John 12:23-28 (NASB) 23And Jesus answered them, saying, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25”He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal. 26"If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also; if anyone serves Me, the Father will honor him. 27"Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But for this purpose I came to this hour. 28"Father, glorify Your name " Then a voice came out of heaven: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."
Throughout His life we hear hints of purpose. Repeatedly Jesus says things like, “I have come that…” and “my hour has not yet come." It is as if He is sorting His way through life saying, “this is my purpose, that is not.” Do you and I have the kind of God given purpose we see and hear in the life of Jesus?
When we think about or talk about our purpose in life, the question I usually hear is “What is my purpose in life?” As Christians, I can tell you what our answer should be. Our purpose in life, yours and mine, is to serve the God we have known in Jesus. We are to serve God in our homes, in our work, in the church, and in the community. As Jesus served God with His life and with His death, so we are to serve God with the whole of our lives.
How do we discover a God given sense of purpose? A clue is given to us in the words of Jesus. “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Jesus was talking about His death and He is talking about you and me doing a certain kind of dying. His was death on a Cross. Ours is a dying to our self-centered ways.
We need to die to some attitudes that keep us from sensing God’s purpose. These attitudes are heard in questions like, will things go my way today? what’s in it for me? when is something good going to happen to me?
We may also need to die to the assumption that our role in life is our purpose in life. We can be blinded by important but temporary roles. If we die to attitudes, assumptions and distractions, we can be raised to a new life of a God given sense of purpose. We rise to a new life. We rise to a life where we see that God is weaving the dark, somber threads of our life with the brightly colored ones into a pattern that gives beauty to our life and fulfills God’s plan and purpose for us.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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