You can't complete what you were left here to do if you don't even know what you're here to do. Dr. Tony Evans says when you know your divine purpose, the Lord will grant you the power to carry it out. God will never reveal something to you that He knows you're not ready to do something with. This is the alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr.
Tony Evans. God designed human beings for more than just Being. Today, Dr. Evans takes us to Ephesians chapter 2, where we'll discover what more than being ought to look like. Let's join him.
When God created Adam, he said, I'm going to let you rule. You get to rule the world. Yeah. And I'm going to start you off with a garden. your world, your plot of land.
And I'm going to give you two things with this rule. Sure. You're going to have authority because I'm going to let you rule. I am not going to rule independent of you. I'm not gonna rule in place of you.
I'm going to rule through you. I'm gonna let you roll.
So I'm going to give you authority to run your world. For good or for bad. But I'm also going to give you, if you run your world, like I want your world run. I'm going to make provision for your world. In other words, I'm going to take care of you as you run your world my way.
Now if you run your world your way then you you have to take care of yourself but But if you run your world my way, I'm not going to only give you authority over it. I'm going to make provision for it.
So God created Adam. He created his world. He said, be fruitful and multiply, replicate the image of God worldwide, and manage your garden, your world. And manage it under me if you want to see it be productive. as it can be.
Of course, we know sin entered the picture. And turned a well-ordered world into chaos. The chaos in your world and my world. is due to sin. It's due to either our sin Somebody else's sin is usually a combination of both.
That produces cattle. Chaos. In a world that God created to be well ordered. God wants you to rule your world. We've seen that, we've documented that.
If you've tracked this series, and yet many of us here today are living in worlds and chaos. We're not ruling our world. Our world is ruling us. God is not calling the shots. It looks like the devil is running the show.
And our world is not being run as we know it should be run. Many of us, some of us, were born in the chaos. We came out of our mother's womb in a chaotic situation, and it hadn't settled down yet. Others have invited chaos. Either way, our worlds are not being managed by us.
It's financial chaos, it's relational chaos. It's social chaos. It's emotional chaos. It's not ordered. Things are not Flowing.
Now, I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want you to think I'm implying that There aren't supposed to be problems in life. There are going to be problems in life because even if you didn't do anything wrong, you live in a sin-soaked, chaotic world.
So there's going to be the implications of that. But Jesus said: even though in this world you will have tribulation, be of good cheer. Because I have overcome the world. In other words, the chaos in the world should still not be setting the agenda for your world. Yeah, there's going to be chaos in the world, but you still should be running your world.
In order to set you up to run your world. God saved you. For free. By grace have you been saved. Verse 8 says.
That is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not according to works, so that no one should boast. You are saved by God's grace, that is. If you're here today and on your way to heaven, it's because you've been forgiven of your sin and you've received the gift of eternal life, not because you've earned it, but because God gave it to you when you place faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
So now you're saved.
So I'm going to assume that everybody or most everybody here is saved. If you're not saved, then we're going to trust that God will convict you of that so that you can move on to verse 10, because I'm going to talk about verse 10. I've mentioned verse 10 a number of times in a number of different ways. I want to walk through it again because I want us to get this. After saying that you are saved by grace, not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, he then comes in one of the most astounding verses in the Bible.
For you to redefine yourself. Four. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he hath created beforehand. that we should walk in them. He'll do the planning, but we have to do the walking.
He won't walk for you. He'll walk with you. He'll work through you. But he won't walk in place of you. See, a lot of us go to God and say, God, do this for me.
God said, what? Walk. Walk. God has written your story in eternity. And all the days of it.
You're not a mistake. Your race is not a mistake. Your gender is not a mistake. Your weight may be a mistake because you control that, but that's a different You're not supposed to be anything but what you are because God saw it before you became it. See, many people's lives are lived in falsetto.
You know, falsetto is where you sing in a level outside of your range.
Okay. You operating outside of where you should be. In the words of a great philosopher, a man has got to know his limitations.
Okay, you have to know what God has called you to do. That's why you got to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. I've got to leave yours alone and you've got to leave mine alone because God works with each one of us differently. That's why you can't listen to somebody else's testimony and expect God to do it the same way with you. No, you've got to work out.
He's already in you if you're saved, but you've got to work out the outworking of your own salvation.
So he's got your own set of tests, your own set of trials, your own set of victories, and don't compare with somebody else because God is not working with them exactly how he's working with you. He's got a plan for each of us to bring us to the place of completing our story. Michelangelo, when I was in Italy, I saw Michelangelo's unfinished art.
Now we know Michelangelo for his finished work. But we saw a lot of his unfinished work. These were statues with no arms or no legs or just half the torso. He didn't get around to finishing it.
So they have this museum of his unfinished works. You don't want to die with an unfinished life. You don't want to die with a life that was incomplete. The greatest thing you can say on the day you're supposed to die It's what Paul said, I'm ready to be offered up. He says, I finish my course.
Jesus says, I finished the work. that he sent me here to do. And when you're finished, even if you don't want to die, because you don't want to leave family and friends. You're ready to die because you there's nothing left to do Because you completed what you were left here to do. You can't complete what you were left here to do if you don't even know what you're here to do.
You don't even know what the good works are. You know why we don't know what the good works are? Because most people are concerned about what they are, even Christians. They're concerned that go to work. But they're not concerned about the good work.
That is the thing that God has left them here to do to advance his kingdom and glorify his name. That is the last thing people think about. And guess what? God will never reveal something to you. that he knows you're not ready to do something with.
So you can pray all day. Show me your will for my life. If he knows you're not gonna do a bit more with that will, In other words, if he sees you not even doing anything with the stuff he has revealed, he's sure not going to reveal any new stuff. Because all he's doing is accumulating stuff you're not going to do anything with. He put more truth in the attic.
to be stored away. God loves to reveal his will. And the Bible says, he who is willing to do his will will know it. God's not going to play hide and seek. He may not show it all to you at one time, but he'll walk you through the process of seeing him unfold the good thing that you ought to do.
And every Christian, every masterpiece in here has the good thing, the good area God wants you to rule over by virtue of doing his good work. And you don't even have to fix it up. All you have to do is walk in it because he'll set it up. I wonder if anybody has ever seen God set something up. Where he hooked it up, where when you arrived, it was set.
It was ready for you. It was ready. All you had to do was walk in it because he had already hooked the sister up or hooked the brother up.
So all you had to do was walk in what he had already set up for you. And see, that's how you know you're flowing. You're flowing when God has set it up and you're just walking in it. You don't have to force it, make it happen, and drive a nail for it to happen. Why?
Because he's already set it up in the spiritual realm beforehand so that you can now walk. in it so that you can flow in It. My favorite place to go in all the world is New York. I love me some New York. Big Apple, all the fine cuisine, Broadway shows, 24-hour nonstop lights.
I love the action of New York, of Midtown Manhattan. Sister Evans loves Saks, Fifth Avenue. Saxf Avenue. That's her favorite store. In the windows, they have dummies.
They have these mannequins in the window. These are the best looking dummies you've ever seen in your life.
Okay, they're looking good dummies. The reason that the owners of Saks put dummies in the window is because they know that dummies like us walking up Fifth Avenue. and they want one dummy to talk to another dummy. The dummies in the window are beckoning us to enter the kingdom called sex. Sacks is a kingdom.
It's floor after floor after floor after floor of so much more. It's a whole kingdom. but to entice us into their kingdom. They put dummies on display. These are blessed dummies.
These dummies are sometimes blessed with fur coats, sometimes blessed with evening dresses. They are blessed with jewelry and they bless with fine watches. These are some blessed dummies. The dummies are not there. For the sake of the dummy.
That's not the work that the dummy was put there to do. Yeah. The work that the dummy was put in the window to do. was to lure folk off the street into a kingdom called sex. The moment a dummy thinks That the reason the dummy is in the window is for the dummy, that dummy just became a dummy.
Because the dummy is not in the window for the dummy. The dummy is in the window for the kingdom. Called SACS. Everybody's now looking for a blessing. Bless me, bless me.
I want him to bless me. I want him to bless me. Remember the definition of a blessing. A blessing is not simply having stuff. A blessing is God doing good for you so that He can do good through you.
He does good to you so he can do good through you. He does good to you so he can do through you. If he can't do through you, he's not interested in doing to you because you just invited a curse, not a blessing. Moses, I'm going to give you power, rulership, and authority over Pharaoh.
So you can go and tell Pharaoh, I'm the man. Uh-uh. You're going to have a little bling bling going. You're going to have a little something-something now. You're going to have a little spice.
You're going to have a little Tabasco on you right now. But it's not for the purpose of you wielding power. It is for the purpose of setting other folk free. Abraham, I'm going to make you a great name. But I'm not just going to give you a great name so you can go around and talk about my name is Abraham.
I'm going to give you a great name because through you, I'm going to create a great nation. And from the great nation, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. Nehemiah, I'm going to set you up in Persia and you're going to be the man next to the king. And I'm going to give you a burden for the broken down walls in Jerusalem. But I'm not just putting you in the king's palace so you can talk about my job is better than your job.
I'm putting you in the king's palace so that when the right time and opportunity comes up, you will open up the door to rebuild the walls and to set things right in the program of God. God blesses you.
So that he can use you to do something good for others in the name of the kingdom of God. But who decides what that something good ought to be? Dr. Evans will have the answer when he returns in just a moment. First, though, today's message is part of Tony's current series, The Spiritual Toolkit.
This 10-lesson collection will help equip you to successfully tackle the challenges you'll encounter throughout life. Using these biblical truths and lessons as tools in your arsenal of life skills, you'll find genuine freedom, experience a growing faith, and discover the keys to a successful and fulfilling life in Christ. The Spiritual Toolkit is available for you to own and review at any time on digital download and CD or USB flash drive. And we're offering it as our gift to you when you come alongside Tony's ministry and make a contribution. We depend completely on your support to keep the alternative on this station.
And this is one way we can show our appreciation for your faithfulness. In fact, for a limited time, we'll even include an add-on bonus. Dr. Evans' book called Free at Last, which will help you understand your identity in Christ and how it leads to true spiritual freedom. Don't wait.
Visit tonyevans.org today to request these resources or call us anytime at 1-800-800-3222. Again, that's tonyevans.org or by phone at 1-800-800-3222.
Well, now let's get back to Dr. Evans and more of today's lesson. In our homes, we all have appliances, right? They are good things to serve you. We all love the technology that appliances provide us: refrigerators, stoves, electric can openers, toasters.
You know, they're just great to have. No appliance determines its own purpose. The refrigerated. The manufacturer, the maker, said that's what you're going to be, and constructed it accordingly. The stove didn't say, you know, I want to set things on fire.
Uh-uh. The manufacturer constructed the stove. In other words, the maker determined what the appliance would be. You don't get to decide. God has already written it down and decided, but He constructed you for the decision.
He's made you so that you can facilitate a decision. Neither does an appliance exist for itself. Refrigerators don't eat their own food. Stoves don't eat what they cook. Can openers don't eat what they open.
And toasters don't chew on their bread. Unless they're real old, then they may chew it up, but you know what I mean. In other words, They were made good to serve you. Their fulfillment is doing what they do. As long as the refrigerator is getting cold, it's fulfilled because it's doing what it does.
As long as the stove gets hot, it's fulfilled because it's doing what it was constructed to do. Your fulfillment is in doing the good work you were created to do. Because of the masterpiece, you are. God has masterfully constructed you, and you are. Perfect in terms of God's plan, but you have to walk in it by your decision and your choices.
Now you may say I just don't think anything will become of me.
Well, that's 'cause you believe a lie. Only Jesus should be ruling your life. ruling in the sense of final authority. Only Jesus. Because he's the one who put together the design.
He knows what you're made like, He knows what the good work is he wants to use you for. Before you die. But now somebody here says, but I've lost so much time. You know, I got saved at twelve and 13 or 15 or 20.
Now I'm forty or forty-five and You know, I went to church and Can he still do something with my life? I'm sitting down. Imagine Watching what I always watch at home, the NFL Network.
So I'm sitting there watching the NFL network. And um The TV goes, pow! and blinks off. I'm saying, what? I fiddle around with it.
It pops back on after a couple of seconds. Pop! It goes back off. I fill around with it again. Pop, it goes back off.
My T V is Messed up. It's 12 years old. It's old television.
So I'm thinking this is my opportunity. 60-inch. Flat screen. H D T V This is my opportunity. But even if I'm gonna get rid of it and give it to somebody I want it working So I call The T V repair guy.
Who specializes only in this television? This is the only TV he works with, only brand of television, this is the brand I have, and he's a specialist. And he comes over to the house. He says, well, what's wrong? I said, the TV keeps popping off.
I can't keep a picture. He says, okay, let me take a look. He unscrews the paneling and pulls out the circuitry. Oh, he says, oh, this is no big deal. You just have a little separation of Y here.
Let me solder it back together again. And you'll have a picture in no time. I see my dream dying. He says, you'll have this working in no time. I said, okay, well we can get the TV fixed up and still give it away.
He said But then he throws me a curveball. I say, because I think I'm going to get a 60 inch, you know, the sharp picture. He says Well, you may want to wait. I said, why? He says, I fixed your circuitry problem.
But I'm not finished yet. He says, I know these backwards and forwards, and most people don't know all that this set can do. He said, can I work with it a little bit? He dismantled the thing. He took the screen off, the reflective mirror in the background he took off.
He sprayed this special spray on it that cleaned it up. He did some other things with the circuitry and he put it back together again with an amazing picture. He said If you put an HD next to it, yeah, you'll be able to tell a difference. This is older than that one. But he said if one is the next to it When I get finished tuning up this color, You're gonna have a new television.
He began working and twisting and tweaking with the television that was old. That it passed its prime. But when he got finished with, because I told you he was an expert. When he got finished with him, I had a brand new picture. A picture that I don't remember having when we bought the television.
I had a brand new screen. He told me I could use this for years to come and save me the money on the HD. Not sure I want to save it, but at least it's an option now. He says that right now I have a brand new television set because the master had come in and worked with it. I thought it was gone.
I thought it was over. I thought it was useless. But when I had the master come, and touch it up a little bit. I didn't have to trade it in.
Some of us want to train in our lives before you do. Because I know stuff is popping off. Every time you do something, it goes pop and it doesn't work. Every time you try to achieve something, it goes pop and you're stifled. But if you just let the master work with it just a little by a while, he'll show you he can turn, tweak, solder, wipe, fix, and put you up a screen.
That'll look brand new. even though it's past its prime.
So if you pass your prime, don't throw yourself away. Don't trade yourself in. Let the master come over. and do some tweaking, because he can give you a brand new picture, even in an old shell. That's our God.
He can do exceedingly abundantly above. All you can ask to think, you know why? Because you're a masterpiece. Created in Christ Jesus for good works that He's already put out there for you. All you got to do is walk in it.
He has that for you. Um Dr. Tony Evans, explaining why it's never too late to start living a renewed, purposeful life.
Well, if you'd like to have a copy of today's message to hear again or to pass along to a friend, just contact us for details on the title Created to Rule with a Purpose. Better yet, get it as a part of our current special offer, the Spiritual Toolkit, along with Tony's empowering book called Free at Last. It's available right now as our thank you gift when you make a contribution to help us keep Tony's teaching on this station. All the details are waiting for you at tonyevans.org. You can also call us at 1-800-800-3222, where members of our resource team are available day and night to help you.
That's 1-800-800-3222. Blessings come from God. but not just from God. On Monday, Dr. Evans will touch on the importance of the blessings we pass on to our kids.
and what to do if they were never passed on to us. I hope you'll join us.
