Understanding My Purpose

Often times we get our lives turned upside down.  Sometimes this happens by our own hand and sometimes it happens because we could never have predicted the hand that was dealt to us.  Be it self-inflicted or external, the upending of our lives often results in a great deal of turmoil and pain.  In these moments, especially these moments, it is essential that we remember our purpose. 

Allow me to illustrate an all too familiar scene.  This holiday season there is much to be thankful for and joyous about.  However there are many who find their lives this year has given them a different perspective on the holidays.  For some these days will be filled with sadness and sorrow due to the absence of a member of the family.  For some these days will be filled with pain as all that their family seems to do is fight at the holidays.  For some it will be a reminder that they are parentless, spouseless or in some other way broken.  For those with a full table and full hearts it is far to easy to simply distance ourselves from the pain and revel in the joy of our full table and heart.  And yet in doing so both the brokenhearted and those with full hearts have missed the point. 

We tend to make our lives about us.  And this is where understanding our purpose comes in extremely handy.  Our lives are not about us.  We were put on earth to bring honor and glory to a God who is over all, in all and through whom all that we see has been made and given to us not as a playground, but as a place in which we are able to point to and magnify our Creator God.  More than that, our Creator sent His Son to place us into a right relationship with Him.  A relationship that we broke by sin and He fixed by obedience and then gave to us by grace.  And we now live and wait for Him to make all things right.  This is an oversimplified version of the Scriptures but it is none-the-less true.  And so be our experience joy or pain, the truth of our place here is the same.  We are not here for us but we are here for Him. 

I want to encourage myself and others to look not for ways to make my own life better, but for ways that I can point to the purpose I was placed here for.  That my life would show Jesus to the world around me.  And I can do that even if my heart is filled with sorrow.  I can do that if I am rejoicing in the goodness of God or rejoicing in the pain that God has allowed in my life this year.  I can do that in happiness and sorrow.  I can do that in richness or poverty.  No matter what my circumstances, I can find purpose in understanding that I am here to point to the God who put me here.  And that is my purpose.

Are you truly thankful?

Have you even asked yourself the question, "Am I truly Thankful?"  I want to ask this question this morning from two perspectives.  The first is the perspective of that which I am thankful for.  The word Thankful is broken into a root and a suffix - Thank and ful.  Literally thankful is to be full of thanks.  And so the things for which I am to be thankful for is all things.  Paul says as much in 1 Thessalonians 5:19 ". . . in everything give thanks; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."  We are to give thanks in everything.  Now the trouble as I examine my life is that I have taken thankfulness to mean gratitude for those things that please me.  I tend to place myself at the center of the universe and when I do so I can divide my life into two categories - those things for which I am thankful and those things that I am not thankful for.  The problem with this very human perspective is that it is not biblical.

The second approach is related to the first but slightly tuned.  I then think about how often I give thanks.  Paul a few verses earlier says, "Rejoice always."  At all times and in all things we are to give thanks.  When I focus on the things for which I am thankful as the things that please me then the moment the pleasure goes away I often cease to be thankful.  I am thankful for a meal at dinner time but if at 9 PM I am suddenly snacky I somehow forget to be thankful for the meal I ate less than a few hours ago.  If God blesses me with something but then a few days later I experience hardship I tend to focus on the hardship and forget the blessing. 

At the end of the day the trouble with both the what and the how often of thankfulness tends to demonstrate that I am far too focused on myself.  My thankfulness is determined by what God and others are doing for me and my thankfulness is only as frequent as the feeling of euphoria.  I need to change perspective so that my thankfulness is biblical.  When it is biblical my thanks will be ever present and continual.  I will truly be full of thanks.  Thankful.