Does My Life Have a Purpose?

Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. Greer talks about why God created us. He wanted a creation that was centered in love, so he gave us the brush and said, you put in the center of this creation.

And so we took the brush and we painted in, not God, we painted in ourselves. We said, well, I'm going to be the center. I'm going to be the boss. I'm going to be the point. I'm going to be in charge. That's what we now call sin. Welcome back to Summit Life with Pastor and Author J.D.

Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, if there's one thing that everyone wants, it's to feel like we have a bigger purpose in life. Like we are part of something important and something beyond ourselves. We try to find it in our careers or our families, charity work, or special talents. But at the end of the day, is any of that stuff really going to last beyond our lifetime?

Does any of it truly make a difference? Today, Pastor J.D. explains what we're really created to do and how to bring meaning to our lives as we find this ultimate purpose. So grab your pen and Bible and join Pastor J.D. now in a message he titled, Does My Life Have a Purpose? Here in our fourth and final week, our question is, Does God have a purpose for my life?

I want you to try to think about that question in a very personal sense. Not, you know, does God have a purpose for the world? But does God have a purpose for you, specifically for your life? And if so, how do you figure out exactly what that purpose is and know that you are accomplishing it? You see, few things in life are as important as you finding your purpose.

Because when you understand something's purpose, you can put up with all kinds of pain and inconvenience in pursuit of it. For example, say your boss asks you to come in one weekend on a Saturday morning to open up a bunch of envelopes, 10,000 envelopes. He wants you to open up and sort through the contents. You know, he's not going to pay you overtime. It's just something you got to do because of your job. Well, every envelope you open is, you know, you're resentful about it and you're complaining.

This is like the worst weekend ever. But say that he or she, your boss tells you that in one of those envelopes is a $100,000 bonus check for you. Well, at that point, suddenly it becomes an adventure. No longer is it tedious and mind-numbing. It is everyone's exciting.

It's like a Willy Wonka adventure where you're just trying to figure out where that golden ticket is. Same tedious job, the difference is solely in your perception of purpose. Or how about this, try being a doctor who tells a woman that she is going to increase her waistline by 10 inches and gain 30 pounds over the next few months and she'll probably punch you in the face.

Yet my wife has heard that from a doctor four times and every time she rejoiced because that meant she was pregnant. Same conditions, the difference was entirely in the perception of purpose. Knowing that God has a purpose for you would transform how you see everything in your life. It would transform how you see the resources and the blessings that God has given you.

It would transform how you interpret your pain and your difficulty, inconvenience. So the question is, how can you discover the purpose that God has for you? If you've got a Bible, open it to Psalm 57. You've got your Bible, if you've already opened there, there's a little thing right at the beginning of Psalm 57 that usually we just skip over. I don't know what you call it, maybe an epitaph or something, but I want to highlight this weekend. It says this, to the choir master, to the tune of Do Not Destroy, which I guess was a popular song during that day.

It's like saying, kick this one up to Taylor Swift, shake it off. Although I kind of think David was more of an M&M guy, if anything. It was a miktam of David when he fled from Saul in the cave.

That's very important context for this song. David wrote this song as he is fleeing from Saul, King Saul, who is trying to kill him. You see, David had been anointed, the new king of Israel, which was awesome, except that the current king of Israel, Saul, was not too happy about it. So Saul drives David out of the country and then has several thousand soldiers scouring the countryside trying to find David, to unearth him from this cave he's hiding in in the wilderness of En Gedi and kill him. So in short, you could just say everything has gone wrong for David.

It's been a really bad week. Verse one, David says, be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge. In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge till the storms of destruction pass by. Here's your key verse. Verse two, I cry out to God most high to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me. He will put the shame him who tramples on me. God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness. My soul is in the midst of lions, yet I lie down amid fiery beasts.

The children of man whose teeth are spears and arrows, whose tongues are sharp swords. Then verse five, he's going to give you a refrain that he's going to come back to a couple times. It's the only real request in the whole song. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. My heart is steadfast, O God, my heart is steadfast. I will sing and make melody. Awake, my glory.

Awake, O harp and liar. I will awaken the dawn. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, among the peoples. I will sing praises to you among the nations, for your steadfast love is great to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds. Be exalted, O God, above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. Psalm 57 is a pretty remarkable Psalm because in spite of all the things that are going wrong in David's life, in spite of the fact that he is suffering innocently, not one time in this entire Psalm does he ask God to change the situation. The only thing that he asks throughout the Psalm is, God, glorify your name in this situation.

Not one time does he ever say, Lord, would you vindicate my name? Would you make people know that I didn't do this? You know I don't deserve this.

Would you fix this situation? Could you at least give me some nicer accommodations? This cave is a dump. It's dark. It's dank.

It stinks. Could you make Saul get hemorrhoids so he's not comfortable on his horse and he has to go home? David probably wanted all those things. Yet in this Psalm, he seems to perceive that something bigger is going on. So rather than asking for any of those things, he asked twice, be exalted, God above the heavens. Let your glory be over all the earth. In other words, God, use this situation to let other people see how majestic you are through this situation. And David exudes incredible confidence about God answering that prayer. In verse 2, he'll say, I know that God is going to fulfill his purpose for me. That's not a request, by the way.

That's a statement of fact. Verse 4, he says, I will lie down to rest in the midst of fiery beasts. You don't typically think of when fiery beasts are surrounding your house, that's not the time to take a nap. But David says, I'm confident enough that I'll just lie down and take a nap. Verse 7, he says, I'm going to arise early in the morning and sing and make melody to the Lord. Instead of cowering in this cave in fear, David's getting a good night's sleep and waking up early in the morning to sing songs of joy. I'm going to give you three things from this Psalm that I think you could learn about your purpose from how David talks about his. Number one, God has a purpose for you, but it's not about you. God has a purpose for you, but it's not about you. You can see that in the refrain that David goes back to again and again, the only request that he makes, God would you be exalted in and through this situation.

The ultimate purpose of your life is not about you. Superceding David's desire to be rescued is his prayer for God to be glorified. You and I and David exist for God's glory, and that's a hard thing for people to get sometimes, but the ultimate center of everything that happens on earth and ultimately everything that happens in your life is the glory of God. Why did God even create the earth?

Well, let David himself answer Psalm 19 one, the heavens declare the glory of God. God spun the world into existence. He created the galaxies and the mountain tops and the oceans and the water molecule. He created it as a demonstration of his power and his beauty and his glory.

Sometimes I feel like you and I are like flies walking on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with no idea the majestic masterpiece that is underneath our feet. Why did God save Israel? Why did God choose to save Israel? Well, again, let David answer Psalm 106 verse eight. God saved Israel for his name's sake that he might make known his mighty power. Isaiah agrees, Isaiah 48 nine. For my name's sake, God says, I will defer my anger for the sake of my praise. I will refrain it from you. Ezekiel concurs.

He's equal 36 verse 22. Thus says the Lord God. It is for the sake of my holy name that I am about to act. The nations will know because of what I do in and through you.

They will know that I am the Lord. Paul says in Ephesians one six that God chose to save us and the way that he saved us so that we would be a demonstration to the angels and the entire creation of the glorious grace that God has and his power that we would forever be trophies of his grace. David says that the reason that God continues to work in his life is for the glory of his name. Psalm 23 which we quote a lot at funerals.

There's a little phrase in it most people have never really looked at. Psalm 23 three. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. So what is the ultimate purpose that God has for us now?

Bringing him glory. That's why he created you. It's why he saved you. So Paul would tell us that in everything we do even something mundane like eating and drinking we should do all of it to the glory of God. You say well wait a minute that seems pretty self-centered of God.

Seems kind of unloving if you ask me. Let me answer that with an analogy. In order for life on earth to work the earth has to rotate around the sun. If the sun were a person and it loved the earth the sun would insist that it remain the center of the earth's orbit because for the earth ever to lose the sun at its center would mean certain death for the earth and everything in it. Well see that's how we are with God.

Our world was created to rotate around the sun. You and I were created for God. So the most loving thing for God to do is to insist that he be in the center of our lives. Psalm 16 11 a verse we quote a lot around here says in your presence is the fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forever more. If God wants us to have the fullness of joy and pleasures forever more then he will lovingly insist that we build our lives around him as the sinner. That's the most loving thing that he can do.

The essence of the father you see is love and God wants us to share in that love so he insists that we put him at the center. Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life with Pastor JD Greer. Before we dive back into today's teaching I wanted to make sure you knew about something. Every month we talk about our featured resource that we send to our loyal supporters and gospel partners. But did you know that we have a whole library of free resources on our website. This includes our entire sermon library, daily devotionals, a weekly newsletter, Pastor JD's blog, the Ask Me Anything podcast and so much more. All of these resources are available free of charge and it's all because of our generous supporters and especially our gospel partners who give financially to this ministry each and every month. Nothing we do would be possible without them including today's broadcast. Are you thankful for Summit Life and all of the other resources we provide? Then we'd love to have you join the gospel partner team with a regular monthly gift.

Just call us at 866-335-5220 or head over to jdgreer.com to get involved today. A little theologian named J.I. Packer said in a little book that has to have the worst name of any book I've ever read, Hot Tub Religion, says this.

It's a good statement nonetheless. He said, if it is right for man to have the glory of God as his goal, can it be wrong for God to have the same goal? If man can have no higher purpose than God's glory, how can God? If it is wrong for man to seek a lesser end than this, then it would be wrong for God too. The reason it cannot be right for man to live for himself as if he were God is because he's not God.

However, it's not wrong for God to seek his own glory because he is God. Now, the reason that's so hard for us is that you and I are born into the world with a completely backwards mentality on that. We are born into the world thinking that we are the center of everything. Let me walk you through a little brief history of mankind to help you see this.

I heard Andy Stanley talk about this years ago and it's always stuck with me. The reason God created us as I explained was for his glory. He created everything as a demonstration of his glory and then kind of at the height of his creation, he creates his masterpiece, which is a man and a woman that he created in his image. Only time he'd used that phrase, he created man and woman in his image. It's his crowning piece and the angels are watching everything God creates like, oh wow, whoa, didn't know it could get better, awesome.

Then God creates the man and the woman and they're just in awe and then God does the unthinkable. God takes the paintbrush before the painting is finished and he hands it to man and woman and he said, you paint the center. Now why would he do that? Why would he do that?

Because he knows what every person who's ever been in love knows and that is that it's only love when the person freely chooses you. He wanted a creation that was centered in love so he gave us the brush and said, you put in the center of this creation. So we took the brush and we painted in, not God, we painted in ourselves.

We said, well I'm going to be the center, I'm going to be the boss, I'm going to be the point, I'm going to be in charge. That's what we now call sin. I told you the way to understand sin is simply in how it's spelled, S-I-N, make the middle letter really big, S-I-N. It's when I do what I want to do instead of what God wants me to do. I don't want God to be the point, I want to be the point. I don't want it to be about his glory, I want it to be about my glory.

I don't want him to be in charge, I want to be in charge. And every child born into the world since then arrives with that problem thinking about his needs, thinking about her will. The two words I have never had to teach any of my children are the words no and mine. I do not know where they learned those words but I never had to send them to rebellion camp, I never had to have them stay after school to be tutored in selfishness. They get those things honestly from their mother.

I'm just kidding. Our default setting, our default setting in life is self-centered. That's why I told you when you look at a picture and it's got multiple people in it, the first thing that you do is you do is you look for yourself in that picture. And if you look good then it's an awesome picture, right?

And if everybody else looks terrible but you look good it's awesome, if everybody else looks great and you look bad it's a terrible picture. And that's kind of a metaphor for how you think about life. If life's good for you then life's good, if life is good for everybody else but not you then life is not good and God's not fair. Even in our religion, even in our religion how we approach God we're self-centered. Let me summarize some of your prayer lives.

Gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. God help me, God hurt her, God smite her, would you please help everyone to behave the way that I need them to behave so that my life is awesome. Hey God are you listening to this?

I'm the center, I'm the point, you make it work for me. And when God doesn't do that we get angry, right? We get angry, we start saying God I don't understand what's wrong with you. What's wrong with you God? How come you're not doing this so that you can make me happy? Don't you get it God?

It's about my glory and my happiness. When you give to God you expect God to make it worth your while, right? So when that offering bucket comes by you're like you watching this God? You seeing what I'm putting in your plate? You better pay me back for this. This better not be a sacrifice. You better multiply this tenfold, give it back to me. Oh creator of the universe, you seeing what I'm giving to you?

You better be grateful. And then we live as if God exists to glorify us at the center of the universe. So we put bumper stickers on our car that say God is my co-pilot as if it's our car going to our destination and God's going to ride along to help us get there. And then we talk about how God is the best means to my best life now and if God doesn't behave we're like the nerve of that guy. And then we start saying God I don't understand how am I supposed to defend you to everybody else? How am I supposed to tell everybody you're a good God when this is what you're doing with me? God what's wrong?

I just don't understand you. God I'm confused. God what are you up to? God says what am I up to? I'm up to my glory. And you're like well what about my glory?

I'm not really that concerned about yours. You say well I still feel like it's not loving for God to seek his own glory. Well let's talk about how God pursued his glory after we rejected him. What do you do? What do you do when your prized creation hijacks the rest of your creation and makes it about them instead of you?

What do you do? Well you know what governments in Jesus's day had a really simple answer to that question. You crushed the rebel. So when Jerusalem rebelled against Rome Rome sent out a big army they obliterated Jerusalem tore down the walls strung up men and women on crosses for miles around then put a big arc of triumph in Rome that celebrated their victory of the Jews called the Ark of Titus and they made up songs that they would sing for the next hundred years about how they destroyed the Jews. What did Jesus do when we had flaunted his glory? Did he come down and crush us set up an ark of triumph in heaven and have angels sing songs about how quickly he destroyed us? Is that what he did?

Well let me show you. Philippians 2 6 though Jesus was in the form of God he didn't count equality with God a thing to be held on to. No he made himself nothing taking the form of us. He did what?

What? He did what you and I would never do. He showed up on earth not born into a palace born into a stable as a servant and not one time in his life did he ever play the God card which is what I would have done from day one in a restaurant.

Excuse me could I get some service over here? I'm God. Excuse me I think you're in my seat after all I'm God. He didn't play the God card he lived as a servant and then he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even death on a cross instead of crushing the traders he offered himself up to be crushed by them for their sin for their treachery as they taunted him. Most of us would have a hard enough time dying for a friend but now here he is dying for his enemies the traitors as they spit in his face and they mock him. In other words God says you painted me out of the picture you shoved me to the side you rebelled against me and so here's what I'm gonna do I'll show you. Then he gets on his war horse and he rides down from heaven to earth but as he comes he begins to lay aside the garments of his deity and put to the side the privileges of his divinity and he's born into a stable not a palace he lives as a servant he dies a criminal's death but he's doing it in our place so that he can save us so that we forever can share in the joys of his glory. His glory was not a selfish glory his glory was a giving sharing glory therefore verse 9 God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

His glory was not a selfish glory his glory was a saving glory you can almost hear Paul yelling is he not worthy to receive glory from you he's twice worthy of your glory he's twice worthy of glory once as your creator and secondly as your savior his glory was not a selfish glory that crushed us when we rebelled it was a glory that sacrificed himself to save us and Paul says how could we who experience that kind of outpouring of glory that saved us how could we not take every second of our lives and every resource we have and not offer it up and say God it's about your glory and not mine King David gets that that's why he says this whole thing is not about me it's about you God and this situation the primary objective is how's it going to bring you glory listen you will never understand your purpose until you get that that it's not about you what if there's sickness that's in your life what if it's not about you what if that missed opportunity what if that's not about you what if that difficult relationship is not about you what if this chapter of singleness is not about you what if it's about giving God glory you see many of you are at a place where you want to get God back into your life you started to come back to church maybe you realized something was missing in your life maybe you got scared of death and you're like I don't want to be on the wrong side with God when you know I die maybe you just had kids this happens a lot here at the summit church people have kids and they like we gotta get God back in our family so they come back to church and that's awesome I'm so glad you're here you are very welcome but I want to keep you from a mistake that I see a lot of people make and that is they come back just to make God a part of their lives like I need him to be happy in life I need him to have a good family of course I don't want to go to hell you do not come to God to make him a part of your life you wake up to realize that you were created for him some of you need to have what we call around here a Copernican revolution of the soul Copernicus was the guy that figured out that the earth was not in the middle of the universe up until that point everybody looked out in the sky and saw the movement thought well clearly we're at the middle everything rotates around us and Copernicus said ah not so actually the sun is in the middle of our solar system when we rotate around it you need that it's called the Copernican revolution in astronomy you need to have a Copernican revolution of the soul where you realize that Jesus did not come to be a very important planet in the orbit of your life he came because he was the center and you're out of orbit that's why your life has fallen apart and you don't come back to him by getting him into orbit but by putting him at the center our lives get out of whack when we start believing the lie that something else will give us happiness and security instead of looking to God thankfully Pastor JD has pointed us back to our true purpose here on Summit Life here at Summit Life we are so grateful that we've already met some of our 2023 goals and expanded this program into brand new areas across the country so even more people can hear the rich gospel teaching every day JD tell us about some of these new locations yeah that's right we had a goal for this year of expanding into places like Atlanta Dallas Phoenix Houston San Antonio to be honest with you when these opportunities were put in front of us we did not have the resources to obtain them but we we just sensed in our spirit that this is what God wanted us to do and to go through that door and so we stepped out in faith and you know the good news is is that we have a listening audience you who responded with generosity and they believe in the kind of things they hear here and they want other people to hear them and they were so generous in how they they donated to to Summit Life so that we could go into these new cities and we're already hearing great stories great reports of how God is at work there we want to invite you to continue partnering with us by sharing this program sharing our free daily devotionals and our podcast or giving financially so that we can keep offering everything that we do free of charge and to be able to go into these areas so go to jdgrier.com and find out how you can be a part of the ministry here at Summit Life. Our gospel partners are so vital to the health of this ministry their regular monthly gifts allow us to strategize on decisions just like we've highlighted today you can become a gospel partner by giving us a call at 866-335-5220 or you can always visit us online at jdgrier.com i'm molly vidovich you know in the rush of punching the clock getting kids to soccer and getting dinner on the table we often find ourselves hungry for a bigger purpose how do we find it join us for more answers thursday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer Today's program is produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries