Our God-Given Purpose
Our God-given purpose is to fulfill our created purpose and bring praise to God's glory, and we must prioritize the passion for Christ over the passion for souls to truly follow God.
Oswald Chambers preaches about the purpose of believers in Christ, emphasizing that our primary aim is to bring praise to God's glory by trusting in Him. He warns against focusing solely on winning souls or doing good deeds, as our true passion should be for Christ Himself, not just for Christian work. Chambers highlights the importance of manifesting the life of Jesus in our daily struggles and challenges, showing that our response to disagreeable situations reveals whether we are truly reflecting Christ's character in our lives.
Text
" ...that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory." Eph 1:12
"The joy of anything... is to fulfill its created purpose: 'that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.' (Eph 1:12)
"We are not here to win souls, to do good to others. That is the natural outcome, but it is not our aim, and this is where so many of us cease to be followers. We will follow God as long as He makes us a blessing to others, but when He does not, we will not follow.
"Suppose our Lord had measured His life by whether or not He was a blessing to others. Why, He was a 'stone of stumbling' to thousands, actually to His own neighbors, to His own nation... and in His own country 'He did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief' (Matt. 13:58).
"If our Lord had measured His life by its actual results, He would have been full of misery. We get switched off when instead of following God we follow Christian work and workers. We are much more concerned over the passion for souls than the passion for Christ....
"The passion for souls in not a New Testament idea at all, but religious commercialization. When we are taken up with this passion, the joy of the Lord is never ours but only an excitable joy which always leaves a snare behind."
The habit of enjoying the disagreeable
"That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 2 Cor. 4:10
"...It is not a question of being saved from hell, but of being saved in order to manifest the life of the Son of God in our mortal flesh, and it is the disagreeable things which make us exhibit whether or not we are manifesting His life. Do I manifest the essential sweetness of the Son of God, or the essential irritation of 'myself' apart from Him?
'The only thing that will enable me to enjoy the disagreeable is the keen enthusiasm of letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in me. No matter how disagreeable a thing may be, say 'Lord, I am delighted to obey Thee in this matter,' and instantly the Son of God will press to the front, and there will be manifested in my human life that which glorifies Jesus.
"There must be no debate. The moment you obey the light, the Son of God presses through you in that particular; but if you debate you grieve the Spirit of God. You must keep yourself [spiritually] fit to let the life of the Son of God be manifested, and you cannot keep yourself fit if you give way to self-pity. Our circumstances are the means of manifesting how wonderfully perfect and extraordinarily pure the Son of God is. The thing that ought to make the heart beat is a new way of manifesting the Son of God. It is one thing to choose the disagreeable, and another thing to go into the disagreeable by God's engineering. If God puts you there, He is amply sufficient." (May 14)
Sermon Outline
- I. Our God-Given Purpose
- A. To fulfill our created purpose and bring praise to God's glory
- B. Not to win souls or do good to others, but to follow God
- II. The Passion for Souls vs. The Passion for Christ
- A. The passion for souls is a form of religious commercialization
- B. We must prioritize the passion for Christ over the passion for souls
- III. Enjoying the Disagreeable
- A. The life of Jesus is made manifest in our mortal flesh
- B. We must let the life of the Son of God manifest itself in us, even in difficult circumstances
Key Quotes
“The joy of anything... is to fulfill its created purpose: 'that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.' (Eph 1:12)” — Oswald Chambers
“The only thing that will enable me to enjoy the disagreeable is the keen enthusiasm of letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in me.” — Oswald Chambers
“There must be no debate. The moment you obey the light, the Son of God presses through you in that particular; but if you debate you grieve the Spirit of God.” — Oswald Chambers
Application Points
- We must prioritize the passion for Christ over the passion for souls to truly follow God.
- We can enjoy the disagreeable circumstances in life by letting the life of the Son of God manifest itself in us.
- We must keep ourselves spiritually fit by obeying God's light and not giving way to self-pity.