Purpose. What's Yours - And How Do You Know?

My son Adam has a friend I'll call Ben. The two of them met online in a web-based training program for professional animators. Ben lives in Alaska; he is a very quiet guy; and he and his family have absolutely no connection of any kind with church or the Christian faith.

Now, since making connections in the animation industry is tough from Alaska, Adam invited Ben to come live with our family in Missouri. We invited Ben to church often; we invited him to join us in prayer; Adam invited him to the Bible study he was involved in; we had our natural family conversations about faith around him; when my wife was in the last days of her battle with cancer, we included him in our prayer times and times of devotional singing. In short, I know Ben saw a lot of the whole range of experience that we would call the Christian life.

Okay, so I'm confident the Holy Spirit was at work the whole time; I won't deny Him that. But as far as I could tell, our witness didn't have an impact on Ben's resistance.

I don't know for sure if it would have made a difference, but there is something that came to me later, after he had returned to Alaska (why does it so often seem to happen that way?). I know that Ben would at least have to have put in some thought if I had asked him one question: BEN, WHAT'S YOUR PURPOSE?

Visionary Gabe Lyons beautifully articulates purpose as Christians understand it in his book The Next Christians: "The next Christians believe that Christ's death and resurrection were not only meant to save people from something. He wanted to save Christians to something. God longs to restore his image in them, and let them loose, freeing them to pursue his original dreams for the entire world. Here, now, today, tomorrow."

Yes! As the one thing in all creation that God made in His own image, humans were made to work alongside Him in caring for everything else He had made; and in a fallen universe, God still calls us to work alongside Him -- to help Him restore everything to Himself again -- starting with other humans.

But if you don't believe in God -- if you're convinced, for example, that we're all here by way of a process of random mutations and other happenstances -- how do you discover your purpose? How can you even intuit that you have one? And if you do discover something you believe to be your purpose, where'd it come from? No, really -- where'd it come from?

The thing is, faith or no faith, people want to know their purpose; they search for it daily. Google it for yourself: just type in "What is my purpose in life?" What you'll find is that folks from Focus on the Family to Forbes to Psychology Today -- and on and on -- have advice for you. More often than not, if the adviser does not have God to point to, then he or she will try to persuade you that your purpose comes from within you.

But in a worldview without God -- in a universe where you and I might be random results of random occurrences -- that explanation doesn't satisfy. "What's your purpose?" becomes a question without an answer. In a worldview with God ... well, it's really not a mystery.

Your turn. What's your purpose? What would you have to share with a guy like Ben?

You can share your comments by clicking here.

Some Weren't Sent ... But They Went

Shavuot was one of the three major pilgrimage festivals for which devout first-century Jews traveled to Jerusalem annually. It was also known as the Feast of Weeks, because you counted seven weeks, or 49 days, from Passover, and then held Shavuot on the fiftieth day. Most people know Shavuot by the Greek word for "fiftieth day": Pentecost.

Shavuot commemorated the giving of the Torah to Israel by God at Mount Sinai. So historically it was linked to the exodus-and probably the reason they held it so soon after Passover. The fact that Jewish males were expected, no matter where they lived, to come to Jerusalem for both Passover and Shavuot no doubt posed challenges for some people. If you lived in faraway Syria or Egypt or Mesopotamia (Iraq) or Parthia (Iran), you had to travel a long way and a long time to get to and from these events. No wonder not many folks made every pilgrimage every year.

Some indeed came from all those places, though; Acts 2 says so. Remember? The disciples suddenly turn up speaking the native languages of all these diaspora Jews, and the pilgrims say to each other, "We are Parthians, Medes, Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judah, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome; Jews by birth and proselytes; Jews from Crete and from Arabia...! How is it that we hear them speaking in our own languages about the great things God has done?"

Christians around the world celebrated the modern feast of Pentecost a little more than a week ago. What might the pilgrims who attended that world-shaking first Pentecost of the Christian era likely have been doing a little more than a week after the event? Probably traveling the road home. And there's something that intrigues me about that.

You see, right after His resurrection, Jesus told His disciples (John 20:21), "As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you." But they didn't go right away.

Next Jesus took the disciples to a mountain in Galilee and sent them (Matthew 28), saying "Make disciples of all nations." But then He told them to go to Jerusalem and wait -- so they didn't go right away.

And on the Mount of Olives Jesus told the disciples that they would be His witnesses to the remotest places on earth (Acts 1), but again, He told them to wait in Jerusalem -- so they didn't go right away.

Then in Acts 2 we read about the pouring-out of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem and the church being born when 3,000 people believed and were baptized. Still, we don't get a report of one of the disciples who had been sent by Jesus actually going anywhere until Acts 8, when Philip, followed by Peter and John, went to evangelize up the road in Samaria.

Yet in the very next chapter of Acts, we get the story of Saul traveling to Damascus, in Syria, to round up a whole group of believers. If by this point Jesus' disciples were only just beginning to move outside Jerusalem, where did these believers 1,800 miles away in Damascus come from? Well, how about from among those 3,000 diaspora Jews who had been in Jerusalem for Shavuot?

There's no question that Jesus sent His disciples -- but the first believers who actually went -- and shared the Gospel -- were probably those festival pilgrims.
Can this have meaning for us today?

Yes. Here's just one example. Close to two million people living in the United States are non-immigrant internationals -- many of them students. Most are here for a short time; most intend to return to their home countries. Often, when they discover that Christianity is not just a western religion, not just a religion for people of European descent, many want to know more -- and some come to faith in Jesus. And when they return to their countries, they carry the Gospel back with them.

It's like an international mission field right here under our noses.

Can you and I respond to this opportunity right now? Again, yes! Here are some things we can do:

* Be faithful to the Lord who sends all of us -- and to His message of salvation.
* Praise God for changing the hearts of many Shavuot pilgrims 2,000 years ago and then sending them back home carrying the Good News about Jesus.
* Watch and listen for when and where the Spirit might call us and send us.
* Trust God's promise that His Word will accomplish the purpose for which He sent it.
* Pray. A lot.

Let the church's recent celebration of Pentecost remind you that each of us is sent -- some of us across oceans and continents, and some of us across the street or across town. Regardless where, there are people there who are hungry for the Good News we have to share.

"Then (Jesus) said to His disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest'" (Matthew 9:37-38).

Funny how things work out and how the Lord achieves His purposes -- sometimes in some very interesting ways.

You can share your comments by clicking here.