God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

God created all of us for certain things, and in order to fulfill our destiny, we have to do all of these things. Let me review them quickly for you. First, we were created for God's pleasure, so that He could love us and so that we could respond to His love by loving Him back and by worshipping Him. The second one was about fellowship and learning to love one another. The third was that we are to become like Jesus. In God's original creation plan, we were created in God's image, but that was marred by sin. So now, a piece of our destiny is to be transformed to be more like Him. We call that growth/transformation process "discipleship." Forth, we were created for ministry or serving God by serving others. God shaped us in a certain way in that we are to be able to do ministry. We have already talked about all of those things.

There is another purpose that we were created for: to share the Good News. There is a word for that: that is called "evangelism." Sometimes that word may be a little bit misunderstood, but the word itself basically means this: to herald the Good News. It is the picture of the person who would come into the town announcing "The King is Coming!" He is crying out--the crier who would come and to cry that the king is coming, the king is here. That is what the word "Evangelism" is. We have Good News, and we are to be heralding out the Good News of what Jesus Christ has done. It is all about Him! Evangelism.

Where are we to be sharing our Good News? Well, the Bible says in Acts 1:8 "You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth."

First, we are to be His witnesses in Jerusalem. That doesn't mean that we must buy a plane ticket and go to Jerusalem so we can all evangelize this city first. (Personally, I'd like to go, as I've never been to the Holy Land. I don't want to ride a bus when I get over there you know, but I've always wanted to go over there. I haven't been yet, but I will one day.) But that is not what this verse is talking about. Jerusalem is basically the place they were in, since they were in Jerusalem when He gave them this word. In other words, the Lord is saying, "I want you to start at home first."

Rick Warren put it this way in his book, Forty Days Of Purpose: God made you for a mission. That mission is to share the good news of what Jesus has done for you. Now, we are going to focus on that. It is kind of the culmination of what we've been talking about so far.

All the things that you have learned about God and destiny, God wants you to share them with somebody else. All that you have received, God doesn't want you to hang onto it and hoard it--He wants you to share with other people. In the last prayer that Jesus prayed before the crucifixion and ascension, He was getting together with His Father and crying out to Him. This is what He said, "In the same way you gave Me a mission in the world, I give them a mission in the world."

When we talked about ministry, we talked about having a ministry to the Church. But God wants you also to have a mission out in the world. In the same way that you may have a ministry to believers, you must also have a Mission to unbelievers. God wants you to get outside of the Church! He's called you to get outside of the four walls of the church and to get outside of yourself.

Acts 20:24 says: "The most important thing is that I complete is my mission, the work that the Lord Jesus gave me: to tell people the Good News about God's Grace." We have a mission to share. Acts 1:8 tells us where to start that mission. Start in your community with the people that are closest to you--that's the place where you begin. That's where Jesus wants you to start, right at home.

Let's look at Acts 1:8 again, "You shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to all the ends of the earth."

The Lord also wants you to go to those who are really close to you but not like you; to those who are a little bit different than you. That's the Judea and Samaria. You see, they lived in the Province of Judea, and the area just right north of them happened to be Samaria. Judea was Jewish and the Samaritans were half-Jews. What He's saying is this--"Go to the folks that are a little bit outside of you--maybe not right into your community, but those that is a little bit different than you." Then the third category there is: "to the ends of the earth." That means 'everyone else,'--those that don't fit into those first two categories. In other words: everybody. That is the commission, and you are called to be a witness.

What is a witness? It is somebody that simply testifies to what they have seen or experienced. They share what they have seen, what they have experienced and what they have felt. That is a witness.

You are an expert on your life, and you have something to tell. You have a story to tell, a story about of what Jesus Christ did for you. You can share how He forgave you of your sins and how He gave you a new life. Yes, you have a story to tell, and you need to tell your story. The Lord wants you to be witnesses of your encounter with Him. That's what He wants you to do, because God is building His family. We've already talked about the family of God and about how He wants us to fellowship and love one another. God is expecting us to help expand His family, and He's using us to expand His family. This is God's plan.

Ephesians 3:11 says "This was God's plan for all of history, which He carried out through Christ Jesus, our Lord." You get to be a part of God making History, by bringing people into His kingdom. But God had a plan; He had a mission and the way He's going to accomplish this mission is through what Jesus Christ did. We are to be the ones that speak out of what Christ has done because Jesus Christ is the only way to come into a relationship with the Heavenly Father. He is the only way.

I read story years ago about when Jesus when up into Heaven. Obviously, this is not a real story because the person telling it wasn't there, but he was just telling this story just to make a point, and it is a good point. Here is the story:

Jesus ascends up into heaven, back to His father and to angels there. One of the angels greets Him and says, "Oh, Lord, we've heard all about what You've been doing on the earth, how you lived that perfect life, and that must have been really difficult to do." Jesus said, "Well, yeah, it was, but I did it." Then he said "I heard about the sacrifice that You made for all of mankind, and You took upon You the sin of the world, and that must have been really, really difficult." And Jesus said, "Yes it was".

Then the angel said, "Well, I guess everybody knows; I guess now the whole world knows what You've done!" And Jesus said, "Well, no, only a few, at first just twelve. No, make that eleven. Then one hundred and twenty, but the numbers are growing. But I've told them this: I told them to tell somebody who will tell somebody who will tell somebody who will tell somebody."

The angel said, "Well, do You have any other plan? I mean, what if they don't do it? What if they forget to tell it? What if they get tired telling? What if they give up, what if they quit? What happens if they don't come through? What is Plan B? Do You have another plan?"

Jesus said, "No, I don't have any other plan."

In other words, we are it! That is kind of a scary thing, isn't it? God is entrusting us with the Gospel. God is counting on us to be the vessels that He uses to tell the world of what He's done. But we are the ones--we're it. God has called us all to be History-Makers.

Back to Acts 1:8. The first point of that verse is that we must share with those in our world--this is the Jerusalem part. These are the people that you know. These are the people that you are connected with, those in your world.

Jesus affirmed this in His life and ministry. Look at the story in Luke 8. One day Jesus had healed a person, and this person was following along with Jesus and basically said, "Jesus, I'm going to go with You." Jesus told this person (in Luke 8:39), 'Go back home and tell people how much God has done for you.' So this man went all over town telling people how much Jesus had done for him. He said, "Jesus, I want to go with you." Jesus said, "I don't need you with Me; where I need you is back there. The people know you. They have heard things about Me, but they are going to hear it first-hand because you have experienced Me. "Go back home".

You see, God wants us to start with the relationships that we have. He starts in our home and in our neighborhood, and in the pace where we work. He wants us to share with the people that we are in contact with on a regular basis: our friends, our families, our co-workers. The list goes on: the people at the gas station, at the bank...the people that you just see on a regular basis. That is your community of people in your sphere of influence. That is the place where we begin.