God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

In our last lesson, we began exploring how important it is to worship God, because we were created for His pleasure, and part of our destiny is to worship Him. We looked at Mark 12:30, which says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength."

We concluded that God wants us to love Him in three ways. First, He wants us to love Him thoughtfully, which means God wants us to love Him from our mind. (We looked at that in our last lesson.) Secondly, God wants us to love Him passionately--that means we love Him with all of our heart, with all of our soul. Third, God wants me to love Him practically, with our strength and with our abilities.

God wants me to love Him in these three ways. First of all worship is focusing my attention and my thoughts upon God. Second, it is expressing my affection to God. Let's talk about that....

Some people find it a bit hard to express their affection for God. They say, "I'm not a very affectionate type of a person. I wasn't raised that way. I wasn't brought up expressing myself affectionately and it is difficult for me. I'm not used to that. It is brand new..."

It is going to be new for some of you, but is that an excuse not to do it? Did God create you that way? Did God create you in such a way that you don't know how to express or to be affectionate? No, of course not. Sometimes we become that way because of the damage that we have received in our life, because of how some people related to us and treated us. Sometimes we become that way, but God didn't make us that way.

God wants to bring us to the place where we learn how to express our love to Him and to be passionate in our expressing of our love. I know expressing love can sometimes be a risky deal, just think back--remember when that first time you told someone that you loved them? That was a scary deal, wasn't it? It was kind of like: "what if I tell them and they don't tell me back? Am I willing to take that kind of risk?"

God is taking the risk out of it, because He told you first. He said, "I love you." And He just wants us to express our love back to Him. In fact, if we can truly understand His love and receive His love than we can do so.

1 John 4:19 says, "We love Him because, He first loved us." He is a loving God. In a lot of religions, God is really a mean, angry ogre who is ready to whop you, and god is always angry with you. But that is not the way our God is. That is not to say that God is not a holy and just God, but that is to say that He is also a loving and compassioned God; and God always takes the first step. God initiates everything; we only get to respond to what God initiated. When God loved us first, we then can respond to that kind of love.

Hosea 6:6 says, (God is speaking here) "I don't want your sacrifices, I want your love." In other words, 'I don't want your offerings; I want you to know Me.' This is what God wants. He wants us to give Him our love and to know Him.

If we were made for God's pleasure, and the most important and the greatest thing is to love the Lord. Since loving God is like the first thing (the most important thing), then that is what "success" really is. You see, if I finish my day and if I've known the Word a little bit more and if I love the Lord a little bit more than yesterday, then that day is very much a great success. Sometimes we have different criteria in what we think a successful day is, but a successful day is really "how much more do you love God and how much more do you know God?"

If you get up in the morning and say, "God today I'm going to love You more and know You more." You go throughout your day and all Hell breaks loose and kicks up, and everything goes down the tube, and you can't do any thing right and everything goes bad for the day. But at the end of the day, if you love God a little bit more than yesterday, and if you know Him a little bit more than the day before, then that day is a success.

On the other hand, you can get up and you can finish the day and say, "I had 27 things on my "to do list" and I accomplished everyone of those things today. but I didn't get to know God a little bit more and I didn't love Him a little bit more," then that day is not a success. God did not make you for you to complete your "to do lists". He made you to love Him and to know Him. Your "to do list" will come and go, but God doesn't. God wants to use every thing on those "to do list" in order to learn to love and know Him a little more. If you have been able do that during your day, then that day was a good, regardless what else happened in that day, regardless of how everything might have fallen apart in that day--that day was a good day.

There are people who think that God doesn't care about them. "How could He--God is too busy. He has to take care of a world." But Exodus 34:14 says, "He is a God that is passionate about His relationship with you." Now our God is a passionate God...He is passionate about you and He wants you to learn how be passionate about Him. As you begin to receive God's passion for you, then you can learn to become passionate back to Him.

Let's say that today is my anniversary and I come home, and I bring a box of See's chocolate's. That a good start. But if I say to my wife, "Mary, I'm giving you these chocolates for 3 reasons. First I'm your husband; second, it is our anniversary, and third, husbands give chocolates to their wives on their anniversary. Here you are, have them, have a great day."

What will her response be? First of all, my wife is a chocolate lover and she will take chocolate's anyway she can get it. However, my wife might be looking for a little bit more passion on my part, rather than doing something out of duty. You see, a healthy wife, enjoys it whenever her husband pursues her passionately. I did qualify in that didn't I? A healthy wife! Ok, that's another message, but you know what I mean.

In the same vein, God likes it when we are passionate about Him. We need to learn to be passionate with our God, we need to say, 'God, I love you.' We need to be okay with expressing that.

You may have sung some songs and that say: "I love You Lord," but sang sing them in a dragging voice, and there was no sincerity in our words. Now that may be where you are at, but God wants to change that so that you will be passionate toward Him. That happens when God expresses His love toward us. As we learn how to receive that love from Him, then we can be passionate back to Him and give Him our life and our heart.

When a couple is in church and getting married, we go thru the vow part. "Do you take this woman and do you take this man..." We do the "do you's" and you finish with the "I do's." What did they just do? They just simply committed themselves totally to that other person. Those vow's read "for thick and thin," "for health...for poverty." Someone may say, "Hey, I didn't sign up for that poverty one"--but the vow is for the good and the bad, for sickness and in health. You go through that and you say, "I do, I commit myself totally," and you are giving yourself to that other person. That is an act of love that you have now given your whole self to that other person, and they gave themselves to you.

You see, a part of loving is giving. You can give without loving, but you can never love without giving. If there is love, then you will give.

Worship is a form of giving. It is an activity of showing our love for God--we give Him our heart, we give Him all of ourselves.

Roman 6:13 says, "Give yourselves completely to God, since you have been given new life." The main reason we don't give ourselves to God, is because of fear. I don't give myself completely, because first of all I don't know what God will expect of me to give back. Or, if I give myself totally to Him, I don't know what kind of person I might become. I'm scared to death. I don't know if I want to become one of those religious weird people.

God wants your heart, and He wants your passion. But let me tell you this, if you can learn to receive God's love for you, how can you be passionate back to Him? One of our problems is if we cannot receive love. If I can receive love, then I can give love back. Do you understand? Some of us have a starting place is where we are wounded in our capacity to receive love from somebody else. And if I can't receive love, then I can't give love. Maybe walls are set up and God has to tear those walls down. God wants to do that and He will pursue that with you.

Whatever walls you have with people, you probably have the same walls with God. If you struggle with receiving love from somebody else, you probably struggle with receiving love from Him. But, if you can get to the place where you can receive God's love for you, then you will be able to give back to Him, because it's a natural response. You won't be able to help it--you will want to be able to see His love; you will want to be able to glance into His face. You will become passionate fro Him. You will want to be able to acknowledge every thing He has done for you.

Some of you will begin this with an act of thanksgiving. "I'm going to thank God for everything He has done." Then you will have eyes to begin to see all that He has done for you, and then you will have eyes to see how much He loves you. If you can see how much passion our God has for you, it will change you.

Here is a prayer that I would like to invite you to pray.

Lord, give me eyes that see your love. Remove every barrier in my life that keeps me from receiving love, so that I can receive Your love.

And when you receive that kind of love, then you will be able to be passionate toward Him in the same way that He is passionate toward you.