The past week was a whirlwind building up to today as I transitioned and wrapped up things at work. Still, there is an uneasy feeling inside that I needed to do more to prepare.
This year our mission team will be leading a Vacation Bible School for a small church plant in a town near Tecate, Baja California, Mexico. This will be the third one for me at this location, but we did come to this area to serve a local day care many years ago that was run by Jim and Linda Doss.
Many of those children would be in their teens now, some possibly in young adulthood. It is amazing how time flies.
For some reason, my heart is telling me to travel light and nimble. The bags are packed and I don’t think I’ve traveled this light on a week long trip ever. I always seem to throw stuff in last minute that I don’t need.
This Monday I will be delivering a message or rather story to the kiddos on Genesis 1-2. The creation story. In my apologetics studies the past year I learned about the different points of view on creation, but that’s not the point of our message. It’s about being created with a purpose.
These studies have also occupied a lot of my free thinking time considering how we know our purpose and I’ve concluded that God tells us what it is in the Bible. However, because of our need for individuality most of us look beyond our purpose to a specific calling. We jump from what we should be living for to what “I as an individual should be doing with my life.” Another way to think about it is “what am I supposed to be contributing or doing?”
This can be a difficult process for some people because our default way of thinking is self-centric rather than other-centric. There is an internal conflict created by the nature God created in us and the sin nature that we inherit from Adam and Eve’s original sin.
The bottom line for me is that we are created to glorify God. For us this means living righteous lives (essentially following God’s law/rules). But, none of us are capable of living to that standard. When the rich young man asked Jesus what he needed to do to have eternal life, Jesus first asked him if he followed all of the 10 commandments. He said, yes, that he had done so since birth, but what must he do to inherit eternal life. Jesus then told him to sell all he owned and give to the poor and follow me.
The point here is that none of us can live to that standard. We need Jesus to obtain eternal life because without Him, we cannot attain the righteousness that God requires. We cannot fulfill God’s purpose without Him.
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