If you had asked me what I wanted in life when I was ten, I would have listed the entire toy section of Walmart. If you had asked when I was fifteen, I would have said a Rawlings baseball glove signed by Torii Hunter. And when I was twenty. . .? Well, I wouldn’t have known.
Somewhere along the line, I learned toys and gloves were not too important. I learned if I wanted to make it far as an adult, I would need more than just toys. Hot Wheels and Legos are simple pleasures, and they are not very compelling to a man needing to make money and provide for his family.
We innately know there is more to life than balls and Tonka Trucks—there’s got to be more. We experience too much pain and suffering for there not to be greater purpose to life than fun and games. But, when we are twenty or twenty-five and needing to make something of our lives, we don’t really know what more is. Oh, sure, some guy in a book on male sexuality says we need a cause worth living for so we need to figure out what we want in life. But unfortunately, that’s much easier said than done. By the time we are twenty, the disappointments and broken dreams of life have usually all but smothered any ounce of want left in us.
We just want to feel purpose. We want to experience what it’s like to live with vision.
God Works in Us to Create a Burden for Things on His Heart
I have never read the Bible through in a year. Many of my friends talk about doing it as if they were taking a stroll in the park, enjoying the sun and fresh air. I wish I could say the same, and maybe by the time I have fully matured I will. I dream of sidling up beside one of my pals in my nineties, jittery with excitement because I read the whole canon in ninety days—for the fourth time that year. Until then, however, trying to read that much of the Bible in one year feels like hacking through the underbrush of the jungles of Ecuador. After ten feet, I have to sit down and take a break. My back feels tight and my lungs out of breath. Forging ahead is more a work of discipline than an experience of pleasure. Not because the content isn’t good; but because the language and concepts are so complex and so in-depth, my near-ADD brain can’t handle it. Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. . . I always get stuck in those books. I give up and head to Psalms.
I like Psalms. David, Moses, and Asaph were not afraid of saying things as they were. These were some of the godliest men to ever walk the earth, yet many of their Psalms are nothing more than long-winded letters of complaint put to music. The best part is God doesn’t seem to mind. He does not appear as threatened about honesty as I assume he might be. In fact, as I read the Psalms, I get the picture these men enjoyed a closer relationship with God because of their openness. They were willing to let God in on the parts of their lives they struggled with the most.
I don’t think God minds the fact that I struggle to get through the Bible in a year. I keep working at it, and maybe someday I’ll get it done. But I know God is not waiting to pour out his blessing on me until I can read his book in a certain allotted amount of time. If we come to the Bible wanting to feel his heartbeat, he will let us experience the wonderful treasure of Truth he has in store for us. And while the difficult books of law and prophecy are perhaps the most important books of the whole Bible, God also knew there would be a few Ashers and put in some simple, yet powerfully practical books, such as Philippians.
Philippians is nice because it only has four chapters. I like to read it so I can tell others I read a book in one sitting. I always think it sounds amazing when I hear other people say they read a book in one sitting. So, I read Philippians and saunter out to my family in the living room telling them I just read a book in one sitting. I imagine they picture me as someone incredibly smart, one of those self-taught men like Booker T. Washington who slaved in the fields by day and read voraciously by night. Or maybe they think I’m the next Hudson Taylor who studied Greek and Hebrew while working a loom. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll discover the world’s next best bread-spread or translate the Bible into a complex language.
Although it’s short, and painfully down-to-earth, the book of Philippians is truly quite compelling. Every time I read it I am struck again by the example Paul lays out for us Christians. He begins the epistle by reminding the Philippian Christians that God is going to complete the good work he began in them. He says he can boast in that and feel good about it, because he holds them in his heart as partakers of grace with him, both in imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.[1] Now, I know Paul was writing to a group of people who made up the church in the city of Philippi. But I believe this is true for any of us who partake in the grace of Jesus Christ even today.
Here is what stuck out to me, though—these people at Philippi were suffering as prisoners and as advocates of the Gospel. As I read further in the chapter, I noticed Paul exhorting them to stand firm in one spirit. He wanted them to have one mind, striving side-by-side for the faith of the gospel, not frightened in anything by their opponents. He says the fact that they remain steadfast and united, unafraid of opposition, is a sign to their adversaries of destruction and their own salvation—salvation from God.[2]
I don’t know how many times I read over this passage and only saw it as an encouragement to the people of Philippi, completely missing what was going on. First, these people are a part of a cause greater than themselves—the defense and confirmation of the gospel. In other words, they are telling people how God is reconciling the world and then showing it to them by the way they live their lives. They are ministers of reconciliation. The fact people get upset at them proves those people are headed for destruction and the Philippian Christians are saved. This is pretty incredible because the church at Philippi began with a jailor who kept Paul and Silas in prison for preaching and “causing a ruckus,” a slave girl who had been demon-possessed and used as a fortune teller, and a wealthy merchant woman who met Paul at a Bible study by the river.[3] These people came from drastically different backgrounds. Wealthy, hardened, and broken as they were, they are now defending and confirming the Gospel together, even to the point of imprisonment.
And that leads to the second thing. I didn’t see it until I read the book at least ten times. Chapter two of Philippians starts out calling us to selflessness. Do nothing with selfish ambition, count others more significant then ourselves, look not only to our interests but others as well.[4] Paul ends the section by reminding us how Christ left his fabulous home in heaven where he could have been equal with God—he was God after all. But instead, he came to earth and got dirty in the gutters making a way for us to live in relationship with the Father again. Ultimately, Jesus even died for sins he did not commit.[5] “Therefore,” Paul says, “work out your salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.”[6]
So, two things stood out to me in all this: First, any opposition I face in defending and spreading the Gospel is a sign of my salvation. God saved me. Second, he is working in me to help me want him and to help me work for him.
The Philippians Helped Save Others in the Ways They Had Been Saved
I am not a Greek scholar, but I enjoy learning more of the original languages of the Bible. I’ve researched different passages and words and I’ve wondered what “fear and trembling” meant in this passage. The idea of “working out my salvation in fear and trembling” seemed to go against everything I was taught about salvation and everything Paul talks about grace. What is interesting to me is fear and trembling in this passage is not a fear in the sense of fearing the Nazi regime. Rather, it is a fear in the sense of great respect for how my salvation came to be. It’s like when you pay one hundred dollars for a pair of new running shoes—you’re going to run and run well. Working out my salvation in this way is feeling compelled to action because I see how much it cost the One who saved me—I am not going to waste it.
After reading this simple passage several times over again, I understood Paul as telling us to remember what Christ did for us, what he saved us from, and how much it cost him. Paul wanted to vividly engrave in our minds the deliverance and freedom we have from sin and its consequences. He also wanted us to see the price God paid for our deliverance, so the thought of not joining Christ in his work would keep us up at night. We should not grumble about each other or dispute with one another because we remember clearly what Christ suffered so we can be saved.[7] We should rejoice in the opportunity to be poured out as a drink offering, as Paul put it, because we have deep reverence for all that Christ endured so we can now live free.[8] I realized then that I find my cause in remembering what Christ has saved me from.
What specific sins and consequences does his sacrifice, his abundant grace, deliver me from? In answering that question, I will discover what I truly want in life.
The Beauty of Using Your Story to Help Restore Others
There is something beautiful about God restoring people and then using them to help restore others who are broken in similar ways. We are all broken. We all need to be reconciled to God. And most people, whether aware of it or not, have something specific keeping them from experiencing deeper connection with the Father. As Christ sanctifies us, helping us overcome and sort through those specific areas, inevitably we develop a passion for helping others struggling in similar ways.
Paul, the author of Philippians, radically persecuted Christians. He hated the Gospel message and anyone who furthered it. When God saved him, he became one of the most passionate evangelists to ever walk this earth.
Christian pop-star Lecrae grew up in the inner-city ghetto and was raised by his single mother. Lecrae never met his father—he became a drug addict, leaving Lecrae’s mom to raise their son on her own. Around age eight, a babysitter sexually molested Lecrae, leading him into extremely promiscuous teen years. But once God got ahold of his heart, once Lecrae surrendered his life to Christ, he began using hip-hop as an avenue for reaching people in similar situations. He now ministers most directly to those struggling with sexual abuse, parental neglect, and everything else he faced growing up.[9]
My book, Live Free, has been one of the most important works I have done so far in my life. I find it important to me because I know what it’s like to live in moral defeat and sexual confusion. I know the feeling of wanting to live free, but being unable to—being bound by desires inside of me leading me away from God. Christ has saved me from lust and a life of moral compromise. I have found a cause in helping others find freedom from lust as well.
It seems to me, God wants to do something with the broken parts of our lives. He not only wants to recreate us, making us new and more striking bearers of his image than ever before; he wants to then use us to help him do the same in others.
I find that incredibly beautiful about God! Satan thinks he beat God because so many people choose to fritter away their lives pursuing his perverted replicas of God’s design. But God is not only helping people get back on track; he is also turning those who spent time dabbling with Satan’s empty pleasures into instruments of restoration for others headed in the same direction.
We truly are more than conquerors. Not only does Christ help us overcome our own sins, but in him we are also then able to help others overcome theirs.
And I don’t think it stops there. As God continues to make us one with himself, he also begins laying burdens on our hearts. Since we are experiencing his salvation from private sins, we are free to pursue those burdens with passion. Our life calling is not limited only to what God has saved us from. At the end of Philippians, in the fourth chapter, Paul says we should think on and pursue whatever is honorable, just, pure, and commendable.[10] Paul seems to be saying we are to work out our salvation by helping others in ways we once needed help, and then going beyond that and advancing God’s glory and goodness wherever it seems fit. We don’t necessarily always need a rhema, a special “message” from God; we simply need to start thinking about things that honor him.
Soon after Wilberforce’s conversion to Christianity, Sir Charles Middleton suggested he represent the bill to abolish the slave trade. His good friend and fellow politician, William Pitt, agreed and encouraged him to take up the cause. A little while later, Thomas Clarkson sent Wilberforce a letter also calling upon him to push the bill in Parliament.[11] I suppose after being encouraged three times to take up a cause, Wilberforce began wondering if it was something he ought to do. He accepted the challenge and spent the rest of his life championing for the abolishment of slave trade in Britain.
In the same way, God makes certain things so obvious to us we don’t need to spend time in prayer over whether to champion them. It “seems good to us,” as Luke spoke of his decision to write out his gospel, or as if “perhaps God might want to do something” through it, like Jonathan told his armor bearer.
Kevin, a friend of mine who found a deeper level of sexual freedom talking with other guys on EDGE, a short-term missions program for young men, turned around and become an EDGE leader. It seemed like the right next thing to do. He found fulfillment in helping other young men walk through the same journey he had traveled in opening up about deep things in his heart, things holding them captive to sins of lust. Corey, another friend whose dad told him not to give a letter to the worker at their house and who took from that encounter the lie that he has nothing worth sharing, now writes songs. He loves putting to music words that help people sort through deep motivations in their hearts. It makes sense that God would turn a lie Corey once believed into an avenue of leading others into a deeper walk with him. These are snapshots of how God is using men once bound by sin, fear, and deception to help others bound in similar ways come to know him more.
For me personally, it was seeing the need in the educational systems of inner cities that motivated me to get involved in teaching. I had never thought of myself as a teacher, now I have done it for three years. I don’t know where all God will lead me in the future. He keeps putting different burdens in my heart, and I’m not always sure what to do with them. But he put them there; and I believe it is my responsibility to do something about them—just as Joab, Abishai, Jonathan, David, Nehemiah, Kevin, and Corey all did.[12]
What Matters More Than What We Do or Whether We Have the Skills Is Where We’re Getting Direction
In the book of Jeremiah, God condemns lying prophets—not necessarily because he never told them to prophesy, but because they never stood in his counsel. As a result, they didn’t know what to prophesy. Instead, they spoke “visions of their own mind, not from the mouth of the Lord.”[13] If they had come to the Lord and stood in his counsel, Jeremiah writes, he would have given them words to proclaim to the people that would have turned them from their evil way.[14] It’s not that they were the wrong people to prophesy, nor that they were doing the wrong thing; they simply hadn’t gotten their inspiration from the right place—the Lord.
Paul wrote in second Corinthians that if we behold the glory of the Lord we are transformed into his image (2 Cor. 3:18). This transformation process not only saves us from our own brokenness, but also counsels us in what God wants to do throughout the world. Being transformed into the image of Christ and knowing what God wants done throughout the world happens when we stand in his counsel and look on his glory.[15]
We cannot drum up inspiration on our own. It’s time we stop trying to “find God’s will for our lives.” I don’t think it is our responsibility to figure that out. Our responsibility is to gaze on the glory of God. As we do so, “standing in his counsel,” he imprints on our hearts visions we cannot ignore—at least not without significant effort.
It seems to me the challenge is staying in God’s counsel. Where is God restoring people? I should go study it. Where has he written his story? I should read it over and over again. Am I spending time in prayer? What impressions does he give me when I do? Am I allowing him to place burdens inside of me by interacting with people who have needs? What do I feel when I see their brokenness? These are the places I discover a cause worth living for; not in playing video games, watching the latest movies, or attending the most recent concerts.
Finding God’s will for our lives is not as difficult as we like to make it, but it’s not always very clear, either. It often feels more like an impression than a lightning bolt, and that’s okay. We can’t miss the life God has for us when our hearts are turned towards him and our faces are caught up in the grandeur of his glory.
Nowadays, whenever I am unsure of what I want in life, I remind myself of the significant struggles, pains, or sins he has saved me from. I also consider the things I feel should change or continue. I have found purpose and a cause worth living for in what God is already doing and speaking in and through me.
Question: How does this impact the way you think about finding your purpose in life? Share in the comments below.
[1] See Philippians 1:6-7.
[2] See Philippians 1:27-30.
[3] See Acts 16 for context.
[4] See Philippians 2:1-4.
[5] See Philippians 2:5-8.
[6] See Philippians 2:12-13.
[7] See Philippians 2:14-16.
[8] See Philippians 2:17.
[9] “Lecrae,” Wikipedia, accessed October 14, 2016, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lecrae.
[10] See Philippians 4:8.
[11] “William Wilberforce (1759-1833): The Politician,” The Abolition Project, accessed October 14, 2016, http://abolition.e2bn.org/people_24.html.
[12] See 1 Chronicles 19:10-13, 1 Samuel 14:6-15, 2 Samuel 7:1-3 and Nehemiah 2:12.
[13] See Jeremiah 23:16.
[14] See Jeremiah 23:22.
[15] Consider reading 2 Corinthians 3-5. Observe the progression Paul speaks of in being transformed by the Spirit of God (3:1-18) to living as God designed (4:1-18) and participating in his work of reconciliation (5:1-21).
