God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

We have to have a right attitude in order to be able to fulfill our destiny. We need to serve the Lord with the right attitude, with an attitude of being grateful. It is an attitude of Thanksgiving.

Jesus had this attitude. Look at what He did when He was about to raise Lazarus from the dead, recorded in John chapter 11. "Jesus looked up and said, 'Father, I thank You that you have heard Me and I knew that You always hear Me.'" Then it says, "'I said this for the benefit of all the people standing there.'"

He could have been silent and not said anything. He could have walked up to the grave and mumbled His little prayer, and Lazarus would have still come back to life. But Jesus introduced this whole miracle with thanksgiving. There is something about thanksgiving that made Him able t o say this, and Jesus modeled this for us. You see, there are a lot of miracles in the life of Jesus because He had this attitude of thankfulness. I think we would see more of the same big miracles in our lives if that spirit and attitude of thankfulness was there.

Psalm 100:2 says , "serve the lord with gladness." Anyone knows that it is better to have gladness there whenever you are going to serve God. I believe it is thankfulness--we need to serve God not out of duty, but out of delight, because we want to. Service doesn't have to be drudgery, and some of us think, "Man when is this going to be through? Man, I got to change my gift for something else!" Well our whole perspective changes with gratefulness. When we have the perspective of being thankful for what God did for us, then it becomes more fun and exciting to serve Him.

2 Timothy 1:9 says, "It is He Who has saved us and changed us for His holy work." He saved you with all your stuff with all of your "ickyies," and all your junk. He saved you out of that, and that is something to be thankful for. You could have been totally useless, but now you are totally useful--and that is something to be really thankful for.

What keeps us from having this attitude of gratefulness? There are a couple of things that immediately jump to mind. The first of these is the area of comparing and the criticizing. God doesn't like it when we do that. The bible says, "who are you to criticize someone else's servant, the Lord will determine if someone else has been successful." It is not your job to judge, it is not your job to compare or to criticize. When you do that, then competition raises up. Personally I think that competition, more than anything, else kills the American church. It kills the spirit and it is the spirit of comparison.

It is too easy to fall into the trap of comparing ourselves with another church, or another person in ministry. If they are doing well, we don't like it. We get bitter, because we judge ourselves against them. Whenever they do something well then we feel bad about ourselves for not doing it as well. And when they fall down and stumble, then we are not feeling so bad because our comparison is with them. That is sick and it is a very bad thing.

The second thing that can make us have wrong attitudes is when we try to impress others. Matthew 6:1 says "When you do good, don't try and show off. If you do, you won't get a reward from your Father in Heaven." Serving God and self-promotion don't go together, and you can't be exalting yourself. If you sometimes you find yourself sneaking into the conversation things like, "Well, you know God used me"--that can be an indication of an attitude problem. You may be phrasing it subtly, but if your motivation is such that you want people to know what a great minister you are, you have an attitude issue that you need to deal with. Don't act as if God couldn't get along without you, because it just doesn't work. You may, at times, impress other people, but you are not impressing God. And most of the time, others will see through it, and you won't impress them either.

Another great indicator of whether or not you have the heart of Jesus in ministry is determined by the heart of gratitude that is in you. If you are struggling with that heart of gratitude, why don't you sit back and reflect on what has God done for you.

In fact, your prayer life and your time with God are a time to give thanks to God. I think the attitude of Jesus would be hard to build that into your life. I am going to give you a homework assignment, a very practical thing. Please write some things that you are grateful to God for. Tomorrow when you get up and spend time with Jesus, take a few minutes and give thanks to Him for everything that Jesus has done. We have to have that attitude of gratitude within us and that'll create the heart of Jesus.

Serving Jesus means being faithful. We already talked about being available and being grateful, but those two things are not enough. We must also be faithful.

Now faithful means this: I don't give up, I don't quit, and I just don't stop just because things aren't going well.

Anytime you serve the Lord, you are going to have times where everything goes wonderful. You are also going to have times when everything doesn't go well. It is in those difficult times you are going to be tested, and it is in those times that you will grow.

In John chapter 15, Jesus says, "I am the vine and you are the branches. He that abides in Me bears much fruit, for apart from Me, you can do nothing." Then it says Anything that bears fruit, He prunes. If you are bearing fruit, He prunes, and we don't always like that pruning stuff. Pruning is not the most "fruitful" time in our lives, but it is the time that you grow most.

The question is: do you have the stuff to hang in there? John 17:4 says "I brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave Me to do" and at the end of His life when Jesus hung on the cross, He said "I finished everything; I completed it I did everything I was sent here to do." Just like Jesus, we need to finish the work that we have been called to do.

You may retire from your job, but the truth is that you never retire from ministry. God always has something for you to do until you go to be with Him. 1 Corinthians 4:2 says, "the one thing required of his servants is that they be faithful."

One day you are going to stand before God and there is going to be a reward system. You see my gratitude is not only to be thankful for what God has done in my life in the past, but gratitude also extends to what God will do in the future. Heaven is my future, and I don't know what kind of reward system God has, but you know the bible talks about that but you know that we can be thankful of all we have in the future here. A lot of times, thinking about what is ahead is what keeps my mind staying on course to be faithful.

1 Corinthians 15: 58 says, "Throw yourself in the work of the master, confident that nothing that you do for Him is a waste of time or effort."

Nothing that you do is a waste of time. Sometimes we do some things, and we feel like, "What's the use no one sees this and it doesn't matter?" You may not want to continue with the task because it seems insignificant. It feels like what you are doing has no importance, and it bothers you to work on it because it doesn't feel important. But there is a difference between being significant and being in a prominent place. We may not be recognized as we do what we do, but if God has given it to us to do, then it is significant to Him.

Prominence is not significant. Rick Warren pointed this out well in his book, "Forty Day s Of Purpose." He said that on our faces there is a place of prominence, and when you look on somebody's face, everyone has a nose. It is prominent, it is seen by everyone, but how significant is it to live? If you lost your nose, you could still live. You might not smell things and you might have to breathe through your mouth, but it isn't going to kill you to loose your nose. Yet it has a very prominent place, and it is seen.

Many lot of times we want to be doing the things that are seen. Here is another example: your hand which is seen, yet if you lost your hand, you can still live.

There are a lot of things that are very significant but are not prominent, but if you don't have them you won't live. Take your heart s an example. You don't see your heart, you don't see your liver, you don't see your kidneys-- but those are extremely important parts of your body. They are significant. They are just not prominent, they are not seen. A lot of times we look at the things that are seen, and we say "Well I want that job that is seen because I like that bit of prominence."

We don't always realize that some of the most significant gifts are not the ones that are most prominent. In fact, the significant things in the body of Christ are not the things that are prominent, the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. But because they are not seen, sometimes we don't think that they are important. That's because we are looking at these gifts through the eyes of man and not necessarily through the eyes of God.

There are a lot of important things that going on in this church that are ever seen: somebody sets up chairs, somebody sets up tables, somebody cleans, somebody works in the parking lot, somebody blows the leaves, somebody is setting something up, somebody fixes the coffee, somebody is over there watching children and teaching the Sunday school--and they are not seen. There are a lot of things that go on in any church that are not seen, and sometimes we don't think they are important because they are not visible. But I'll tell you this, that God sees every one of them and your pastor appreciates every one of them.

Know this: God sees it regardless whether or not man sees it, and that is what is important. He will not forget how hard you have worked for Him, and how you have shown your love for Him by caring for other Christians. God sees what you have done; your love for Him is shown by caring for other Christians.

I'd like to share one last verse this. It is the verse we want God to say to us when we go to meet Him face-to-face : "Well done good and faithful servant. You have been faithful in a few things, so I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share in your master's happiness."

God shaped you for something. Begin to ask God what He has called you to do. If you don't have an active role in ministry, it is missed. You have an important place in the Body of Christ and you may not think it is significant, but God has a job for you. He has a way for you to help the body to function. I want you to think about how God has made you, and shaped you and what are you willing to do for Him.