As I have lived on this earth for over 50 years there has always been this pull inside me to find out what my purpose is. I’ve chased relationships, ministries, position, and people. I have clawed my way to the top and rubbed elbows with some of the superstars of the Christian faith. I have had the opportunity to work and mingle with some of the most successful billboard topping artists. I have traveled the world and have been privileged to experience so many beautiful people and wonderful cultures. I have a beautiful wife that loves me unconditionally and 3 children and 2 grandchildren that I love dearly. So I would consider myself very blessed. However, that pull has remained. Even after all that I have been able to experience in life I was still searching for purpose, belonging, and identity.
I don’t think I have ever prayed or asked God to show me my purpose because I have been caught up living life that it’s something that I never stopped to meditate on. So this pull of discontentment has been like a nagging headache. The kind of headache you know is there but you can still function in spite of it. However as I am getting older and have stepped away from the busyness of life that dull headache has become a raging migraine. The desire to find purpose, beloning, and identity has dominated my thoughts. The things and the doing I thought was satisfying that void was actually just a fog that was blinding me from seeing the world in full light and beauty.
I was sitting in my office reading through the book of John I got stuck on a scripture. I could not stop reading it. It was John 3:16
It starts “For God so loved the world that he gave.” I think I have heard and quoted that scripture over a million times. It’s one of those foundation scriptures that many of us take for granted. It’s become so common that we see it on posters at sporting events. I sat there and was like “ok God why am I not able to move on from this silly verse that I have quoted a million times.” I would pick up my eyes off the page and close my eyes to contemplate and meditate on something else and those words revloved like a stock market ticker in my mind. The phrase “For God so loved the world.” Kept scrolling over and over in my brain.
I got up went out and literally watered the lawn, I pulled weeds, went in the garage and did some woodworking in my shop and those words followed me around like a screaming kid in the back seat of the car.
Finally I stopped and looked up at the ceiling in my shop and said “Ok God you got my attention what are you trying to tell me?” He said nothing. For the next 5 to 6 days those words “For God so loved the world” hijacked my thoughts.
The Sunday after reading that in my office I went to church and all through worship I kept thinking about it. Worship was over and Pastor Gio got up and started speaking. To be honest I I was not 100% engaged but in the midst of my fog I heard him say as clear and as loud as a fog horn, “Do you realize the purpose of our entire existence is to be loved.” Instantly the fog in my mind lifted and something in my head clicked. I sat up straight and on the edge of my seat and paid attention to what he said next, “Not to just be loved, but to be Loved by God. God created you for the sole purpose to be loved by Him.”
There it was in the most simplest terms, My entire purpose in life is to be loved by God. I heard God speak to me, “Andrew I have been silent in your asking because I wanted you to realize that my love is relentless and ever pursuing. It never stops pulling and calling to you. But my Love is not something that is just given out when asked for only to be bastardized like so many other things in life. My love has to be received and accepted by you. You actually have to receive my love and while my love is freely available it comes by way of sacrifice. Yes you can live without it, many do, but love without sacrifice is just perversion and lust that does not satisfy. It is there one minute and gone the next. I created you to be loved by me (period!). There is nothing else you need to do or strive for. Everything I have planned for your life is birthed, nurtured, and matured from that place of me loving you. You don’t have to search for your purpose because your purpose was ordained at the foundations of the earth. I knew you and loved you then and I could not wait for you to come into existence so that I could love you. I am crazy in love with you, Andrew. So many can see my love in the distance through the lense of all their busyness. They reach out for it and even get a small taste of it but never experience the fullness of it because they are striving for purpose instead of love. My desire is for all those who are weary and burdened down to receive my yoke of love and to learn of me by just abiding in me and my presence and allowing me to love them. Am I enough?”
For the rest of that day and the following days God and I had conversations about what it looked like for me to be loved by Him and to receive His love. He took me to John 15 (I highly encourage you to study this passage) and as I have started to unpack this passage It is becoming clear that it's always been about me abiding in Him. He did not create me to work to be something, He created me something. Those times when I encounter trials are not because God is mad at me. It is him pruning the excess and deadness in me so that I can remain healthy in Him and through remaining in Him I will bear his fruit. His love is not about me producing my own fruit but producing the fruit of the vine I am attached into. A branch does not work to be part of of the vine, it just is. God is love and His love is the vine and I am the branch and every bit of love He has flows to me, all I have to do is not fall out of connection with Him.
In today's cosm of Christianity we run on ministries, prophecies, and words but He is asking is my whisper enough? When I gently whisper in your ear to come and quiet your life to spend time with me is that enough? Am I enough? Will you receive my love keep my commandments and remain in my love?
I am beginning to understand the meaning of “For God so loved the world.” His love is everything there is nothing else I need. Being loved by Him is all and everything. The entire purpose of my existence is to be loved by God and as I abide in Him He is enough (period)
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