What motivates you in
Life?
The Purpose
Driven Life
Part II
Sermon by Manfred Schreyer
Read Part: | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | of this Sermon Series
(Eccl 4:4 NIV) And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from
man's envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the
wind.
Last week we interrupted my sermon series because we had Unity Sunday. But
during the service I thought of the terrible wars humanity had fought among
themselves and what pain we had left among our neighbors.
And the question then becomes is war or any sort of violence one aspect of
our purpose in life? Surely it can not be. Surely it can not be that God
creates us for the purpose of king others and to be killed for a human
cause.
Surely it cannot be that we believe we can create a destiny for ourselves
here on earth.
Think about it: While you were conceived by your parents you were long
before conceived in the mind of God. Our God thought of you first. You and I
are not conceived by accident, by chance or by luck. Your and my creation is
no coincidence. The creation of our whole being is chosen by our God in
every detail. Our God formed your body, he created the color of your skin,
He gifted you with talents and He gave you over to your uniqueness.
You as are formed out of nothing. God took nothing and breathed His spirit
into you and then he chose very carefully your parents, the place you were
born, the friends you would meet and situations you are able to evaluate.
As you were made out of nothing he chose the very day you were to be, and
he chose the day you are to leave from this earth.
I invite you to think of yourself as someone who is placed on an airplane,
in a very specific class of the airplane, a very specific row and among very
specific people who are sitting around you.
You were not in charge of the starting and landing of the airplane. You
are not in charge of the flying of the airplane, in fact you are just in
charge of the things you can do as every average passenger.
For those who question their existence I want you to know that God long
before you could have ever thought of it knew the difficulty you would face
in this life and that every circumstance is carefully crafted by our God and
our creator.
(Eph 1:4 NIV) For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to
be holy and blameless in his sight.
Well, you may say: I know all of that. Well, that may hold true for you,
but the fact is that there are people who are unable to find there place on
the airplane
They become anxious. They get out of their seat and they wander around in
the plane. You see that some have three seats and are laying comfortable
across the seat and sleep. . .while you are unable to do so. There are those
who dislike the food that is being served. There are those who ignore their
neighbor who is sitting right beside them, because they just do not like
them or the neighbor is just different. There are those who always get the
hot tea spilled on them when the stewardess walks beside them. There are
those who lash out at person the row behind, because the person constantly
knocks his knees against the seat they are sitting in. There are those who
feel uncomfortable in the seats they are sitting in and they do not believe
they can make the flight because there is just not enough leg room. . .and
so on and so on.
The ones I just mentioned are unhappy people. Unhappy people seek human
reason (mostly their own reason) to make the airplane a more enjoyable ride.
Not once did they consider what motivated them to take this flight. Not
once did they think about that this flight, this journey is specifically
designed for them.
So why are you on this
plane. Why are you living? What is the purpose of all of this.
First of all we have to forget about ourselves. As I said before, we
cannot look at ourselves and identify the purpose of life, because we are
not the creator of our life. We have to go to the source of our life and
that is God.
So, who is God? The bible tells us that God is love. This one statement
has brought a lot of confusion among people. People believe that it says
that God has love. . .but that is not what it says. It says that god is
love. Love is the sole character trait of God. It is the essence of God. And
because He is love. . .He created you to be loved by Him. God can do no
different. He wants the very best for you, he wants you to have the very
best experiences in life.
Now, please believe me God did not create you , because He needed love or
because He was lonely.
God created you as an expression of His love. Just think of that for one
second. If God is love. . .unconditional love, and you are created in Gods
image, then surely you are an expression of his love.
We all believe this, because our world lives by expressions and symbols.
We wear a wedding band as an expression of our love, we cry when we feel
pain as an expression of our pain, we raise our hand in victory as an
expressions of our victory.
Therefore you are not on the plane by accident. You are going somewhere
and God wants you to know that there is a destination.
If you believe that your existence is by accident, then I invite you at
this point to leave, because nothing from here on out will make any sense to
you. For those who believe that the flight/life is an accident dont know of
a destination, their seat assignment has no significance, the life vests
underneath the seats have no purpose, the captain of the plane has an
insignificant position, and the stewards are just there. . .
If you take nothing home today from this sermon, I want you to know that
you are not created by accident, but in love, by love and that your life has
a deep purpose.
There are rules in the plane as there are rules in this life. We cannot
know the rules or find them out by ourselves, because we are creatures
created by a creator, so the creator created a manual for us.
This manual is called the Word of God and it deals with conversations
between Him us and tells of experiences of creation with our God. In there
we find detailed information how we should behave on this plane.
But we in our way; un-accepting our life as it is, we try to give even the
captain of our pane instructions. Here is a guy who knows the course, we do
not listen to the instructions of the stewardess before our takeoff, we do
not pay attention to our neighbors, we are only concerned that the flight
arrives on time.
I assure you the plane will arrive. . .and you will not know the time. The
manual of the flight tells us that the plane will crash and that all those
who do not wear a parachute and all those who created their own manual to
fly the plane will die.
All of us know where the parachute is. But some of us decide not to wear
it. Because it becomes even more uncomfortable to wear it in the already
tight seat of the plane. We struggle with the idea, because our neighbor may
have told us that we really do not need a parachute, and that the manual is
just some human printed document. We may not wear the parachute because we
can not see how the parachute would work in a time when the plane is ready
to crash.
I want you to know that the God of love, gave you in His love a parachute
so that you may return to Him and not crash in your small-minded wisdom on
the hard ground of this earth.
Remember that you were not the one who placed you on this plane and you
are certainly not the one who will be able to leave the plane.
So life has a single purpose. To lovingly accept a loving God and to give
the love to those who are around you
Read Part: | 1 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | of this Sermon Series
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