Purpose Filled Life

What if faith was never meant to feel boring — and if it does, it might be because we've been making it all about us?

In this message, we dig into one of Scripture's most compelling stories: the moment God called Abram to pack up everything at 75 years old and walk into the unknown. No map. No guarantees. Just a promise and a purpose bigger than one lifetime.

We all long for meaning. But purpose doesn't begin with chasing the right career, building the right life, or finally getting comfortable. It begins with obedience — and a willingness to ask a harder question than "What can God do for me?" The real question is: Can God trust you to bless others?

In this episode, you'll explore:

• Why God chooses imperfect people as His partners — and always has
• How obedience and purpose are more connected than you think
• Why short-sightedness is one of the biggest enemies of a meaningful life
• What it looks like when worship fuels your purpose instead of replacing it

Whether you're 17 and just starting to sense a calling, or 75 and wondering if it's too late — this message is for you. God's purpose is carried out by human hands. Maybe yours.

📖 Scripture: Genesis 12:1–8

Visit us at Generations Cowboy Church for more info about our church or find ways you can support what God is doing at GCC!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you want to click, flip in your Bible, I'm going to get there in just a minute. We're going to be in Genesis, all the way, first book of the Bible. If you're like, where's Genesis? We're going old school, Old Testament right now. You know, the thing to me in these moments that I love is just the way that God uses us. And sometimes Easter happens, and then the week after that, it's kind of like, what now? Like, like, man, we had a big service, people got saved, and now what? Now that we know Jesus is alive, how does that change the rest of our life? And so I want to spend uh the next few weeks talking about what it looks like to have a purpose-filled life. That God has given each one of us in here a purpose and a design that only we can fulfill. Every person, not special people like me, because I'm a pastor, everyone in here, God has saved you and then he's made you a part of his purpose. I remember when I felt like for the first time, God was telling me that he had a purpose and plan for my life. I was 17 years old. I can tell you the church service I was studying in. I can tell you the very things I felt like God said to me in those moments that he was going to call me into ministry to serve his purpose. And at the same time, I thought, man, God, you must be crazy. I'm 17 years old. Like, who picks a 17-year-old, especially God, to partner with him and his purpose? Like, I'm 17. I'm still putting my truck in four-wheel drive and going mudding and doing a lot of dumb things. Okay. Like, I mean, I'm still eating chili cheese burritos from Taco Bell for 99 cents. Like, I'm not making smart choices in my life still yet at 17. Anybody else there with me? And them Taco Bell 99 cent menu, praise God, they got me through my teenage years, man. Let's go. Like, I'm 17, God, you got the wrong guy. Like, maybe come back in another decade. Boys mature slower than girls. I'm just gonna say it, all right. Come back when I'm 27. I might be ready for this. And yet, God said, no, man, I'm I'm actually I'm choosing you. And like I that's kind of, I think, an important thing for us to get because God's not looking for the perfect person that's ready for what He's asked you to do. He's looking for you, wherever you're at right now, being willing to say, I tell you what, God, you saved my life. So I give it back to you to use. And if you can give me a purpose, your purpose, then it's all yours, God. That God has a knack for picking what we would consider the wrong people to be a part of his purpose. In the church world today, nobody would hire the 12 disciples to come work for them. Peter didn't have a shot, man. He's got a bad temper, and nobody else on the team is gonna get along with him. I got two other people on the team. They have a leadership complex because they keep trying to figure out how can I sit at Jesus' right hand and left hand, and they're messing up the culture and the vibe on my team, and I can't have these kind of people here. These are the things that we would say would disqualify many people from being a part of what God's called us to do. And God is saying, these are actually the exact people that I want to use to be a part of my purpose. And I want us to understand that that, man, that purpose still exists for every one of us today. We all have a purpose that God wants to do. That in our marriage, he's given you a purpose. He's put a spouse in your life so the two can become one and build something godly and beautiful. If you're a parent in the room raising kids, God has given you a purpose to raise up little humans that you get an opportunity to influence so when they grow older, they can follow Jesus too. You've got a job or a career somewhere, you have a purpose in that career path because there are people in your circle that only you get to see that you can share the hope and the good news of Jesus with that I will never see. So many times we think, man, I don't get why I have a nine to five job, and it's just so boring doing that. Well, what would happen if we begin to see God has actually given me a purpose in my nine to five job because he's surrounded me with people that need to hear and know about him so that they can have what I have. Now, all of a sudden, my nine to five has purpose. God has given you a purpose and he's given you finances in your life and given you the ability to actually make money so you can take those finances and be generous with them to help build his kingdom. Now, all of a sudden, my nine to five changes. My ability to make income changes because I'm not just there to pay the bills and survive. Like I'm actually here on purpose, for a purpose, and God is leveraging this job that I think I just have so that I can actually influence people for him. I can actually make an income and use that money to build his kingdom and bless other people so they can experience him. God has a purpose for every one of us. And if you read from Genesis to Revelation, we're gonna look in the Old Testament this week, we're gonna look in the New Testament next week, and I want you to see that God's design has always been to use people for his purpose. This wasn't something new in the New Testament that came after Jesus rose from the grave and told his disciples to go make disciples. This has actually been God's design from the very beginning that I want us to catch and see that God's purpose is carried out by human hands. I don't know about you, but that seems crazy to me that God would allow you and I to carry his purpose out in the world we live in. And yet that's exactly what he does. You want to know why we should have a marriage that's so grounded on Jesus? Because God has given you a purpose in that marriage. Because God has given you a purpose through those children to raise up little humans that would go out and do the same thing one day. We have been given a purpose. God puts that purpose in our hands. And the question is, what are we gonna do with it? Here's what I know so many people I hear tell me, man, faith is just so boring and church is just so boring. It is if you're not living life with a purpose. If you think your purpose is to just come check a box, sit in a service for an hour, give God a tip and then go home, that's incredibly boring. It is. But if the purpose to come together is because God is trying to build a community that pulls together to grow stronger in Him and then leave this place and go to my kids' sporting events and walk through my kids' schools and go to my job and take the finances God gives me and take those things and all give them to God for his purpose. Man, now life is not boring at all. Because every facet of my life suddenly carries a different meaning and purpose. And there's a generation right now growing up that's asking the question, man, what is my purpose in life? Go see how many people in high school or in college getting in that transistent season. One of the biggest questions they have is, what am I going to do with my life? When we hold the keys to that, and we're gonna look at Abraham today and see about how God gave him life and his purpose, that he chose this guy named Abraham. He's actually Abram still at this moment. God hasn't changed his name yet. And so just follow along. That's who it is. Maybe you were in Bible college, maybe you're in kids' church and you used to sing Father Abraham, right? How many sons? Same guy, right? All right, Abram. He just hasn't made it to Abraham yet. He's about to graduate. It's okay. There's a reason they don't let me sing during worship. You're welcome. Genesis 12. Are you ready? One through three. We're gonna take a look at Abraham's life, and I'm gonna help us see how God's design from the very beginning has always been to partner with us to go out and be his hands for his purpose. The Lord said to Abram, Leave your native country, your relatives, your father's family, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the families on earth will be blessed through you. I mean, think about what God just said. You're gonna talk about mind-blowing. God just said, I'm picking one man, and through you, I'm going to bless everybody on earth. That's wild. Like that God would pick the humans that we just know about 12 chapters before this, screwed everything up in the Garden of Eden, right? Like we've got a pattern in those 12 chapters that we can't seem to make the right decisions to keep following God and get this thing right. I mean, there was Noah's flood in there, there was Cain killing Abel. Like, there's a whole list of spots in those first 12 chapters where humans have made a mess of what God has tried to create, and yet God still simultaneously says, Man, I tell you, my plan is to use you to bless everybody on earth. God wants to accomplish his purpose through your hands and through my hands. That he actually wants to entrust us to be a part of his purpose and the things that he wants to do. That he could have found better partners than us. You think he could make something in creation that's better than us, but that is not the way God designed things. I need you to hear me. God wants you to carry out his purpose. It'd be easy for me to say God wants me to. God wants you to carry out his purpose. God has put his purpose in your hands. God has invited everybody here. I'm just a stay-at-home mom. Man, you get to raise kids one day that could change the world by the way you invest in them as a stay-at-home mom. That God has invited every one of us to be a part of his purpose. And I think the enemy has tried to corrupt this whole thing. And the reason so many people are unsatisfied with the church and unsatisfied with following Jesus is because we have put ourselves at the center of everything. Church is about me. What's the music that you're going to play? What's the stuff that you're going to have for me and for my family? And and am I going to enjoy the experience when I come? And so if faith is unfulfilling, it's because we're we've got it centered around the wrong thing, and it's us. Our faith is centered around Jesus, and it's centered around his purpose that he's called us to. And then everything else trickles out from there. And so the invitation is to not make this about you. The invitation is to make this about Jesus and what he wants to do through me. And that is probably the hardest thing to do in today's world because that means I have to die to what I want so that other people can experience what God wants through me. That the invitation suddenly gets a little bit more of a challenge here, that we are not the center of the universe, that God has a knack for picking imperfect people, Adam and Eve. That didn't make it past the first couple chapters of the book. Abraham, man, if you know his story, like he tried to follow God, but man, his family was jacked up. I mean, he didn't know how to follow God and not make a mess along the way. King David, everybody's like, whoo, man, King David, his life was pretty jacked up. He had to fare and murdered a man. Peter had a bad temper. We talked about it last week, chopped the dude's ear off, then denies Jesus three times. Judas betrayed him. Like, man, Jesus, you got a knack of picking the wrong people. And he's like, Nope. I've trusted my purpose in your hands. You know what that tells me? That there's no amount of failure that we can do that can mess up God's purpose. Because his purpose isn't dependent on you, it's dependent on him. I've had people say, Man, if I I just I feel so guilty because I felt like I was supposed to share my faith with that person and I didn't, and now they're gonna spend forever in hell. No, they're not. You think God is gonna trust somebody's eternity to you? Not a chance. He wanted to use you, you didn't live up to your end. He's gonna find another person to do it. We get a chance to either be part of his purpose or not. And he has a knack for using unqualified people to serve his purpose. So if you're sitting out there right now, and most of our minds, if I were you, I'd be sitting there coming up with a list of reasons about why God could never use somebody like me. Paul, named Saul, murdered a bunch of people, got saved, and become one of the biggest people that ever built the church. If God can use a murderer, he can use you and me. Because he's invited us. His purpose is something God puts in our hands to partner with him as part of this process. That is the invitation, and the blessing that comes is to be a blessing to other people. Like I love what he said, that I'm going to bless you, and through you I'll bless the nations. I don't know if we figured this out, but the knack of reason why God would bless you isn't just so you can store up everything God's given to you, but it's so that you can actually be a conduit to bless other people. You want to know how God can trust you with more? Be a conduit of his blessing. Don't dam it up. Be a conduit, it can pass through. I spent some time working for a guy digging ditches. Conduit was my favorite, man. It was so much fun. We would run hundreds of feet of this conduit, put a trash bag on the end of a line, and hook up a shop back on the other end, and you could suck all that all the way through there to run conduit through there. Why? The conduit was only valuable because it created a pathway for one thing to get from point A to point B. And if that conduit didn't allow that, it didn't serve a very good purpose. And God says the same thing about our life. I have blessed you to be a conduit so that you can carry what I've given to you to another point so that somebody else can be blessed by what I've done for you. And the people that learn to be conduits of God's blessing and let it go on to bless somebody else, God actually begins to trust with more. Why? Because I can, because you let it pass through you instead of trying to hold on to all of it. This is the way he works. This is the purpose he's invited us into. Genesis 12, 4 through 6. We'll keep rolling. So Abraham departed as the Lord had instructed, and Lot went with him. This is the part that's crazy to me. Abram was 75 years old. Any brave people who would say, I'm I'm 75 or older in the house today. Any hands want to go up, claim it. 75 or oh, come on, yeah. Got a few of you. Imagine God told you today at 75, hey, I want you to sell everything you got, pack it up and move because I got a plan for your life. Most of us at 75 would be like, whoa, this is retirement age. This is time to sell stuff to do what I want, not actually make more sacrifices to go do what you wanted me to do, God. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth, his livestock, and all the people he had taken into his household at Haran and headed for the land of Canaan. No U-Haul, no moving company, no college kids that have a moving business that I can call up to help me load up this stuff, put it on the back of donkeys, do our best to start trekking across the desert, baby, to go follow to some place God told me to go at 75 years old. And when they arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem, and there he set up a camp beside the Oak at Morah. And at that time, the area was inhabited by the Canaanites. Think about that. At 75 years old, Abram packed up his entire life and went to follow God's plan. Like you'd think God would pick like a 16-year-old. Has a little less stuff, a little easier to move, a little more energy and rigor, and sometimes I think God picks the most obsolete person from who we think he would pick, so that he can see that, hey, only I could accomplish what I'm trying to do here. That God invites everybody without excuse when you are called to be a part of his purpose and to be used by God. This is the part I think a lot of people say, I want to be used by God. But here's what being used by God requires it requires obedience to God. Abraham was invited to be a part of God's purpose, but Abraham still had to pack up everything and move to be used by God. God didn't like pull a Star Trek thing and make everything magically just disappear from here and then plant it over there for him. Abram had to put in the work and actually obey God. That he invited Abram to partner with him, but that partnership required obedience from him. Why? Because blessing follows obedience in our life. You want to learn how God can trust you with more? Obey him with what he's already given you. You want to figure out how to live out the purpose that God has for your life? It will always look like obedience. Always. And I hear so many people, man, they tell me things like, man, God told me to do this. Like I know God spoke to me. I know he told me to sign up for this group and be a group leader, and I'm gonna do this. All right. And then three months later, they're crying and I'm out and I quit. Wait a minute. Did God call you to do this? Well, yeah, but I didn't know it was gonna be this hard, so I'm done. Obedience isn't always going to be easy. And for most of us, we keep asking God to tell us something else. I'm just waiting for another word from the Lord so I can know where to be obedient with. He's like, You're not obedient with what I've already told you. Why would I ask you to do something else? Be obedient with what you have, and he'll know he can trust you to be obedient and more. That's the challenge, that's the call and the struggle for most of us. I promise to be uncomfortably real. It's just the way I roll. To me, obedience is so important because at the end of the day, obedience is nothing more than faith in action. You want to know why God asks you to obey? Because He says that without faith, it's impossible to please God. And one of the fruit of faith in our life. You want to see how much faith in God you have? How much do you obey him and follow him? Because if you don't obey him, you don't have faith in him. Obedience isn't faith isn't about this feeling I have here or this feeling I have here. Faith without works is dead, is what James tells us. Faith without obedience is not faith, it's dead. Because if that worked, then the Pharisees would have got in and Jesus didn't have to come die on the cross because they had all the rules they needed. Obedience is nothing more than faith in action. And for most of us, the reason we struggle to be obeyed and to obey Jesus and here, it's just gonna be really uncomfortably real because it's going to cost us our comfort and our convenience. It is uncomfortable and inconvenient to obey God. And if you are waiting for Him to make it comfortable and convenient, it's not God. Abram was 75. Hack everything up, go to this land. Terribly uncomfortable, terribly inconvenient, didn't fit into the game plan that Abram had for his life, but he had to do the uncomfortable and the inconvenient thing so that God could use him to be a blessing to other people. And most of us miss out on God's purpose because we're not willing to be uncomfortable and it's kind of inconvenient. Just being honest. Like this is where I see most people struggle to get momentum in their relationship with God. Is because to be honest, it's uncomfortable to obey God sometimes. It's gonna go against culture instead of with culture. It's going to cost me some of my time. It's gonna cost me some of my personal time. It means I'm gonna have to get up early. Or I might have to stay up late. It's gonna cost me, I may not be able to do all the hobbies that I'm used to doing because I'm gonna have to sacrifice some of that time to do what God called me to do. It's gonna be uncomfortable because it may ask me to move, and I'm comfortable here, God. Like Abram's story, I can relate to just a little bit. I mean, moving to a place where I had nothing more than one relationship three years ago was a bit of an uncomfortable moment. Walking away from every source of income and moving with no source of income was a little bit uncomfortable and inconvenient for a season in my life. Trying to plant a church and work a full time job to provide for those things simultaneously was uncomfortable and inconvenient in my life. But to a Accomplish the purpose God has called us to. Sometimes He's going to ask us to do uncomfortable and inconvenient things. This morning, the setup team showed up here around 6:45 to put in all this work so you could walk through the doors and enjoy church service. Kind of inconvenient for them. Maybe a little uncomfortable for their families. Especially if you got littles in the house. I have even more respect for the ones that have littles in the house and do this. Today, during kids' church, somebody is back there leading your kids in worship and teaching them about Jesus. And sometimes I know you have a little angel, but other people's kids are a little feral sometimes. I'm just saying. It's not yours, it's somebody else's kids. Yours are perfect. But other people's kids are a little feral sometimes. And they're doing it anyway because it's inconvenient and it's uncomfortable. But God has given them a better, bigger purpose and He's put it in their hands. And so they're teaching your kids about Jesus right now. They're leading them in worship. They're sharing scriptures with them so that they can grow in their faith. Hospitality team shows up to serve donuts, to welcome people as they're coming in, to make sure we can serve you if you have any questions and how can we make sure you have what you need? Worship team, and they sacrifice evenings practicing and putting all this stuff together at coming in early to practice. And many of those help set up and then lead worship. And then sound and audio is the most thankless job in the world because when everything works like it's supposed to, nobody recognizes them. But then when the slide doesn't pop up or the microphone starts humming, all eyes turn on them. Hey, listen to me. Please hear me out. If you ever have an issue with the sound or video here, come talk to me. Leave my guys alone back there. All right. They're doing their best. If it's too loud or too quiet, come tell me. I got one good ear. It's this one. You can tell me in this ear. No, I'm just kidding. Hey, listen, I'm gonna do this. If you serve in some capacity here in some way, in some shape or form, in any area, whatever that might look like, could you stand up for just a moment? Come on. I know most of you don't want to do that. I want you guys to see. Like these are the heroes to me, man. These are the people. They do the uncomfortable and the inconvenient. Thank you guys. Thank you for doing that. We get to enjoy these moments because somebody's willing to do the uncomfortable thing. Somebody's willing to do the inconvenient thing. We wouldn't be here without them. And I think the enemy has done an incredible job convincing us that if I could just get more comfortable in my life, then everything would be better. I will say this till the day I die. I told my kids this growing up in the house, too. Comfort is nothing more than a lie. Comfort is actually your enemy in life. Here's what I can tell you. Most marriages have issues because we're not willing to do the uncomfortable thing and deal with the issue. So we're just going to pretend like everything's okay and I won't do the uncomfortable thing and actually address the issue or ask somebody for help. Raising kids is sometimes the most challenging thing if, as parents, we're not willing to do the uncomfortable thing that our kid needs us to do. You want to learn how to be a disciple and a follower of Jesus and do community together? Man, you better figure out how to do the uncomfortable thing because everybody wants relationships. It's the big buzzword in the church world, right? Community and relationships. Well, here's what I can tell you: every person in a relationship brings baggage into a relationship. And you get three choices at that moment. We can trip over each other's baggage, we can unpack that baggage, or we can just walk out on this relationship. And everybody wants community. I don't want to do the work of helping deal with somebody else's baggage or unpack my own baggage so that we can actually have a relationship together. Why? Because it's uncomfortable. Comfort is your enemy, it is not your friend. And the sooner you will do the uncomfortable thing, the sooner you will see God move in your life. I promise. We're gonna keep rolling. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and He said, I will give this land to your descendants. And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the Lord who had appeared to him. You know what's crazy to me? God told Abram to go to this land. And then he said, I'm gonna give it to your descendants. I mean, that meant Abram was never actually in his lifetime going to see the promise God gave him fulfilled. God didn't say, Hey, Abram, I'm gonna give this land to you. He just said, I'm going to give this land to your descendants. Which means God is asking Abraham to put an incredible amount of trust and faith in him that he's called me to a purpose that I won't even see in my lifetime. But I need you to do it anyway because there's another generation after you that's going to benefit from your step of faith now. But if you don't take this step, the next generation won't get theirs. Hear me. God's purpose for our life is bigger than most of us will ever see in our lifetime. This is why I say you're not the center of your life and your faith. Jesus is. Don't put yourself in the center because when we do, then we come up with reasons why we can't be a part of God's purpose. But when we leave Jesus in the center, then it doesn't matter if it gets accomplished in my lifetime or not, God, if I have to pour out my life to set up the next generation to benefit from what you're doing through me, then let me never see that blessing so that my kids or my grandkids can. If you don't believe this is scriptural and I'm just pulling something out of the air, if you're reading in the Bible plan with us right now, we're reading through the story of Ruth. And sometimes we hit genealogies in scripture. Anyone else like do your eyes roll in the back of your head a little bit when you hit genealogies? And you start speed reading through those because I can't pronounce most of the names anyway, right? And I just kind of okay, here we're back to the story again. Let me give you a history lesson from the book of Ruth. Perez is named in the book of Ruth on purpose. If you know Perez's story, he came about from a very scandalous relationship between his mom and somebody that should have been his grandpa but didn't do what he was supposed to do in a very messy situation. And yet, in spite of how broken Perez's life was, you jump a couple of generations and all of a sudden there's this man named Boaz who comes from the line of Perez. And even though Perez's life was scandalous and it was imperfect and some bad things happened and didn't go his way, today's, I gotta, that's a different sermon. I gotta stop. I gotta stay on task. Uh ha. Listen, church hurt is one of the biggest tools the enemy is going to use to keep you from experiencing what God wants in your life. And the sooner you can deal with your junk and move on from that hurt, the sooner you can live out the purpose that God has for you. The longer you live in that hurt, the longer you're gonna stay stuck in your relationship and not accomplish what God wants for you. Because Boaz existed and was a godly man following him, even though Perez's life was jacked up in some bad circumstances. And that tells me somewhere along the way, Perez began to create some kind of legacy that impacted Boaz. And he was a man of God, a man of integrity who followed the Lord. And then somewhere along the way, Ruth shows up. She's not even one of the Israelites, she's a foreigner who decided to give up her gods and surrender her life to God and become a woman of God. And Ruth and Boaz get married, and these two godly people form a relationship, and then their great grandson is King David. Maybe God is inviting you to build a marriage centered on him now, because your great grandson, God is wanting to call, to do some incredible things, and you just think, man, I just got marriage problems right now, and I don't know if I want to deal with them. And God's like, man, if you would deal with them and center this thing on God, the thing I could do through future generations, if you could see past this moment to see what I see, David's coming. If you'll just do this now, David's coming. God's purpose is almost always bigger than we ever experience in our lifetime. But we're so short-sighted that we can only see what's happening here and now. And we miss out on what God's trying to do because we don't see God's playing chess and we're just playing checkers trying to figure out the next move. And when we let God have control of our life and go to live his purpose, we begin to realize that he's putting a pattern together that is actually building a legacy that lives longer than you or I will ever even realize. And I've said this from the get-go, it's my heart. My goal is to not just see your kids love Jesus. My goal, if I do this thing right, is to see my grandkids love and follow Jesus. Because if I disciple my kids and train them upright so that they actually disciple their kids to train them upright, then it doesn't matter what happens to me. One day I don't have to be here anymore because I've built a legacy that can outlive me and follow God because I've taught them how to reproduce themselves. That is the purpose to build something that will outlive us. What if one day God is asking you to set up chairs and invest and give? Because one day, years from now, God's going to build a church on land somewhere and build a building that's going to be a blessing two or three generations from now that you and I won't even be here to see. Your grandkids, your great-grandkids might actually begin to have a space where they can come and see and grow in Him. Genesis 12, 8. I'm almost done. I promise. And after that, Abram traveled south to set up a camp in the hill country with Bethel to the west and Ai to the east. Then he built another altar and dedicated it to the Lord, and he worshiped the Lord. Hear me out. Last point. I promise I'm done. If you're taking notes, you should write this one down. Type it in your phone somewhere. God's purpose never replaces his worship. So many people want to do something for God to try to earn something in my relationship. God, if I man, I've messed up so bad. If I could just serve somewhere, then maybe, maybe God could see that I'm worth something. Or the other temptation in ministry is that I begin to serve so much that I don't take the time to worship God myself. I love Abram's story even though I'm following God's purpose, it's never such a big purpose that I don't make the time to worship God in the process. Because God's purpose never replaces his worship. You want to raise a generation in your home or generations to come that worship God, you worship God. And make worshiping Him your purpose and following Him. I remember when I felt like the Lord called me into ministry and I was in ministry early on. One of the things that God said to me is, Don't ever let the work of ministry replace your time with me. There's a temptation, even in what I do, to say, man, I read the Bible sermon prepping. Guess what? Tomorrow's Monday. You know what happens tomorrow on Mondays? Start sermon prepping for next Sunday because Sunday's always coming. And there's a temptation, man. I can make sermon prepping and that, my Bible time with Jesus, but the problem is that I'm never taking the time to spend with God myself. I'm always looking at ways to give out to somebody else. And hear me, you can't give out what isn't poured into you first. You want to learn to serve his purpose, make your relationship with God and worshiping him the top priority in your life, and he can always use you to accomplish his purpose. Never let his purpose trump our worship for him. When worship dries up, purpose disappears. You want to hear me? I can point out any church that you and I have ever been a part of that will have problems. Our church, we're gonna have problems. When worship dries up, purpose disappears, and when purpose disappears, that's where drama and all these other problems get in. Because we've quit focusing on what we're supposed to focus on, his purpose, and we're now focusing on me and what I want and what I think should happen. And or I don't like what you did and you don't like what I did, and when worship dries up, purpose disappears. When purpose disappears, problems always surface. And every church that's facing problems, there's a temptation to take your eyes off God's purpose. Why would Satan bring problems into your life? Because if he can get you focused on your problems, he can get you distracted from God's purpose. And so the question for all of us, man, in this why did God save us? Why did he raise back from the dead? And if he's alive and he saved us, he didn't just do that so that we can wait one day to get to heaven and then enjoy him. He saved us and invited us into his purpose so that we can go out and other people can come to know him through us. And that is our purpose on this side of eternity until we get to heaven and we spend forever with him. And when we get a hold of that purpose, this life has way more meaning. God wants to use you right where you are. He has you strategically positioned on purpose for a purpose. I'm a teacher in school. Yep, he's got you right where he wants you. And I own a business and run a business. Yep. And he surrounded you with customers because he's got a purpose for you and people he wants. I got coworkers, I got kids, parents on my all team that look to me. He's got you perfectly positioned in a position of influence to reach people that he's called you to reach. Heaven's coming one day. Between now and then, the goal is to fill that thing up with as many people as we can in this life that we have right now to do it. And that's what we're gonna give our life to. Will there be problems along the way? Shoot ya. Will I go after God's purpose in ways that you might not like? Probably. But we're gonna stay focused on his purpose and let the problems settle themselves. God has a purpose for you. And the question that you gotta ask yourself is, man, am I going to fulfill that purpose? Is my faith in Jesus fueling my purpose in life? Is my faith in Jesus fueling my purpose in life? Or is my job? My finances? My 10, 20, 30 year plan that I got, God, don't mess with that. My schedule, God, it's kind of full. You know what? Some of us can't live out our purpose because we don't have room in our got in our life for God's purpose. The invitation is to surrender our life to be a part of his purpose in something that's bigger than us. So I want you to stand all across this place. And I've got some friends that are gonna come down and we're gonna take a moment to pray together. We're gonna take a moment in worship. And if you're here, man, is my faith in Jesus fueling my purpose in life? That's the question. I want you to just, man, can we take a couple minutes and wrestle with that? And if the answer is no, please be honest enough to just say it's not. And maybe you're distracted because you get some stuff going on in life. Cool, man. I got some friends down here that would love an opportunity to pray with you. Don't carry that stuff on your own. Don't carry the weight on your own. Don't feel like I gotta be strong enough on my own. That is not what God ever called you to do. He brought this community together so we could be strong for each other. Maybe you're distracted by some things in your life. Maybe you just need to come down and own it with somebody. Say, hey, would you pray with me? Like I got some things distracting me from what God has called me to do. And I want to know how to get rid of those distractions so I can stay focused on his purpose. As they lead us in worship, if you need prayer, don't miss an opportunity to come down and let somebody pray with you. Let's worship and let's give Jesus a moment to speak to us about what our faith is focused on.