God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

In lesson 4, we began exploring how important it is to worship God. It is important because we were created for His pleasure, so part of our destiny is to worship Him. Mark 12:30 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. Second, God wants us to love Him passionately, which means to love Him with all of our heart, with all of our soul. Third, God wants use to love Him practically, with our strength and with our abilities.

We looked at the first two (loving God with our mind and loving Him with our passion) in earlier lessons, so let's move on to the third one: loving God practically with our strength and abilities. That is using our ability for God. We need to love the Lord our God with all of our strength, with all of our abilities--with what God has made you with and designed you for.

In the movie, "Chariots of Fire", there is a true story of a young man who planned to go into the mission field. But before he did so, he ran in the Olympic Games. He understood the call of God on his life: the call to go to China. But, he also understood how God made him. He said, "God made me fast." He went on to say "when I run I feel His pleasure."

When you give back to God from how He made you and how He designed you, that is worship. The athlete said, "I feel His pleasure when I run." When I do what God made me and designed me to do; that gives God pleasure, and that's worship.

The athlete in this movie made another important statement. He said "If I don't do this... I'll be holding what God gave me in contempt and I'm not going to do that to God, I'm going to run."

When you do what God has made you to, that is worship. "Love the Lord your God with your heart, mind, soul and your strength, your abilities." Whenever you live out how God made you and designed you--that is worship.

Colossians 3:23 says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all of your heart, as if though you are working for the Lord and not for people." Whatever you do, don't do it for people, do it for God...whatever you do.

Some people think, that if they are going to fulfill that first and greatest commandment, loving the Lord, they need to spend five hours a day with God in their quiet time. That's great if you are able to do that, but you don't really need to do that. They think they need to go to church everyday, but they don't need to do that either. I want you to understand this, worship is more than spending time with God. Worship is more than coming to church. Worship is: doing whatever God made you to do, and doing it for Him. That is worship.

Some of you say, "Well, I've got this job, I don't like this job and I don't like this boss." In that you need to change bosses. You don't have to change jobs in order to change bosses, you understand. You just have to change who you are working for. When you get up tomorrow morning, this same job that I have been having for 10, 15, 20 years, whatever-- when I go to this job, it's going to be different because I'm going to have a different boss. I'm going to be working for Jesus now. I'm going to be working for Him...whenever you do that, for Him, that's called worship.

Whatever you do, if you are doing it for God, that is worship. It doesn't matter whether you are home and doing the menial task. In fact Roman 12 says, "Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, your eating, your going to work, you are walking around like and place it toward God." You see, that's an offering, all the ordinary stuff falls in the category of worship. You are cooking dinner for your family that is worship, if you are doing it for God. You are taking out the garbage, and you say, "God I'm taking this out for You"--I know that I'm going out to extremes here, but I think God cares in whatever we do. I don't think there is any task in our life that's so menial that God is not concerned about, cares about, or that He doesn't enjoy what we do for Him.

I think God wants to change our lives in such a way that we have a lifestyle of worship. This lifestyle is not only for the times when we are giving God our undivided attention, such as during a church service. It is for all we do. We can focus our minds and our hearts upon Him, such as singing or reading or in other ways where we focus on giving God our attention. We can give God our affection. But there are also the times where we are doing the things that we are doing. If we do it for to give glory to God, that is worship.

Going to work can be an act of worship. Taking care of your family can be an act of worship. Babysitting your grandchildren can be an act of worship. Anything you do...going fishing can be an act of worship. Anything that you do, if it's for God and unto the Lord, it is an act of worship. We need to see that if it's done onto to Him.

There is another thing that happens in worship; we are set free. That is because, if we are doing it for Him, then we can release a lot of our expectations of people. Have you ever heard someone say, "Do you know how much I sacrificed for you" and they go through this whole list in what they did for you? Well, obviously they did it with an expectation, they didn't do it unto Him.

If you do everything onto Him, it frees you from the expectations of people. That does not say they should respond in a certain way, but it is to say this: therefore I'm set free because I know I did this onto God and even if they don't respond to it, it doesn't matter because He responded and He liked it. He enjoyed it and therefore I can finish my day, and I can say I loved Him a little bit more and I got to know Him a little bit better. There is freedom in that.

What do you worship? What is in your life that has your attention? What is it that has your affection and that has your abilities? Is it God? If it is not God, then you want to change it. Why? because if anything in our life, anything in our life that has our attention that has our affection and that has our abilities, anything in our life beside God, that is an idol. If we are worshipping idols, God says, "I want to be the One you worship. Do you have any idols in your life?

The way you check it out is by asking yourself what you are giving your attention to. What has your heart? What has your affection? If you would stick your mind into neutral, where would it gravitate to? What would my your begin to think about? If it is not God, or things related to Him, maybe you have an idol.

You can also check it out whether or not you spend your time and how you spend your money. Pull out and look at your calendar--your calendar is like your theological document. You look at it and say, "Oh, this is how I'm spending my time." it reveals how you see God.

Look at your checkbook. How do you spend your money? The way that a person spends their money and their time, pretty much tells you where the idols are in their life.

God says you should not have any other gods. God is to be our object of our affection, our attention and our abilities. God created us for a reason, He created us in order to love us. But on the flip side, He created us for His pleasure and we are to love Him back.

Let's close in prayer. Are there any idols you need to confess and repent of right now? If there are, this is the time to confess to God. Just say, "God forgive me." Your idol can be your job, your career, it can be sex, it can be another person. Take those things now and begin to lay them at the feet of God and offer up these things to Him. Now offer your life up to Him. God wants you to love Him with all your heart, your soul, your mind and your strength. Everything you do in this life can be done for the Glory of God. That is what the bible says...if you eat or drink, anything fits in that category, do to the Gory of God. He deserves our worship.

Let's pray:

Lord, we do ask you to forgive us for the idols we have in our lives. We renounce them, and lay them at your feet. And Lord, we want You to be enthroned in our life. Lord, we want you to teach us this week, how we can do that.

Lord, may we wake up and say, "I have a new boss today"--that boss being You, Lord., Help us to just start working for You. And we are going to do it for You, Lord. And we are going to do it in such a way to give You the Glory and gives You honor.

We are just going to surrender ourselves to You today--let You be our new boss. Lord, I pray that You give us the strength and the discipline everyday this week, that we will spend the time with You and focus our hearts upon You.

Lord, I ask You to remove any wall, any barrier, any hinders that keeps us from receiving love, so we can express our love to You. Lord, we are passionate about so many things and Lord let us be passionate about You. Lord, we want You to be our first and most important passion. Help us to get to that place on a daily basis in earth of our lives. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.