PDL Day 7
I’ve been reading the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren, and although I’m not as consistent as I should be, I still find immense pleasure in this devotional when I make the time for it. The theme for today is: our Purpose is to glorify God—“It’s all for Him”. Not to glorify ourselves, but to uplift Him with our lives (even though we can’t make God any more glorious than we can make the sun any brighter). There was a specific passage in the chapter that hit me fast:
Living the rest of your life for the glory of God will require a change in your priorities, your schedule, your relationships, and everything else. It will sometimes mean choosing a difficult path instead of an easy one. Even Jesus struggled with this. Knowing he was about to be crucified, he cried out: “My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour?’ But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify thy name.”
Jesus stood at a fork in the road. Would he fulfill his purpose and bring glory to God, or would he shrink back and live a comfortable, self-centered like? You face the same choice. Will you live for your own goals, comfort, and pleasure, or will you live the rest of your life for God’s glory, knowing that he has promised eternal rewards? The Bible says, “Anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life. But if you let it go, … you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.“
It’s time to settle this issue. Who are you going to live for—yourself or God? You may hesitate, wondering whether you will have the strength to live for God. Don’t worry. God will give you what you need if you will make the choice to live for him.
I can say right now that I have literally given up everything to follow Him. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do, yet I wouldn’t trade it for all the riches and fame in the world, just because of how much closer I’ve gotten to Christ since then. It’s ridiculous.
And after reading this passage, I realized that God never asks us to do anything that He himself didn’t demonstrate for us. At this horrible hour, we see Jesus Christ facing the reality that in a few minutes time, He is about to be taken away by his “disciple” Judas and a mob to suffer pain and crucifixion. I mean, this is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. I don’t think He forgot who He was. He could have thrown up the dueces, said, “I ain’t gonna have nails stuck in me by nobody!” and snapped his fingers to bring out a legion of angels to save Him. He could have done it his way, and we know that He didn’t want to suffer pain. But the story didn’t turn out like that. What does He do? He chooses to forsake his own life (literally) to pursue the will of God; the Purpose for His life. And because He chose to live for God and not for Himself (funny, considering living for God would mean living for Himself, if you get it! Haaa), we have the privilege as Christians to stand here today, confidently, knowing that at the end of our lives we can come before God, righteous.
And when Rick Warren wrote the above, I thought, wow, we really do have two choices: either to live for ourselves, or to live for God. To glorify ourselves, or to glorify God. And honestly speaking, I’ve spent a lot of time in an attempt to glorify myself—beauty, fashion, positions, titles, money, and it ain’t happening. Somebody please tell me what the point is in living for something that’s going to end after a certain period of time?! There is no Purpose in living for myself! But in living for something greater than myself, something that goes beyond myself and that lasts forever? When you live for your Purpose of glorifying God, your Creator, the Creator of the Universe, your life will finally have meaning—as funny as it sounds, your life has Purpose when you finally start living for your Purpose.
It was only after I truly decided to commit my life to the Lord that I realized how sad and empty my life before full dedication to Christ was. It’s bland and confusing and empty and vagrant. But a life for God, the one that I’m living right now, the only life worth living? It has eternal significance and value. It’s funny, because before reading today’s chapter I was thinking to myself, “I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I can truly be committed to the life I want to live,” because it really is a hard life. It’s a fulfilling life, but it ain’t easy. It gets quite discouraging sometimes because I don’t measure up—I always stumble and fall. But then I read the last part of the passage up there: “God will give you what you need if you will make the choice to live for him.” As long as I keep getting up after I fall, and as long as my decision is to live my life for the Lord, then God has my back and He has yours.
Make the choice, is what I say. Because if God is for me, nothing will succeed against me. But it was a good read today! :) I’m about to take a break, and then hopefully read some of Catholic and Christian for some apologetics stuff. I have so many books but so little time! It’s very frustrating. Ugh :/
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