The Lutheran Hour
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"Living a Life With Purpose"
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Text: Mark 1:14-20
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Grace to you and peace in the Name of our Lord Jesus who calls you to a purposeful life of faith in Him, now and forever. Amen.
A few years ago, Time Magazine featured a story about Peter Sellers. Sellers was a famous comic actor, playing the role of Inspector Jacques Clousseau in the Pink Panther films among many others. The article continued. It told about him appearing on the Muppet Show and being interviewed by Kermit The Frog. His interview began with Kermit telling Peter Sellers, “Now, just relax and be yourself.”
Sellers responded, “I can’t be myself because I don’t know who I am. The real me doesn’t exist.”
Now I suppose that Sellers was trying to be funny, because he was a comedian by trade. But on this particular occasion his words were anything but funny. In fact, they were rather sad.
One of his long-time friends said, “Poor Peter! The real Peter disappeared a long time ago. What he is, is simply an amalgamation of all the stage and screen characters he has ever played, and now he is frantically trying to unsnarl that mess and find out who he really is.”
I don’t know if Peter Sellers was ever able to unsnarl the mess or not, for just six months later he was dead. But, I don’t think that he was alone in those feelings. For many today go through life wondering who we are, where we’re going, what we’re supposed to be doing. Do you have God’s sense of purpose in your life? Do you see yourself as part of His team, fulfilling His plans? Accomplishing His goals for your life?
Are you trying to follow Peter Seller’s walk through this life or will you follow the example of another Peter today, Simon Peter?
Someone said that the elixir of modern life is the joy of not knowing where you’re going, the confidence of not knowing how to get there so that you can have the peace of not worrying about when you’ll arrive.
Jesus challenges us to wake up from such a purposeless stupor. He called Peter and the Disciples to a life of following Him, of taking up the challenge of pursuing others with His Gospel message! God had a plan for their life, for their work, for their leisure!
God has a plan for you; for a life with purpose, a life to be lived to its fullest measure! Life in Him for others!
“As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’
To be a Christian is to believe in Jesus and to follow Him. Believers in Christ know that they are saved by grace alone, not by anything we do or say. A believer’s good works, one’s maturing actions in faith, one’s willingness to serve others in His Name, such things add nothing to Jesus’ work for us on the cross.
But that doesn’t mean that such things are of no value to us and to others. In fact, following Christ, growing in Him and maturing in faith, such things infuse His purpose into all that we do in this life. Those who believe in Jesus; we want to grow in our knowledge of Him; we want to mature in our practice of receiving and sharing His forgiveness, life, and salvation. Growing in grace and serving others in His Name, it allows us to see even more clearly what God has done for us in Christ. Works flow from faith, just like fruit grows naturally from the branches connected to the healthy tree.
When you follow Christ, all of life becomes new in Him, all of your life is put at His disposal and God’s purposes become yours, His eternal perspective becomes the vista of your life!
To live purposeful lives, we need to be connected to God, to know what He values, to know what He cherishes, what He ultimately wants for us and for others. In that knowledge, everything we do, everything we cherish, all of our time, and talents, and treasures become refocused towards His glory and our neighbor’s good.But this is exactly where our world pushes back. This is exactly where our own sin and self-centeredness rebels against God. Come follow me? No, Lord, I like where I’m going on my own; thanks all the same.
I read some blogs about purpose this past week…and all of them said something like this….YOUR Need IS what you must do; YOUR Talent IS what you can do; YOUR Passion IS what you love to do; YOUR Purpose IS what you should do.
But that idea of what you should do is still something that you control, something that you define, on your own terms. But that’s precisely what unbelief is all about. Sin is not necessarily some heinous thing that we would never do. Sin is the simple rebellion against the One who created us. It is the unwillingness of following wherever God leads and doing whatever He says is right to do.
Many people today live aimless lives, but they’re quite content in doing nothing, nothing but what they please.
According to recent statistics, single young men are wandering in a prolonged phase of immaturity and irresponsibility. Researcher Kay Hymowitz claims that single young men (or SYMs) often loiter “in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood.” In this limbo SYMs “often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing , and, in many cases, underachieving,”
Hymowitz points to one particularly telling statistic. “Once upon a time,” she says, “video games were for little boys and girls. Those boys have grown up to become child-man gamers, turning a niche industry into a $12 billion powerhouse. Men between the ages of 18 and 34 are now the biggest gamers; according to Nielsen Media, almost half-48.2 percent-of American males in that age bracket have used a console during the last quarter of 2006, and did so, on average, two hours and 43 minutes per day. (That’s 13 minutes longer than 12 to 17-year-olds, who evidently have more responsibilities than today’s twentysomethings.)
But after analyzing these trends among SYMs, Hymowitz offers a hopeful challenge, especially for followers of Christ: “With no one to challenge [young men] to deeper connections, they swim across life’s surfaces. Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.”Adults may be made not born, but disciples even more. Disciples are not merely physically born, they are rebirthed by God’s grace through baptism; birthed in the news that God’s blessings, His kingdom of grace is ours by faith. But we want to get to work in that kingdom, to live life in His Name. Faith wants to exercise its muscles by putting all things in life at Christ’s disposal.
There is a difference between mere occupation and purposeful work in Jesus.There is a difference between pre-occupation to meaningless things and focused work in Christ for the sake of others.
Our text today challenges us to see purposeful life as lived with one’s talents and abilities in service to God.
In the text we find out that these first followers of Jesus were fishermen. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s an honest profession. Work is good. Work should be expected of all people!
But, even hard work must have a goal, a purpose! When Jesus says, “Follow Me” to these Disciples, His call put their work, their lives in perspective! His call to us puts our lives in perspective too.
But again our modern world pushes back. We push back. Many today not only like to divorce their work, their talents from their relationship to God, but even worse, many strive to divorce their spiritual lives, brazenly seeking spiritual power and peace with no reference to the One who created and redeemed us.
All too often, modern spirituality is a self-centered, self-defined, selfish spirituality; that always gives in, always gives out, and eventually gives up.
Oscar Wilde (Irish-born novelist, poet, playwright and critic of the 1800s wrote in his book De Profundis) I took pleasure where it pleased me, and passed on. I forgot that every little action of the common day makes or unmakes character, and that what one has done in the secret chamber, one has some day to cry aloud from the housetop. I ceased to be lord over myself. I was no longer a captain of my soul and did not know it. I allowed pleasure to dominate me. I ended in horrible disgrace.”
But, that’s just what the Bible proclaims. Even personal spiritual faith religion is not enough. Many today have faith in faith. They have faith in their efforts, self-designed faith in self, faith in pleasure, faith even in self-discipline. But it isn’t enough to overcome our sin, our doubt, and the evil in our life, let alone the evil that exists in our world.
Jesus calls all of us out of that. He calls us from our selfish spirituality. He calls us from our purposeless work. He warns us of false faith in one’s power or possessions, false faith in one’s spiritual disciplines or works.
He calls us to follow Him, to believe in Him, to trust in Him alone!
That day, Jesus engaged some average fishermen and showed us all that there is another way; a way for meaningful, purposeful life. Follow Him in all things!
“As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen ‘Come, follow Me,’ Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and they followed Him.”
Today we get to answer that same call.
We entrust our lives to Christ by faith, and as followers of Christ, we are to redeem the time for life has purpose.
We redeem the time with a life committed to Him, to following Him.
They left their nets. What an incredible scene. In the case of these Disciples, there was a change, literally, of their vocations. They were called to follow Christ, to become His mouthpieces to the world. Peter’s change of status from fisherman to “Fisher of Men,” was clearly a call to be a public mouthpiece of Jesus for others.
But, leaving one’s nets can also be a metaphor for obedience to Christ, faithfulness to Christ as the “one thing needed for all of life.” There can only be one Lord of life, one Savior. Anything else that gets in the way of our faith in Christ must be left! But faith in Christ also reclaims and restores many of those same things for dedicated use as one who trusts in Christ for all of it.
They left their nets. It appears so simple, so effortless, and so ordinary. There seems to be no extraordinary nobility of their action. But look harder. They abandoned the life they used to live, the persons they used to be, the only means they knew in support of their families. They left their comfort and security and trusted in the security that only Jesus could provide.
In that regard, we, too, are called to the same basic commitment, if not the same vocation! We are called to follow Christ above all things. As believers, we can still be business people, politicians, laborers, family men and women, singles, in any culture, in any language, but we are Christ’s people first and foremost. And nothing in this temporal world is to take the place of our relationship with God.
Such is the committed life of a disciple of Jesus, and not only does one’s vocation become reclaimed and redeemed in Him for God’s glory and our neighbor’s good, I believe that when people do anything because they are committed to the God who loved them enough to live, and die, and rise for them. They are motivated, then, to strive for excellence in a way that nothing in this world can motivate.
There were a group of people standing outside a very large and ornate cathedral in Europe and they were admiring the very fine craftsmanship, the detail work, the care and the love that seemed evident in the building of such a fine place to worship a loving God. One of the men turned to another in the group and said, “Why can’t we build like this today? Why can’t we build with such pride, with such craftsmanship? And the other man replied, “They had convictions; we have opinions.”
Our conviction is to follow Christ, whatever He says, wherever He goes, and love and serve whomever He places in our lives. Redeeming the time means that we put ourselves at His disposal!
They left their nets and they “followed Him.”We, too, are called to follow Christ. To follow means more than gazing from a closer distance. To follow Him is to listen to Him, to grow in your faith, to practice what He preaches. Those first disciples received from Him a “word of authority, a word of grace, a word that literally changes lives,” and they got about the business of reflecting His words to others.
We are called to listen and to grow in Him, too. With a life maturing in Christ, we want to stay connected to Jesus and His means of grace. We want to receive His power and purpose for our lives today and forever.
As Preacher Dwight L. Moody once said, “The only way to keep a broken vessel full is to keep it always under the tap.”
Well, we’re all broken vessels and we need the Lord’s filling in order to cope with life! We just need to stay under the tap of His grace. That’s what we Lutherans mean by the Word and sacraments. They deliver personally His grace! That’s why we read the Word, that’s why we listen to the Word, that’s why we receive His body and blood, why we trust in His promises.
To follow Him is to put the blessings of our life in Christ to work in serving others. Jesus said, “I will make you fishers of men.” Peter later says to all of us, “Be ready to give an account of the Hope that you have within you, but do it with gentleness and respect.”
Don’t ever think that you are incapable of being used by Christ to bless others in His Name. Simple people with courage of faith in Christ alone have made a difference in people’s lives, even in the communities in which they live, throughout history.
The Christian understanding of work and service has motivated many believers to not merely build hospitals for the wealthy, but to make them places of healing and mercy for all. It has caused believers to take the education often only to the elite, and make possible elite education for all. Christian Faith in Action has emphasized the value of the individual person, the protection of the weak in society, and professed the preciousness of life, the life of all people.
Luther said it simply that the Christian life is faith towards God and fervent love, even prayerful service towards neighbor! Christians who boldly put their callings to work for the sake of the Gospel, not only have called millions to faith down through history; such work has blessed communities, even countries as well.
So, when we seek God’s voice in His Word and roll up our sleeves to prayer-filled work for others in His Name, that is a life filled with purpose that will always bless and can never be stifled or destroyed! That’s fishers of men in every vocation of life. As believers, that’s you and me, too.
At the age of 15, John Goddard (a famous adventurer, some call him the real Indiana Jones) made a blueprint for his life. He set down 127 goals for himself. They included such things as “retrace the route of Marco Polo, ride in a submarine, milk a poisonous snake, and take off and land on an aircraft carrier.” In 1985, by age 59, Goddard had accomplished 107 of those 127 goals, including the four just mentioned.
Our text today says it’s good to have goals in life, but the most important thing of all is to have the pursuit of God’s purpose in life! Without the eternal purposes of Christ saturating our lives, goals and all, we can become mere actors in our own life like Peter Sellers, not really having a sense of who we are, or where we’re going or why. Today Jesus calls you as He called Peter and Andrew that day so long ago. Regardless of what your aim for life is, don’t miss God’s purpose in it, for it, for others. Paul says it well in I Corinthians 10:31 “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
The call to follow Jesus Christ is the call to see all of your life in His hands for others. There is much for God’s people to do in this world. We are called to redeem the time in which we live. We are called to live a purposeful life in this world to attract people to our Precious Savior.
And because of Jesus, we can do it. Don’t trust me trust and follow Him. Amen.
LUTHERAN HOUR MAILBOX (Questions & Answers) for January 22, 2012
Topic: Should Christians Watch the Super Bowl?ANNOUNCER: And we are back once again with Pastor Gregory Seltz. I’m Mark Eischer. I guess there is some kind of big football game coming up here pretty soon.
SELTZ: I would say so.
ANNOUNCER: Well, a listener wants to know, “With all of the scandals that we’ve heard about this past year and the outrageous things surrounding national sports like football, should Christians get wrapped up in all of the hype and should they even support this by watching the big game?”
SELTZ: Wow, Mark, you really are trying to get me into trouble this week, aren’t you?
ANNOUNCER: I suppose our listeners would only be concerned if you picked the wrong team!
SELTZ: I’m not sure if I should take sides on that one either. But our listener is asking a question that is going to get a lot of peoples’ attention, it’s the Super Bowl. So, let’s answer a more basic question, though. “What healthy role do sports play in our lives, especially for Christians?”
ANNOUNCER: I know that I’ve heard some say that faith is detrimental to someone being a good player. There have been strong Christians who have been mocked, ridiculed for their public display of their faith. They say they have no “killer instinct” and they don’t care if they win or lose.
SELTZ: Well, I’ve heard that, too, and listen nothing could be further from the truth. Faith in God empowers us to strive to do our very best in whatever vocation we’re in. To be the “best” at something is to give God glory and that includes when you are a football player. So, let’s put that to rest at least. But now back to a “sports healthy role in our lives versus participating in the hype.”
ANNOUNCER: And there is certainly a lot of hype.
SELTZ: That’s for sure. A good way to look at things like “entertainment” is to remember that even our “leisure” has a purpose in our relationship to God. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10, “whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.”
ANNOUNCER: Do you suppose God has an opinion on things like football?
SELTZ: Well, only if you’re talking about God’s Team, the Dallas Cowboys, right? Sorry, bad joke. No, I don’t think that there is a definitive statement in the Bible about such things. What is true is that the Bible does speak about what “role” things like sports play in our lives and how we “play the game.”
ANNOUNCER: Oh, such as?
SELTZ: Well, often the Bible compares the Christian life to things like “running, training, even boxing;” kind of “get off the couch and get involved kind of thing.” Philippians tells us to be people of “excellence,” in Philippians 4. And Paul encourages us to make the best of our faith-lives by “striving” to “win the prize, competing according to the rules. (2 Tim. 2:5).”
ANNOUNCER: Okay. So, then it matters “how you play the game?”
SELTZ: Always. But it also matters what importance that game has in your life, too.
ANNOUNCER: Okay. Now, what do you mean by that?
SELTZ: Well, in a well-balanced life, things like football can be harmless, even useful entertainment. It can bond people together as friends whether you are watching it or whether you are playing. It can bring a little celebration to life, too, because it’s always fun to see your home team win.
ANNOUNCER: I suppose there is another side to this though.
SELTZ: Well, there is. Sometimes things like football, or any other type of entertainment in our lives, can also become so all consuming that it becomes a detriment too.
ANNOUNCER: Because it starts to take the place of more important things.
SELTZ: Right. I’ve heard a lot of people so wrapped up in the “game” that they spend hours and hours engrossed in it; watching it morning, noon and night, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday to the neglect of everything else. And when winning itself takes the place of everything else, too, including “how we play the game;” then it becomes detrimental. Then, things like sports can actually be destructive. I think we’ve seen some of the scandals in the past year having proven that.
ANNOUNCER: And when these “entertainment” events start to take us away from, let’s say, Sunday worship or spending time with our families, it’s really hard to see how that can be a “positive influence” in your life.
SELTZ: You know Mark, these kind of questions, they’ve been around from the beginning of time. There was a pastor back in the 3rd century named St. John Chrysostom, and in some of his sermons, he is warning people that they are spending too much time at the Hippodrome; that was an ancient Roman race track, to the detriment of their walk with God.
ANNOUNCER: So in summary, I guess the key here is to keep things in balance, in proper perspective.
SELTZ: And to root for the right team right?
ANNOUNCER: Yes, whoever that might be. Thank you Pastor Seltz, this has been a presentation of Lutheran Hour Ministries.
Music Selections for this program:
“A Mighty Fortress” arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
“With the Lord Begin Your Task” arr. Henry Gerike. From Jubilee: Hymns of the Church by the Concordia Seminary Lutheran Hour Chorus (© 2000 International Lutheran Laymen’s League)
“All People That on Earth Do Dwell” arr. David Cherwien. From Hymn Interpretations, vol. 1 by David Cherwien (© 1992 Summa Productions)
“Allegro from Concerto in d minor for Two Violins” by J.S. Bach. From Bach at the Sem: 2005-2006 Series by the American Kantorei (© 2006 Concordia Seminary)