This message was preached at Word of Grace church by Colin D Cruz on the 22nd of April 2012. You can listen or download to the Audio recording ( in mp3 format ) of the message by clicking here
Well, today we’re
continuing our 40 Days of Purpose, and we’re in the process of discovering why
we ARE here! – that God has a Purpose for your life, and you don’t have to go
through life lost, uninformed, or wondering. For those who may
be visitors or guests here today, so far we have looked at the first three
Purposes which God has for our lives: What are they? WORSHIP- You
discovered Three of God’s Purposes for our
lives. First- is WORSHIP – that you were planned
for God’s Pleasure. Then FELLOWSHIP – You were Formed
for God’s Family. Thirdly, -DISCIPLESHIP – You were Created to
become like Christ, and today were going to look at God’s fourth
purpose for your life,- and its written there on the
top of your outline…you were Shaped to Serve God. Elvis
felt like he was here to do something, - but he just couldn’t quite figure it
out!
On 16th August
, 1977 Elvis Presley, at the age of 42. died of obesity
and drug dependency. In spite of his enormous success- Elvis was,
according to friends, an unfulfilled and unhappy man. When his wife,
Priscilla, was interviewed, she said: “Elvis never came to terms with who he
was meant to be or what his purpose in life
was. He thought he was here for a reason, maybe to preach, maybe to
serve, maybe to save, maybe to care for people. That agonizing
desire was always with him and he knew he wasn’t fulfilling
it. So he’d go on stage and he wouldn’t have to think about
it.” How tragic to go through life and not
know what you were here for.
The Bible says,in Eph.
2:10, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do
good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.
God made you to make a
difference – to DO good works, - and what matters is not how long you
live, but how you live. The Bible says we’re created to
serve, we’re saved to serve, we’re gifted to
serve, and we’re shaped to serve. Now
whenever God gives us an assignment to do something, He always equips us
first. And in the next verse Job says, “Your hands shaped me and made me.” (Job
10:8). God uses five things to shape you – to equip you personally
for Service. –
SPIRITUAL GIFTS
God gives every believer
gifts to use in ministry. Not earned or deserved.
Your spiritual gifts
were not given for your own benefit but for the benefit of others. 1 Cor 12:7
If others don’t use
their gifts you get cheated, and if you don’t use your gifts, they get cheated.
An unopened gift is
worthless. We need to find out what our gift is and then use it.
HEART – passion
Heart – bundle of
desires, hopes, interests, ambitions, dreams and affections you have.
As a face is reflected
in water, so the heart reflects the person. Pro 27;19
Physically – unique
heartbeat. We also have a unique
emotional heartbeat. That races when we
thing about subjects, activities or circumstances that interest us. Passion
Serve the Lord with all
your heart…
Enthuisasm +
Effectiveness
ABILITIES –
Natural talents you were
born with Ex 31:3-5 skill abilities andknowledge
All our abilities come
from God.
The brain can store 1 trillion facts. Mind
15000 decisions a second (digestive system)
Nose can smell upto
10000 odors. Bundle of incredible abilities an amazing creation of God
1 cor 10 : 31 whatever
you do, do it for the glory of God.
PERSONALITY
Introvert extrovert
Thinkers feelers
Sanguine – Peter, Paul
choleric , Jeremiah melancholy
EXPERIENCES
Family
Educational
Vocational – jobs
Spiritual
Ministry
Painful
Greatest ministry will
most likely come out of your greatest hurt.
Your Spiritual
gifts, your Heart interests, your personal Abilities, Personality,
and even theExperiences you’ve been through. That spells
‘SHAPE’. Through those five things God has uniquely
made you and shapes you, for a purpose. And that purpose is
identified clearly in the next verse. –where its says - 1Pet.
4:10, “Each of us should use whatever gift he’s received to Serve
others! Your talents are not for your own
benefit. Do you remember the first line in the Purpose
Driven Life book? “It’s not about you.” He gave
you gifts and talents and abilities and background and experiences and all
these things for the benefit of other people, to be used for
serving others.
So
write this down, “My fourth purpose in life is to serve God by serving
others.” That’s why you’re alive. The only way you can
serve God is by serving others, in the same way that the only way we
can love God is through loving others.
Now the Bible has a word for this, it’s called “ministry”. And
my prayer is that God is going to be saying something to you in your heart
today about your ministry. Any time you use your
talent to help somebody else, you are ministering. And this is
God’s fourth purpose for your life.
Now the good news is
that God not only created us for service, He also gave us a model. in
the form of His Son, the perfect man, Jesus Christ, and He said, “This is what
I want you to do with your life”. This last week you have been
learning about Discipleship – that You were created to become like
Christ,- and what did Christ do , while He
was here on earth? He served, didn’t
He? . Notice the next verse.: Matt. 20:28Just as the Son
of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many.
Now
what does it take to learn to serve like
Jesus? Well it takes three things.
Number
one, (write this
down.) Serving like Jesus means firstly, being AVAILABLE.
One day Jesus was
walking down in Jericho and some blind men start yelling at him. And
the Bible says (Matt. 20:30-32): “Two blind men shouted ‘Lord, have
mercy on us! Jesus stopped and called them. ‘What do you want me to
do for you?’.”
And what did Jesus do?
-- Jesus stopped! If you want to be used by
God, if you want to serve God, you must be willing to be interrupted. I find
this a hard lesson to learn, because generally, when Im doing something I don’t
like to be interrupted. But most of Jesus’ ministry and most of Jesus’ miracles
were interruptions, weren’t they? I had never realized this before,
but all the people Jesus healed – the blind man, the lame man, the sick people,
the paralyzed man, the dead child – all of them were
interruptions. A lot of us say “I’d like God
to use me more. I’d like His power in my life., ..but it seldom
seems to happen ? Perhaps the reason is that we’re not willing for
God to interrupt us in our schedule.
Ill. David sent to 1 Sam
17:17, Joseph Gen 40
Well there
are three common barriers that keep us
from being available to God.?
Number one:is self-centeredness. The
Bible says, Each of you should look not only to your own interests but
also to the interests of others (Phil. 2:4) Whenever you see a need
right in front of you and it’s really obvious that somebody needs your help,
right there and then God is giving you the opportunity to practice serving - to
learn to be available, to be like more Jesus Christ. Real servants
have only one agenda – and that is to serve God through serving others. Let’s
remember that as Christ-followers - we are all in
the Service industry. – serving others.
A second barrier to being used by
God…is perfectionism. - wanting
every thing to be perfect. When I’m not so busy, when things settle
down, then I’ll serve.” Let’s read
Eccl. 11:4: “If you wait for perfect conditions, you’ll never get
anything done.” Real servants do the best they can, give
what they can, with what they have, for Jesus Christ today. They
don’t wait until some perfect time - for that time never
comes. We all have weaknesses. We all
have faults. We all have
failures. But guess what? God uses us
all. Why? Because there aren’t any perfect people. God uses ordinary people. We
have seen that in the 40 Days of Purpose as nearly 25 or so ordinary people
opened up their homes as hosts. And 250 or more people are being
blessed. Why? Because normal, ordinary, average people
said, “My house isn’t perfect, and I’m not perfect. I don’t perfectly know
the Bible, but I could do this!” And you could! And you
did. And God is blessing it. So God says, “Don’t wait
for perfectconditions.” Don’t wait for things to settle
down. As long as you are alive there will be stress, strife, trouble can
challenges. Go ahead and start serving.
Number three:is materialism. Materialism
is the third barrier that keeps us from being available to
serve. Jesus said, “No servant can serve two
masters. You cannot serve both God and money.” (Lk.
16:13). Now would you notice the word “cannot”? He
didn’t say, “You shouldn’t serve both God
and money.” He said, “You cannot serve both
God and money.” You’ve got to decide, really, whether you want to be rich or
whether you want to be blessed. You have to ask yourself -
“What’s number one priority in my life?” If
God wants to give you wealth, that’s great - but it is not the number one goal
of your life. You cant take your wealth with you to heaven, but
you will take your character
So
in our main topic headings - Serving like Jesus means
(1) BEING AVAILABLE.
(2)
Serving like Jesus means BEING GRATEFUL. The Bible tells us a story in John
Chapter 11 of Jesus serving in an incredible way. His friend Lazarus
had died, and Jesus went there,- some people thought, for the funeral, but
Jesus had a different idea in mind. He went there to serve, - to
raise Lazarus from the dead. The Bible tells us in John
11:41-42, “Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank You that
You heard me. I know that You always hear Me, but I said this for
the benefit of the people standing here.’” “I want them to know
that I am grateful that you heard Me”.
Jesus had an attitude of
gratefulness in everything that He did. That was the attitude that
pervaded His ministry. His Ministry and miracles always happened in
this attitude of gratefulness. So why should we serve God, not with
a sense of duty, but with a sense of delight and gratefulness? Well
its because He’s given us new life through Jesus
Christ! And if He never did anything else for us, that alone is good
enough reason to serve Him and to be grateful for the rest of our
lives. In 2 Tim. 1:9: Paul says “who saved us and
called us to a holy life – not because of anything we have done, but because of
his own purpose and grace..” He saved us, and out of the gratefulness
of that, of what He has done for us, we serve Him.
Now, as we might expect,
there are some barriers that get in the way of our being
Grateful. One of these barriers is when we are comparing
and criticizing. ( fill in the blanks!) Those are
barriers that gets in the way of being grateful. Give two children a
bag of lollies each and the first thing they will do is compare what they have
with what the other has, and then criticize the giver! And adults do
that in life, too. But why should we do that? We’re all on the
same team. We have the same goal! God has given each of
us different abilities, different tasks - and
it’s pretty ridiculous really to compare or criticize one another for
what God has given. Comparing and criticizing get
in the way of gratefulness.
The second
barrier that gets in the way of
being grateful is wrong motives.
The Bible talks about
this in Matt. 6:1. Jesus said, “When you do good deeds, don’t try to
show off. If you do, you won’t get a reward from your Father in
heaven”. A lot of our service can be done with very mixed
motives. We might serve in order to get others to like us. We
might serve to be admired. Or maybe we even serve as sort of a
bargaining chip with God. “God, I’ll serve and You take care of me
here.” How do you know if you have a wrong
motivation? The answer is whether you are serving with a true sense
of Gratitude. When you lose a sense of gratefulness
and gratitude then you can know right away that there’s something wrong with
your motivation.
If you want to learn to
serve like Jesus, you have to learn to a) Be Available; and b)
Be Grateful. And then there’s a third thing.
Serving like Jesus
means c) being faithful. That means you
don’t give up. You keep on going. You don’t quit in the
middle of your assignment. At the end of Jesus’ ministry on earth,
Jesus said - in John 17:4,-“I have brought you glory on earth by completing
the work,”Note the words - “completing the work”, “that
You gave me to do.” I want to be able to say that when I get to
heaven – that I completed the work God gave me to do! I want you to be able to
say that too ! Jesus was faithful in fulfilling His
service. He didn’t give up. He didn’t give in. You
may retire from your job someday, but you never retire from
ministry. You never retire from service.
So what motivates us to
keep on going? The Bible says, (1Cor. 4:2) “The one thing
required of servants is that they be faithful.” What
motivates us to stay faithful in serving God over the long
haul? Well, there are a number of things which keep us
going. Being grateful for all the past that God’s forgiven in
our lives, is one thing. We also know
that what we’re doing really matters. Most of
what we do in life doesn’t matter. But any
time you’re serving in Jesus’ name, no matter how small, it matters. The
Bible says this in 1Cor. 15:58, (let’s read it,) Therefore my dear
brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the
work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Notice
“nothing”: - that means it all matters,
even the little stuff. Why? Because in God’s book, there is no
little stuff! . Jesus said, “Even
if you give a cup of cold water in my name to a child,-- that
counts.”
Significance and prominence
Some
years ago two teenage boys tried to come into an evening church
service , only it was packed out, and they couldn’t find any
seats. So they turned around and decided to leave because they
couldn’t find a seat. But one usher said, “Come on,
guys. I’ll find you a seat.” And that usher personally escorted
them down to the center and set them in the middle and found them two seats. That
night both of those boys accepted Christ and became Christians. One of
them was Billy Graham who has now led millions of people to
Christ. Do you think that usher is going to get any credit in
heaven? We have no idea of the significance of small acts. It
doesn’t matter if you’re doing something important that is well known
or if you’re doing something important that’s not well
known. It’s all important. God
brought you here to this church so that you could practice serving
– because in serving God and in serving others – you are going to
find fulfillment in your life. The best use of
your life is to invest it in that which is going to outlast it.
One day you’re going to
stand before God and He’s going to say to you, “What did you do with the life I
gave you? Will you be able to reply – “I did what you made me for –
I fulfilled the purposes you created me for.!” And God will
say (Matt. 25:21). “Well done good and faithful servant! You
have been faithful with a few things so; I will put you in charge of many things. Come
and share your master’s happiness.” You know, more than anything
else, I want God to be able to say that about you –“Well done! You
did what I put you here on earth to do!. You worshiped me, you
fellowshipped with other believers, you grew in character to be like Christ,
and you served Me, the way I shaped you. Well done! Come
on in and enjoy eternity and all the rewards I’ve planned for
you.” I want God to be able to say that about you,
because you were shaped for serving God. Let’s bow our
heads. Would you pray this?
Colin D Cruz
April 2012
