food for thought

This morning I was listening to a sermon recorded a few weeks ago at Liberty University’s chapel. It really got my heart thinking.

 

The speaker posed this question to his audience, “What would it be like to live life loved?” He then went on to explain what this meant essentially challenging us to consider, “What would it be like if we, as children of God, lived the entirety of our day walking in the abundance of Christ’s love for us – if we lived out the love He offers us, by making it our identity – Christ as our identity and nothing else?”

He then used this text from Ephesians 5:1-2 to answer his question, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved
children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave
himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” 

First of all, if we were to ‘live life loved’, as children of God, with Christ as our identity – we would probably stop scrambling to make our life story happen. We would quickly realize that we were given a purpose, long before we ever drank breath in this world, to live out a role in His story – in God’s story. We would recognize that our life is not about us, and finding our story or making it happen, our story is only a reflection of His story. It’s all about Christ!

 

The speaker than said something that made me head spin with hundreds of questions all at once. You are all likely familiar with the popular saying you hear from preschool, “You can be anything you want to be!” The speaker actually admitted he didn’t believe this saying because of what is spoken of in Psalm 139, Jeremiah 29:11, and a few other places in the Word – these portions of Scripture all speak of God having a purpose planned out for us – that He knit us together in our mother’s womb, He knew us before we were born, and He has a purpose and a plan for our lives. WOW! I guess I never thought of it this way.

 

If you really consider the reality of this – how incredibly special is it to know we have a God who loves us enough to have a purpose and plan for us in His story?? That’s incredible! Why would we ever want to exhaust ourselves trying to discover, uncover, or find something that works according to our standards, when we can be a part of something alive, and purposeful?

 

Perhaps this is the reason why we all struggle sometimes to achieve things in our own strength. We want a good education so we can have creditability and pretty pieces of paper that hang on our wall saying we’re educated enough to say, do, or ask certain things. We want the right contacts so we can get the right jobs, sponsorships, and opportunities in our lives. We want the right career so we can earn enough money to get the car we’ve always dreamed of and the family that we profess to deserve. We want to feel loved and needed by friends, family, and persons in our lives. We want to know we have a purpose. Then one day we wake up and realize working to achieve our story is hard work, exhausting, and sometimes tempting to quit.

 

We’re forgetting that our very purpose comes from God – it’s already there and we don’t have to go wandering off to find it. It is not to build up and discover
our own story, but to live out, in freedom, joy, and worship, our role
as God’s child in His story.

Be blessed brothers and sisters!