Problem with us today is not that we are perturbed waiting on the “Next Big Thing”.
The problem is that the “Big Thing” has happened but we looking for something else.
A thing about us humans is that we are never satisfied.
I have a new iPhone and I want the Apple Watch. I have a cookie but I want two. Well eight. I have a girlfriend, but I want her to give me more thrill in the relationship. I have a job, but I want high pay grade and a better office space. And a Ferrari.
It’s like we are born with a void, a chasm inside our souls that never can be filled. Or that it can be filled but not with what we are filling it with.
What happens when I kept my dog Sharp in a bird cage for a week. Well, he starts tearing everything inside the cage, barking at every two feet that passes by him, and poor him spinning in circles until he spills his water bowl and then falls into a “doggy depression”.
He is a dog. While I had him in there to protect him from the poison that had been placed in the yard that would kill him, he wasn’t made to live in a bird cage. He was made to bark, frolic and run, and slobber my face with his wet licks.
Maybe the problem in your life is not that you’ve grown tired barking at squirrels but that you are in the bird cage trying to squawk.
We’ve have been pitched by books, speakers and speakers with books to live life on purpose, but how can I live a “purpose driven life” if I don’t know what my purpose in life is?
Have you asked yourself yet: “Why am I here?”
Even if you were made by a cosmic accident, what reason do you have to roll out of bed and make most of the day?
I don’t know about you but it is bothersome to dress differently each day just to quiet the noise of bothersome people who noticed I wore the same pants twice.
The one great thing about college is that your “Monday, Wednesday and Friday” class doesn’t know what you wore on “Tuesday and Thursday”. I did take this advantage.
What is your reason for living today?
Can I say that I don’t have the faith that I am an accident and therefore life is really meaningless. What meaning is there if your origin was meaningless?
I grew up in church, and I never asked these questions, because theology just has this “God is” answers to my internal curiosity.
It wasn’t until one day in high school that my art teacher kept me in class to finish a project. While we sat in silence, we attempted to break the sound barrier. Soon enough she asked me about my life and being a son of a pastor, religion instantaneously became a centerpiece in the conversation.
She wasn’t rude but very perturbed. She was perturbed that most my answers to her questions was “because”.
“Why are you living in Antigua?”
“Because my family were called to be missionaries”
“How do you know you were called?”
“Because God told my parents to leave America to serve here in Antigua.”
I stood behind my answers until she asked me what I wanted to do with my life.
I told her a pastor. She asked why and I told her because I always wanted to be pastor “because” my dad was a pastor and “because God called me”.
She turned from me and watched the sun beams glare from off the table. It seemed she was gathering energy from that beam, because she brought her eyes up and then gazed deeply into my eyes. She pierced into the window of my soul with her sharp blue eyes.
Her wrinkled lips drew opened. Drawing a breath, she calmed the frightening silence but yet stirred what will be a tempest in my heart.
“But what do you want to do?”
Her simple question complicated my life. I confidently knew what I want to do in life and still today I am still want to pastor.
It’s wasnt what she said but what she meant by what she said.
My high school art teacher struck an unsung cord in me, for the first time in my life, I challenged my beliefs.
Let pause to say this: If you have beliefs and cannot challenge them, then they aren’t worth believing.
Even the Bible says test what you hear. Her question wasn’t divine inspiration, but I did began testing my belief.
I openly questioned the inconsistencies I saw in church. My pastor thought I was being defiant, but I recognized a frailty that did not match their convictions which they were persuading people to adhere to.
I did ask myself that question “why am I here?”
Last year in high school was complied with depression and apathy. My parents saw it best that I changed my geography for a little bit.
A cruise is a good idea. Being clergy, I was sent to a Christian ship. But this ship carried a genre of Christian that most of us in the world have yet to encounter.
Day one, my brother and I learned that ties and a tucked in shirts weren’t not the symbols of a righteous person. Love was the shirt men and women wore.
Men like Alex from Uruguay who at the break down of our faithful ice cream machine, stilled the angry mob with a ray of unearthly compassion. The forecast of their faces turned with burning red to beaming as they clustered around him as he laughed, apologized and touched them with a warmth of sincerity.
I lost my composure, because I never spectated such compassion all in one being at one moment. Besides mother of course, that’s a given.
I grew up impressing people with my theology on Sunday morning then fighting with my siblings on Sunday night. I boarded that ship with the demand to be on the fore front of ministry.
“I want to preach to the people” but they sent me to their little snack booth. I stood mystified in my little red uniformed shirt at Alex, because I had earlier yelled at some customers.
He received the same harsh words and rude language that I received, but he responded differently. He didn’t fight for his right to be treated properly. He humbled himself and made the word “love” into an action.
I cried in my cabin, beating my chest while I chanted “I want that. I want that. I want that.”
He has something that I don’t see much on our planet.
Could one posses something more pure than religious piety and ceremonial ritual?
Is there something underneath the surface of human harmony that is deeper and more sincere than social tolerance?
I realized for him to live this way he had some purpose to his life. I wish I can say that in my search to find his purpose I did so in a “piteous manner” (Christian way).
I attempted to get him angry, make him stumble. I wore the devilish horns for a week, but he always maintained this gracious responsive manner.
Then I threw down my hands and stopped “barking” and just watched him.
I watched him play football (soccer) and when he was fouled though angry he reacted positively. I watched him converse with his friends, and he always seemed to me to be the central figure, because he lived in this constant loving way that drew people around him.
I coveted his life and soon enough he started to answer my question. Providentially, he started to work more with me. There I saw his humanness. He did “sinned” like he lose his patience, and few days didn’t pull his share of the work, but what I didn’t see him was his gracious behavior.
It came out in him saying, “John, I’m sorry”, and “John, you’re right”. I’m not trying to make him a deity but there was something internally differently about him. He was graciously kind enough to share it with me.
It was Jesus. I worked for him the next month and saw he was just as human as I was but there was like two Persons living inside him. There was Alex and there was this Jesus.
Jesus would come out of every time he apologized. He would come out every time work was hard, but there he would burst into a joyful rave and inspire us to push the day through. He would come out of his conversations where at the sound of his name, his eyes would expand with such delight and thrill like “this Guy is amazing John, I’m telling you”.
Some nights, I stayed up under a light and read the books that talked about Jesus. The more I read the more I saw that this Man had some purpose that outlived His work and earthly life. A purpose that endured the rejection, the scorn and persecution. A purpose while he hung accused, sentenced, left to die, He could look at each person that unjustly kill Him and say “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”
I dived deeper into the Bible, and I saw that I was closer to the Truth than I thought but yet still far off. I realized that we all have a purpose but it isn’t found in ourselves. It’s found in God.
He made us for us as His masterpiece, intended to live a life of doing good things he planned for us long ago (Ephesians 2:10). He planned a life for me and you that wasn’t disastrous, but it had a future and a hope that was worth living (Jeremiah 29:11).
I realized my depression in high school that climaxed in not graduating was just a moment that did not define my life. I realized on that old rusty ship that I wasn’t made to be somebody but to know somebody.
You can say Jesus is some kind of thought up idea to control society, but I say seek Him for yourself.
I had to listen to atheistic art teacher and question my beliefs enough to see the purpose to why I build my life around them.
Maybe you can’t see yourself walking into a church building. Maybe that’s too much.
But Jesus isn’t a steeple with a cross. He is a Person that relates to all our weaknesses, for He faced all the same hardships as we as humans face (Hebrews 4:16); yet He is also God Who made a life for you that outlives the useless pursuits of happiness in a life that on average ends at 75.
And He is the purpose that filled the chasm of that Urguain man.
What if today you gave in to my appeal and just looked for Jesus?
What if you for one day diverted from your regular routine and charted a different course? A course that led into the presence of Jesus.
Sounds wild. Maybe not yet.
Maybe this whole time God has been Someone behind the door at the end of the hall that you only knew as much as you can see through the little keyhole.
Maybe you just needed an opportunity such as this and be invited to open the door and see Him fuller.
Maybe it will be end of how you live life and what you call freedom. But what if losing yourself you found a greater gain?
A purpose that fulfills you. Someone that completes you. A life that satisfies you.
A book in the Bible says:
“Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Psalms 34:8 NKJV)
Give God a chance to give you His promise to completely satisfy you.
He has promised to direct to a life that will bring meaning and joy to you.
“You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalms 16:11 NKJV)
If Jesus does exist as God that makes Him the source of life and pretty everything. And if that’s our conclusion doesn’t that make Him the source of all pleasure?
And if He is the Source of all pleasure, what meaning is there for us to be content with a life that is short of this experience?
Your purpose in life includes a plan that will satisfy you.
And you know what? If you really look for it, I think you will find the “Next Big Thing”.
Seeking Jesus for the first time, read the Gospel of Mark. Meet a Man that wasn’t just a Man.
Seeking Him again? I invite you to read the book of Philippians. Encounter a joy that cannot be robbed by bad days, a joy found in being with Jesus.
FOLLOW THE SON 