pastorrudytlc

                  When it comes to choosing a valid purpose for our lives- how do we go about seeking our meaning?  Why did we get out of bed today?  What values went into making our decisions when it came to behaving the way that we have displayed with our actions in these last twenty four hours?  Who did we do what we chose to do for?  What fuel drove our engine that was essential into us arriving at the destinations that we actually landed in?  Are we only thinking of ourselves?  Is there a bigger goal that we are shooting for than just appeasing our own ego?  Can we do much more than just exist if we don’t discover our purpose?  If life is really about looking out for number one, who have we deemed to be held in such high esteem that they get to be the head honcho?  Can a person genuinely be happy if they make all of their days only deflect the glory of their own reflection?   

Why are some individuals Good Samaritans and others nothing more than thugs?  Why will one man love his brother while another chooses to slug his neighbor?  Why will some commit to loyalty while others can’t keep a promise for more than a minute or two?  Why will one student cheat on his test and not feel a bit of remorse while another will suffer great guilt if he or she even thinks about such an act?  Why will one choose hate while another surrenders to become a vessel of love?

It all comes down to whose name are we trying to make known?  Are we doing it all for an audience of our own agenda or have we dedicated our performance to a higher calling?  Each one of us has the free choice to decide whether we want to make living for God’s glory our priority or would we rather settle to just make serving our own personal needs our heart’s biggest desire?  I just know from experience that when I lead from a self-centered mode I tend to wander from the best of roads and end up in a pit of sin. Sin is when we look at our options and say, “I can either glorify God or choose what think I need to be happy. I will eat a whole chocolate cake. I will drink light beer and I will get naked. I’ll be happy. I’m not going to glorify God. I’m going to be happy with a chocolate cake, the six-pack and the naked person. That will give me instant gratification and that’s why we end up choosing sin even when we know that taking that path leads to disaster!

C.S. Lewis, in The Weight of Glory, says it this way, “Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak. We’re half-hearted creatures, fooling around with drink and sex and ambition. When infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Choosing Jesus Christ leads to a way that takes away sin and gives us God’s absolute best. You could have God, but you chose light beer?  You could have God, but you chose nudity? You could have God, but you chose gluttony, folly, and rebellion?  Lewis says we’re too easily pleased. We’re like Esau, who traded in his birthright for a bowl of red stew.

To please God, to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness, to be loved by God and not merely pitied but genuinely delighted in- as an artist delights in his work or a father  in his own son- it seems almost impossible to conceive.  But it is so!  This is the glorious possibility that now lay before you! 

This is not about waiting for a glorious event or writing a classical cantata or pulling off some spectacular achievement.  This is not an invitation to a glamorous life- but a glorious life and that’s the greatest invitation that we human beings will ever receive.  Sin will strike at you and try to convince you that you are too ordinary and average and your insignificant life could never reach such heights as the one god is promising you- but don’t buy into the lie.  Don’t settle for the mundane when you are being offered majesty.  Why do we humans settle to be so boring when we were made by such a creative GOD? Have you seen the sunrise or sunset recently? Have you been moved by the vibrant colors of the sky? Why do we settle to get stuck on one note when our God is the Maestro of such a daily symphony of praise?  Why are we so easily pleased when if we would just acknowledge that this is my Father’s world- we could experience so much more?

To find your life- be willing to lose it to the Maker of it all.  To taste of the fullness of who you were truly designed to be- be willing to submit to the fact that there is a Designer and you are not Him!  There is more but it might not be in the area you have been looking for it in and defining it as you may have been taught to think it may be!  Let go and let God and enter into a whole new magnificence where your dreams may finally come true!  Don’t settle when you were made for the absolute best!  If you have enjoyed creation- then maybe today is finally the day to be astounded by the Creator!