Dear Friends

 

Last month Fiona and I attended a thanksgiving service for someone we deeply admired.   He wasn’t a dynamic speaker (I don’t recall every hearing him speak publicly), a great leader or the life and soul of the party but he obviously spent a lot of time with Jesus. There was a Christ-likeness about him (and his wife).  As we sat in the thanksgiving service and heard close family members and friends tell their stories of this man, it became clear that ours weren’t the only lives he had impacted, and that his had been a life lived well; a life lived with purpose.

 

As I reflected on what it means to live life on purpose, I realised that it is easy for us to spend our lives pursuing that one great purpose that God has for us, like some cosmic “Mission Impossible” where we look for God to reveal our “mission, should we choose to accept it!”  When we live like this, however, our purpose becomes all about some elusive future plan, and we are in danger of missing out on the here and now.

 

I believe that our purpose is much less about some great mission that God has for us, and much more about living out our lives where we are here and now.  It is about living out our purpose in our family, as husbands and wives, as parents and children.  It is about our purpose in our home, in our school or our workplace. It is our purpose as we serve in our church, and as we live amongst our friends and our neighbours.

 

There is a desire in so many of us to achieve something great for God in our lives, but the problem is that we often associate greatness with the world’s values.  I believe that true greatness is simply found in the humble place of devoting our lives to God in the here and now.  I believe that the impact of such a life is way beyond our understanding, as God takes our devotion and fulfills his purposes through us.

 

As we move further into 2014, let us look at our lives and consider what it means to live out the purposes of God right where we are.   I'm excited at the prospect of what God could do through the  Liberty Church family!

love

Jon