Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does Jesus Have a Purpose for My Life? | Who Is Jesus? | Proverbs 16.4

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Tim Minna Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now we're asking, who is Jesus? While there are some differences in gravestones, almost every gravestone has some common features. They usually have the name of the person, the date the person was born, and the date the person died. Those two dates, the day they were born and the day they are died, are separated by a dash. That dash hides a story.

Starting point is 00:00:41 Because you see, that dash is the same on every tombstone, but that dash represents a life. And every life is not the same. Every dash looks the same, but not every life is the same. Everybody spins their dash differently. Every person's life will be reduced to a dash. The question is, how will you spend your dash? In Acts 13, it says this of David, King David. For when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep.

Starting point is 00:01:15 He was buried with his fathers and his body decayed. Wouldn't it be amazing if God said about us that we fulfilled our purpose in our generation, in our life, in our community, in our family, in our church? Proverbs 164 says, the Lord has made every, for his own purpose. Think about that for a moment. God has made everything, including you, for his purpose. You can choose a lot of things in your life, but you can't choose your purpose. That comes from God. Now, there's a lot of hope in that verse, too. There's a lot of hope in the truth that God has created us for his purpose, because that means that our life is not a random

Starting point is 00:02:02 sequence of events. We aren't at the mercy of our circumstances, our economy, other people's choices. God made you for his purpose. Even if your life seems to be one thing after the next, you can be sure that God is working in it, that God is accomplishing something even if you can't quite see it right now. Ephesians 111 says, in him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. There are no accidents, at least not to God. An accident is something that happens unexpectedly or without a deliberate plan or cause, but God has no accidents because everything, according to Ephesians 111 is worked out in conformity to the purpose of his will. Psalm 1388,

Starting point is 00:02:58 the Lord will fulfill his purpose in me. Because we are made in the image of God, we crave meaning and purpose. It's essential to who we are, so much so that we can't really even live without it. If you deprive people of meaning, they won't keep on living. Ernest Hemingway is one of the most famous American authors. He was born in 1890. He was the epitome of a 20th century man. He lived the life. At 25, he sipped champagne in Paris. He went on these large game hunts in Africa.

Starting point is 00:03:36 He hunted bears in America's Northwest. At the age of 61, after having it all, a distinguished literary career, relationships, he had done everything you could want to do. He had money, resources, he traveled the world. He had done Sunday bullfights in Spain. Well, at the age of 61, Hemingway chose to end his own life. He left a note saying, life is one expletive thing after another. We were created for purpose. And if we don't know our purpose, we have a hard time continuing to live. Now, that's a problem because we all struggle with these questions. What is our purpose? What is the meaning of life? Hugh Moorhead was a philosophy professor at northeastern Illinois, and he wrote 250 kind of public intellectuals, philosophers, scientists, writers, and he asked him one question, what's the meaning of life? He then published some of the answers in a book, but one of the things that really stands out to me

Starting point is 00:04:41 is that a lot of people that he wrote to were quick to admit, honest enough to say that they didn't really know. In fact, some of them even wrote back to Professor Morehead and say, hey, if you figure it out, will you tell us? Great thinkers have always asked questions about the meaning of life. Leo Tolstoy, famous Russian novelist. He wrote War in Peace, Anna Karina, other famous novels. When he's about 50 years old, his life kind of crashes. I don't know if, in hindsight, we'd say he had depression. It's hard to tell.

Starting point is 00:05:16 But if he did struggle with depression, It wasn't just over his life, but over general circumstances of the human condition. He just asked questions like, what will come up today or tomorrow? Is anything in my life important or meaningful if it is all going to end when I die? He said that question brought him to the edge of the abyss. Here's what he said. My deeds will be forgotten. I will be forgotten.

Starting point is 00:05:45 So then why do anything at all? It's almost as if he believed that when he died, everything in his life would become meaningless. If it was meaningless in the future after his death, then how could it have any meaning now? So many of us try to find meaning and accomplishment or in career or in where we live or in family or in pleasure. We search for all kinds of ways to find meaning and purpose in our life. But what if our meaning is tied to God? Colossians 116 says, for by him all things were created. Now this is talking about Jesus.

Starting point is 00:06:25 All things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him. That means that my life was created by Jesus and for Jesus. What if my life's purpose? What if your life's purpose? What if every single person who's ever lived, life's purpose, is more about a person than a plan? What if our purpose is to know God through His son Jesus? Psalm 274, one thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. I'm not sure that we find David or anybody else in the Bible praying and asking God to reveal his plan for their life. It's not as if we have these prayers in the Bible in which people are asking things like, hey, God, where should I live? Or what job should I take? Is it in your plan that I get married or not, have kids or not, have a successful career or not? We just don't find those

Starting point is 00:07:39 kinds of prayers. Instead, what we find is people praying like David that he would know Jesus, that he would be obedient to Jesus, that Jesus would have more and more of his heart, that he would be a person who follows closely after Jesus. And then life comes, and you accept that as part of God's plan, to live out your life as faithful to Jesus, no matter what the circumstances are. I'll tell you, this, it passes the eternity test. Remember Tolstoy said that upon his death, if his life were to become meaningless, that it was meaningless now. But if we focus our life on Jesus, then we have life after death. And our life here isn't meaningless then or now. In fact, it is infused with meaning because it is

Starting point is 00:08:31 infused with Jesus. How are you going to spend your dash? Everybody's dash looks the same. And yet that dash hides a lot. So many of us spend our dash living for things that are here and now, living for ourselves. But God invites us to a life of meaning and purpose. He invites us to live our dash in a way that helps us know Jesus in greater and deeper relationship with Jesus. It's that life that will give us meaning and purpose. It's that life that will give us hope, even when things are going wrong, it's that life will make the most mundane things meaningful. Live your dash in a way that you know Jesus better at the day you die than you do now. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating.

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Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does Jesus Have a Purpose for My Life? | Who Is Jesus? | Proverbs 16.4

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