The Purpose Driven Life(22)
Sometimes it takes years, but eventually you discover that the greatest hindrance to God’s blessing in your life is not others, it is yourself—your self-will, stubborn pride, and personal ambition. You cannot fulfill God’s purposes for your life while focusing on your own plans.
If God is going to do his deepest work in you, it will begin with this. So give it all to God: your past regrets, your present problems, your future ambitions, your fears, dreams, weaknesses, habits, hurts, and hang-ups. Put Jesus Christ in the driver’s seat of your life and take your hands off the steering wheel. Don’t be afraid; nothing under his control can ever be out of control. Mastered by Christ, you can handle anything. You will be like Paul: “I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him who infuses inner strength into me, that is, I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency.”25
Paul’s moment of surrender occurred on the Damascus road after he was knocked down by a blinding light. For others, God gets our attention with less drastic methods. Regardless, surrendering is never just a one-time event. Paul said, “I die daily.”26 There is a moment of surrender, and there is the practice of surrender, which is moment-by-moment and lifelong. The problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar, so you may have to resurrender your life fifty times a day. You must make it a daily habit. Jesus said, “If people want to follow me, they must give up the things they want. They must be willing to give up their lives daily to follow me.”27
Let me warn you: When you decide to live a totally surrendered life, that decision will be tested. Sometimes it will mean doing inconvenient, unpopular, costly, or seemingly impossible tasks. It will often mean doing the opposite of what you feel like doing.
One of the great Christian leaders of the twentieth century was Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ. Through Crusade staff around the world, the Four Spiritual Laws tract, and the Jesus film (seen by over four billion people), more than 150 million people have come to Christ and will spend eternity in heaven.
I once asked Bill, “Why did God use and bless your life so much?” He said, “When I was a young man, I made a contract with God. I literally wrote it out and signed my name at the bottom. It said, ‘From this day forward, I am a slave of Jesus Christ.’”
Have you ever signed a contract like that with God? Or are you still arguing and struggling with God over his right to do with your life as he pleases? Now is your time to surrender—to God’s grace, love, and wisdom.
DAY TEN
THINKING ABOUT MY PURPOSE
Point to Ponder: The heart of worship is surrender.
Verse to Remember: “Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes.”
Romans 6:13b (TEV)
Question to Consider: What area of my life am I holding back from God?
11
Becoming Best Friends with God
Since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life.
Romans 5:10 (NLT)
God wants to be your best friend.
Your relationship to God has many different aspects: God is your Creator and Maker, Lord and Master, Judge, Redeemer, Father, Savior, and much more.1 But the most shocking truth is this: Almighty God yearns to be your Friend!
In Eden we see God’s ideal relationship with us: Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate friendship with God. There were no rituals, ceremonies, or religion—just a simple loving relationship between God and the people he created. Unhindered by guilt or fear, Adam and Eve delighted in God, and he delighted in them.
We were made to live in God’s continual presence, but after the Fall, that ideal relationship was lost. Only a few people in Old Testament times had the privilege of friendship with God. Moses and Abraham were called “friends of God,” David was called “a man after [God’s] own heart,” and Job, Enoch, and Noah had intimate friendships with God.2 But fear of God, not friendship, was more common in the Old Testament.
Then Jesus changed the situation. When he paid for our sins on the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct access to God was once again available.
DAY ELEVEN: BECOMING BEST FRIENDS WITH GOD
Unlike the Old Testament priests who had to spend hours preparing to meet him, we can now approach God anytime. The Bible says, “Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God.”3
Friendship with God is possible only because of the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. “All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends.”4 The old hymn says, “What a friend we have in Jesus,” but actually, God invites us to enjoy friendship and fellowship with all three persons of the Trinity: our Father,5 the Son,6 and the Holy Spirit.7