Why Am I Here?

Why am I Here? 

Psalm 145, 1 Cor. 10:31

If God created us with such care and detail, breathed life into our lungs and made us in His image, we must have a magnificent purpose. 

One of greatest questions of life is “why am I here?” “What is my purpose?” 

And embedded in that question is the quest for happiness. For joy and contentment. 

You will only find joy and contentment when you find your purpose. 

Picture the sermon today like a funnel…I’m going to talk about our broad purpose, and as we go through the sermon our focus will get more and more specific. 

Why are we here? 

Read Psalm 145 and 1 Cor. 10:31

1. Our Purpose is to Glorify God 

The Westminster Confession of 1646, one of the earliest confessions of the Protestant church:  The chief end of man is to Glorify God and enjoy him forever. 

This fits with our primary prayer and goal as a congregation: to love God more deeply than we ever have and to pursue him more passionately than we ever have. 

This prayer, this goal, can be summed up like this: the desire of my heart is to find my joy, my contentment, my satisfaction in Christ alone. I pray that is your hearts desire as well. Nothing can satisfy your soul like Jesus. 

John Piper- God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. 

Psalm 37: Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. 

How does that work? If you are delighting in God, what are the desires of your heart? God. And God will always, without fail, give you the gift of himself. 

Jonathan Edwards- God is glorified not only in his glory being seen but in it’s being rejoiced in. 

Jackie Hill Perry- He is so much greater than the greatest thing. Knowing this…He becomes the aim of all our doing. Because if God is bigger than we can imagine, we are wasting our time to chase after someone or something less than Him.

Our purpose, the reason we exist, is to glorify God. 

2. If our purpose is to glorify God, how do we do it? 

a. To glorify God is to worship. 

Worship-with our words, our actions, and our entire lives. 

God’s passion to be glorified in my life and my passion to be happy are fulfilled in the same act: the act of worship. 

In other words, the more we delight in the glory of God, the more God is glorified in us. 

Worship is far more than what we do here on Sunday mornings. Sunday morning worship is simultaneously an overflow and a refill of what you’ve done all week. It is an overflow because if you haven’t worshipped all week, your worship on Sunday morning won’t be what it could be. It is a refill because worshipping Monday through Saturday can be tough, so Sunday church refills your worship tank so you are ready to hit the ground running again on Monday. 

(This is one reason I can’t fathom missing church!) 

Our culture worships stuff. And that worship has crept into Christianity. To make it sound more spiritual we call it blessings. Too much of Christianity, even in the Baptist church, is consumed with getting the things that are attached to Christ. The products of a relationship with Christ. 

Be consumed with Christ. Be consumed with the glory and the honor and the wonder and the magnificence of Christ. 

b. True worship is absolute surrender. 

Romans 12:1- Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship.

True worship, truly living for the glory of God is to throw yourself on the altar of surrender. 

That is scary, but it is not unsafe. It might sound radical, but it is not unreasonable. If God spoke you into existence, breathed life into your lungs, and revealed himself to you through this word, the most logical, reasonable thing you can do is surrender everything to him. 

If you surrender everything to God you will never lack anything. If you hold on to everything for dear life, afraid to lose it, you’ve already lost it because it will never bring you the joy you hoped it would. 

Surrender. 

Anything you hold back will come an idol. 

Paul said in Philippians 3…

7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as rubbish (dung), so that I may gain Christ and be found in him…

When Paul says he considers them rubbish, dung, he not only means that he considers them as not having any value, but also that he does not live with them constantly on his mind. What kind of person sits around thinking about manure all day? 

If I can know Christ, I will surrender everything else. I will surrender the rubbish of everything else for the treasure of knowing Christ. 

God turns around and gives back the things you need and the things he wants you to have, along with peace, joy, and contentment that comes from surrendering everything to God. 

c. True surrender results in obedience

-The first act of obedience is to the gospel. Repentance and faith. This is the first step in finding your purpose. 

-Obedience to the call to holiness. 

Purity. 

A desire to glorify God ultimately must result in a desire for holiness. 

Can I glorify God in what I am about to do? In the daily choices I make. The things I think about. The things I look at. The things I listen to. The things I say. Can I do those things and simultaneously glorify God?

-Obedience to the call to stewardship. 

A desire to glorify God must result in a desire to be a good steward of everything God has given us. 

Not just our possessions, but our entire lives. Our time, our efforts, our hopes and dreams. And yes our money and possessions. If your desire in life is to glorify God, and I think most of us would say that that is our desire, why then do we live as though our only goal is to satisfy ourselves? 

I’ve been thinking a lot about stewardship lately. In every area of our lives. Generations before us built great things and made great discoveries and wrote and read great literature, and our generations spend hours a day staring at our phones. We aren’t redeeming the time as God commands us to. 

And about financial stewardship…

How can a person say they love God and that their desire is to glorify God and be obedient to God, and then willfully withhold something from God, something that belongs to God anyway. Financial stewardship can’t be separated from the rest of your Christian walk. 

It makes no sense, and yet many of us are doing just that. Don’t talk to me about worship or surrender if you are holding something back from God. You can deceive the people around you but you are not deceiving God. You are robbing God and ultimately you are robbing yourself. 

Whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God. 

-Obedience to the great commission. 

Glorifying God cannot be just a private matter. We are called to share his glory with the nations. To make his name famous. We are created in the image of God in order to reflect and represent God. 

-Obedience to the call to service. 

Your broad purpose is to glorify God, but you have a specific purpose as well.

God has gifted you to do certain things in his kingdom, in his church, and for his glory. Figure out what those things are and do them. 

3. Where are we headed? 

If we have a purpose in this life, and finding and fulfilling that purpose is the most important thing we can do in this life. 

And we know that this life is not all there is and there is a destination after this life, and getting to the right destination after this life is very important, then our purpose and our destination must be connected. 

What is our destination? Where are we headed? 

To the place where we will be able to live out our purpose perfectly. 

With all my heart I desire to glorify God in all that I do. And I do not. I cannot. But one day I will. 

Heaven is about enjoying God’s glory for eternity. Everything else is just icing on the cake. I don’t expect to even notice the streets of gold or the gates of pearl. 

I expect to see my loved ones again, and I’m looking forward to that day, but my joy in heaven will not be because I have seen my loved ones again. My joy in heaven will be complete because my sanctification will be complete and because I will enjoy the glory of God without the restrictions of my own wicked heart. 

You will see your loved ones again, but you will not glory in seeing your loved ones, you and your loved ones will together bask in the glory of Almighty God! 

This is your purpose. Your purpose was thwarted because of sin, but your purpose can be restored by placing your faith in Jesus. To reject the gospel is reject the fulfillment of your very purpose. To reject the gospel is to reject the very reason for your existence. To reject the gospel is to reject the ability to glorify God in this life, and if you refuse to glorify God in this life, why would you expect to have the opportunity to glorify him in eternity.