“What Does God Want Me to Do with My Life?” – Part II

According to the first chapter of 1 John, three things are inseparably connected- God, eternal life, and light. As much as I hate hearing about bundling from cable companies, even I have to admit that God loves packages.

Too often, Christians fall into the trap of acting as if life has no purpose except for what we make it. Incidentally, we may have just stumbled onto the Christian idea of God because we like the ideas of morality and eternal life, but we can’t quite understand the significance of “this Jesus guy.” So we wouldn’t dare try to convince anyone else that they need him. In fact, we might even be ashamed of the gospel.

Or perhaps we like to be good people and we’re even cool with Jesus, but we love our lives so much that we never take time to appreciate eternal life. Like the rich man who spoke with Jesus in the gospels, we’d be very sorrowful if God told us we needed to give up everything we have to follow Him and have eternal life.

Then there’s a third category- similar to people in the second category, we think Jesus is our “homeboy,” but there’s something else we don’t want to give up. Maybe we look forward to an eternity spent with God, but we do not want anyone interfering with our morals. We might try to convince ourselves that God can just go along with us and pretend like everything we do is moral; and we’ll just ignore anyone or anything that tries to convince us otherwise.

Eternal life comes to us from God. God is light, and in Him, there is no darkness.
These two aspects are central to our purpose in God. The first aspect deals with God’s desire for you to receive His eternal life. That doesn’t mean he will simply extend your current life. When you receive God’s eternal life, you receive a new life that you never had before. Your old life, full of darkness, and misguided by your arbitrary search for a purpose, is no good because it wasn’t in God. That’s why “born-again” is more than just a phrase to describe judgmental, bible-thumping Christians with big hats and big hair. No one receives God’s eternal life without being born again- by putting off the old, sinful man, and putting on the new man. The new man walks in the light of God, so Jesus Christ is THE ONE and ONLY model for this new man.

No one walking in darkness, in sin and according to his or her own purpose, can truly have fellowship with God. God is not in this darkness. He is only in the light. We should not be deceived into thinking God is somehow fine with our walking in sin and immorality. If we walk in darkness, according to our own sinful purposes, we allow darkness to blind our eyes. So how could we possibly expect God to answer life’s big questions if we are so blinded by the darkness of sin that we can’t see any of His answers? We must first allow God to deal with our sins. A man who never accepts this truth cannot understand God’s purpose for his life.

One who never receives the truth- specifically, one who never accepts Christ into his life, must inevitably come to one of two conclusions, depending on how pessimistic or optimistic he is- 1) that his life is meaningless, and therefore wasted since he has no real purpose in life; or 2) that his life means whatever he wants it to mean. Either conclusion places him outside of God’s purpose for mankind.

Fortunately, if you have received Christ, better things are in store for you because the power of God is working in you. You can keep your salvation, but still choose to live a lie and walk in darkness by cutting off fellowship with God, causing you to miss out on much of His joy. But a better choice would be to walk in the light of God, which will allow you to experience the completeness of Christ’s joy through fellowship with God and other believers. To walk in the light of God, one must have fellowship with Christians, and one must not neglect to ask God for forgiveness of sins. If you walk in the light, you are walking according to truth, rather than according to blindness, confusion and deception. Thus, you are walking according to God’s purpose.

I believe that if you have chosen to follow God- to receive his eternal life, and to walk in the light, you won’t need to worry too much about everything else. God will make sure that things work out in the way that they need to be worked out. Romans 8:28 says, “all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” This verse doesn’t say that the rest of your life on this earth will be easy, nor does it say that you’ll get everything you want- it means everything will work together for good in the big picture. God’s mind is on eternity.

To make things a bit more practical now- If you face a big question in life, and one of the potential answers looks like it clearly falls outside of God’s purpose, it’s the wrong answer. So don’t choose that path! Don’t try to stretch God to make Him fit into the answer, because He won’t be going along with it. Too much stretching might make you wonder if you’ve even met God in the first place. But if it seems like an answer to one of life’s big questions is really within God’s purpose, just trust Him to work it out. Go ahead and live the life that God has given you. Just make sure that the life you are living is the life that God has given you according to God’s purpose, spelled out in His Word, and fueled by His mighty power; and not a life of darkness, located outside of God.

It is worth repeating- God, eternal life, and walking in the light are INSEPARABLE. Each one of us will, at times, neglect at least one of these aspects of the faith. But my hope is that you will experience the completeness of the joy of Christ by choosing to get back on track by reading the bible, fellowshipping with Christians, asking God for the forgiveness of sins, and enjoying eternal life in God. While it is true that life raises new questions about your purpose everyday, you won’t even be able to begin to get the answers you need from God unless you study his Holy word and take advantage His fellowship.