A (3:01)
When I read the Bible, I cannot escape the relentless teaching that God has purposes, he has goals in everything he does. He's not a God who is coasting aimlessly. He's not going in circles. The God of the Bible is pervasively pursuing accomplishments of his own counsel. So Isaiah 46 I am God. There is no one like me declaring, my counsel shall stand. I will accomplish all my purpose. So there it is. I will accomplish all my purpose. God has purposes, he has plans. Isaiah 14:24 As I have planned, so shall it be. As I have purposed, so shall it stand. Plans, purposes. I determined it long ago. Isaiah 37:6 I planned it from days of old, and I now bring it to pass. I don't think there would be any gospel, any salvation, any eternal joy if God were not a planner, one who lived with purposes and goals. Because Acts 4:27 says that all the enemies of God were gathered together in Jerusalem at the crucifixion of Jesus to do whatever your hand, O God, your plan had predestined to take place. Now when I step back from all of that vision of the planning, purposing God, the effect it has on me is to stir me up to really serious questions like, well, what is God's ultimate goal? Then I'm sure He has millions of sub goals and sub purposes in everything he does. I like to say God's doing 10,000 things we don't know anything about. Most of those goals and purposes are hidden from us. But what has he revealed as his main or his ultimate purpose? Where's everything going? That's the question that has burned in me ever since I was 22 years old and became a lover of the all ordaining, all planning God. And then the next question becomes, well, if I could discern what his ultimate goal was, how can I join him in it? I want to fit in to his ultimate purpose. I don't want to strive against it. I want to be right in sync with what God is pursuing in the world. Nothing seems more obviously reasonable to me or hopeful to me than that God's creatures should gladly fit into his purposes. So surely that's his call on us. That's what he's beckoning us to do. Find my purpose, join me in it. So that's my second question then. Is there a way I can join the purpose of God once I have found out what his ultimate purpose is? And then the question becomes, how do I do everything I am doing so that I help that ultimate goal come about, or so that I can be used by God to make it come about? I want everything, not just a few things, but everything I do to somehow contribute to that purpose. So that's why mission statements seem helpful to me. They keep me focused on the great things of life. But let me caution us here. I think the particularities of life are too variable for our mission statement to be very detailed. I know our friend asked that it not be too general, and yet I might disappoint him because I find big, big general purposes really helpful if they're the right kind. So the more particularities about yourself and about your circumstances that you include, the more short term your statement is going to be. Because so much changes, right? You change, your job changes, you have kids, you get sick, you move. Oh my goodness. Life is just so variable that if you make your mission statement to include things about yourself, things about your circumstances that are going to change relatively quickly, then then you're gonna have to be changing your mission statement all the time. And that's probably not very helpful. So if you want your mission statement to last more than a few years, it will need to be high level and general. And that's mainly what I have in mind. When I think of my own statements that guide my life. I need to be reminded regularly about the big picture of life. What's everything about? What goals can I have that are in sync with God's goals and are so clearly biblical that they don't change? So let me give you a whirlwind process of arriving at such a statement and then you can adapt it to your situation in those crucial years of discovery. For me, life changing years 22 to 25. What I saw and could not deny and have never changed my mind on since, was that God was infinitely full of every perfection and could not be improved, and was the sum of all excellence, all beauty, all worth, all greatness, so that his purpose never included people counseling him or adding to him or improving him, or providing for his needs, since he doesn't have any. Rather, what I saw was that God was the kind of God whose ultimate aim was that his fullness his completeness, his perfection would overflow with the communication of all his satisfying greatness and beauty and worth and excellence to me. In other words, God's ultimate purpose is to be seen and savored and shown. Those are my three favorite words for describing it. God's ultimate purpose is to be seen and savored and shown as infinitely glorious. That's his ultimate purpose. This is not megalomania, by the way, because the communication of himself in all his glory is what the human soul was made to be satisfied by. So God is the one being in all the universe, and he's the only one for whom self communication and self exaltation is the highest virtue and the most loving act. So Isaiah 43, 6, bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory. And so the very first thing that he teaches us to pray over and over is hallowed be your name. That is glorified, treasured, loved, honored, praised, admired, enjoyed, hallowed be your name. That's the first and foremost cry of every saint every day, make me a means, God, please make me a means of the communication and the display of your beauty and your worth and your greatness. That is, may others hallow your name. Because I exist. That's why we come into being. That's the essence of every biblical personal mission statement, I think, if it ties into God's ultimate purpose. So that's where I start. And then the question becomes how? And the Bible seems, that is, how can I live that way? How can I join in to that accomplishment of that purpose? And the Bible just seems to offer countless answers like whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. Give thanks to the glory of God. Confess Jesus to the glory of God. Do good deeds that God may be glorified. Welcome one another to the glory of God. Be generous to the poor for the glory of God. And on and on. I have other texts listed here, but, but they're, they're, they're all over the place. Everything we should be doing with our bodies and our minds and our hearts should be something that makes God look glorious, because he really is. We're helping people see him, savor him, show him for what he's really like. So finally the question becomes, is there a common denominator that runs through all of those deeds, all those attitudes, all those words that turn them into God? Glorifying acts? How does everything I do become worship? How does everything I do become a display of God's? Greatness and beauty and worth and the the answer is given. For example, there are other places. 1st Peter 4:11 Let the one who serves serve in the strength that God supplies so that in everything God may be glorified. So if, if everything you do is a service, then he says, let the service be by relying on the all sufficiency of God's grace in your life so you accomplish what you just attempted to do. It's done in his strength so that he gets the glory. You get the enablement and the power and the guidance and the strength, and he gets the glory. So when we joyfully rely on God in all that we do in the service of others, God looks glorious in our lives. Same thing in second Thessalonians 1:11. Let every work be a quote work of faith by God's power so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you. That's 2nd Thessalonians 1:11 and 12. Same point as 1st Peter 4. We do what we do in glad reliance upon God for everything we need in order to love people. In other words, we live by faith in the promises of God in the service of love. So I would say build your life mission statement by thinking through this much before you get to the details of your own gifting and your own calling. God is infinitely glorious. God means to communicate that glory to his people, to see it, savor it, show it. He means for us to join him in that purpose. That applies to absolutely everything we do. And we do it in humble reliance upon his grace and power which come through Jesus Christ in the service of others that will make him look great. Then when you have crafted an overarching mission statement built on those purposes of God, then you can make some short term mission statements. Say for a year you're going to write a book or you're going to change jobs or you're going to pursue marriage or whatever. Some short term that then draws particularities up into that mission statement. According to the season of your life.
