anyway? • What role do I play in this crazy world? • You’re not alone! We all desperately want to find our purpose in life; we need to know that our existence is meaningful.

5. Each one of us is forced to answer these questions at some point in our lives, every answer helping define and shape our life’s purpose. • Why am I here? • What’s my significance anyway? • What role do I play in this crazy world? • We will either consciously determine our purpose, living accordingly, or we will live our life by default, our life’s purpose merely to sustain ourselves. Questioning Our Purpose

6. Questioning Our Purpose • If discovering our purpose in life were not difficult enough, our culture shouts answers at us constantly: • Elementary school: • What are you going to be? • High School: • What’s my next step? • College: • Question everything. • Family/Career: • Make a living. • Retirement: • Relax and Reflect.

7. Questioning Our Purpose But, what if discovering our life purpose didn’t have to be this way? What if we could live a meaningful life from the beginning, confident that every aspect of our lives held meaning and purpose?

8. Psalm 139:1-18:  From the very beginning, God had a plan for your life! 1 O LORD, You have searched me and known me. 2You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. 3You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways. 4 Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold, O LORD, You know it all. 5You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. 6Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. 7Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? 8If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. 9If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, 10 even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. 11If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” 12Even the darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You. 13For You formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb. 14I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it very well. 15My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, andskillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; 16Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; and in Your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them. 17How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! 18If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You. God Created You for a Purpose

9. God not only knows you intimately, but He also has a unique and distinct plan just for you! • Ephesians 2:10 – For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. • Jeremiah 29:11 – For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope. God Created You for a Purpose

10. Universal Purpose: • Love God • It means loving the Lord with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. (Mt 22:37) • It entails hearing and doing the Word. (James 1:27) • It’s living by the Spirit and seeking first His kingdom. (Gal. 5:25) • Love Others – Romans 5:5 • It means building relationships with others. (Mk 2:15) • It moves us to means care for their needs. • (Gal. 5:13) • It’s sharing and testifying to the truth of the Gospel through our daily lives. (Col. 3:17) What is God’s Purpose for You?

11. Personal Calling: Using our God-given talents and gifts to serve the Lord in a specific, God-ordained way. As we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and begin to serve the Lord, we discover our spiritual gifts and talents, learning how to use them to accomplish God’s will. Our personal calling represents the means by which we fulfill our universal purposes in God. What is God’s Purpose for You?

12. Confusion: • Often times, we confuse our vocation or trade with God’s sole purpose and calling on our lives. (Acts 18:3&4 – Paul as a tentmaker; God’s calling on his life was much greater!) • Although these things can be part of God’s purpose for us, they alone do not represent the fulfillment of God’s purpose in our lives. • We also err when we think about our purpose or calling as being something big, that one primary thing that God seemingly cares most about in our lives, that one thing we were created to accomplish. • Col. 3:17 - Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. What is God’s Purpose for You?

13. The real questions: Will you let Him guide you? Will you let Him fulfill His plan and purpose in your life? Will you go deeper in your relationship with the Lord and allow His love to motivate you to fulfill His purpose in and through you? Will You Let God?