The Healing Word

Jack Morris: God made you to love you. He made you to love you forever. He made you to be with Him. If you forget everything else and remember that, it's been worth it.

Guest (Male): Today on The Healing Word, Pastor Jack Morris is here and turns our hearts to Colossians chapter one and invites us to consider the true purpose of our lives. We only have one life to live, one opportunity to invest ourselves in things that last forever.

In this powerful message, "The Five Purposes of Life," Pastor Morris reminds us that when we center our days around Christ, who is before all things and in whom all things hold together, we begin to live lives that truly count for eternity. Let's join Pastor Morris now for today's message, "The Five Purposes of Life."

Jack Morris: Some time ago I was watching the Animal Planet on television and there was this little tiny elephant that had just been born. It was the cutest little thing you ever saw. Its trunk was just a-going like this and the commentator said he doesn't know what to do with it. He was given a trunk and his mother hadn't told him what to do with it yet and so he was just a-flippin' and a-floppin'. It was the cutest little thing.

I thought about that and I thought that's like a lot of us. We've been given a life and we're just playing with it. We don't know what to do with it yet. Now with the little elephant that was cute, but it can be pretty sad when an adult doesn't know what to do with the life that has been given them.

But I'll tell you what we've done. On October the 1st we started searching for answers to the purpose of life. We want to know why we have this life, what we're supposed to do with it, the weeks, the months, the years that are allotted to us. We didn't look to the philosophers. The philosophers have been philosophizing for thousands of years. So have the theologians, the scientists, and the educators, trying to learn the answers to questions pertaining to life.

And we are no further along now by listening to them than we were hundreds or even thousands of years ago. So when we started our study on October the 10th, we didn't even go there. We went to the Bible and we found five purposes for living. We found the answer. We started a spiritual journey on that date on October the 10th and the scriptures by the power of the Holy Spirit has been unfolded to us and we have received revelation through the inspired Word of God.

Now I've heard this expression, you tell me if you've heard this expression. Ready for it? Get a life. Have you ever heard that? Get a life. When people are complaining, they're so self-centered and their problems, all they can think about is themselves. They've just sort of shut down. They're not doing anything, complaining about people who are doing things. You look at them and say, "Oh come on, get a life. Get a life."

Well, the scripture tells us how to get a life. And we've gone through it all, but a little bit of today's message will be repetitious but maybe not a whole lot. We're going to summarize and put it all together in a package form for us today. You're going to need your bulletin, turn to the outline, the sermon outline.

And number one, the very first purpose of life is to bring pleasure to God through worship. Write down the word worship. God has so wonderfully blessed us. He has brought so much good into our lives. Today we have hope in Christ, not only in this life but in the life to come. And now we want to bring Him pleasure by worshipping Him.

Now what does worship mean? Fundamentally it means just loving God back. That's what it means. God loved us and now we're going to turn it around and begin to love Him back. Now look at your bulletin, I have the scripture written there. It's Romans chapter 12, verse 1. Hold your bulletin up and read this scripture in unison together.

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship." Holy and pleasing to God. Pleasing God. This is our act of worship, our spiritual act of worship. Now look at this scripture. It says, "Therefore I urge you brothers in view of God's mercy," or we might put it this way, "because of God's mercy."

In view of God's mercy, because of all of the wonderful things that God has given to us just because He loves us and He knows that we can't get these blessings anywhere else but from Him. In view of that, we need to offer God praise. Now how do we offer God praise? I wish I'd have put this scripture there, but you can just write the book and the verse and the chapter down and I'll read it to you now.

Here are four ways I have discovered in the New Testament how to offer God praise or offer God worship in view of what God has done. Four ways. It's found in Mark 12:30. You can look at it later and I'll read it to you. It says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength."

Jesus, He's the great Master teacher, the Rabbi of all rabbis, the teacher of all teachers. He's the very wisdom of God. Actually He is God incarnate. Listen to what He says, how we are to offer. He tells us to do something fine. "I want to do it Jesus, just tell me how to do it." He says, "Okay, here it is."

He says here's how to offer your love back to God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. There are four ways. Notice how is it, now just try to remember with me. We are to offer back with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.

Now when He says my soul, I'm to offer back my soul to Him. That means I'm to give Him my soul, my spirit. My soul, think of it as the five senses. You can touch, you can see, you can smell, you can hear, you can taste. That's how I communicate with my environment and the world around me. All of that, my soul lives within my body, but through those five senses I communicate with my environment and with other people.

But within the soul there's an inner intimate place called the spirit. And the spirit is the highest part of all individuals and with that I communicate with God. With my spirit, so with my soul, which includes my spirit, I communicate with my environment and I also communicate with God. And so Jesus is telling us that we are to offer our soul back to God.

That means the highest part of us, the part that communicates with the environment, the part that communicates with God. I am to offer that back to God. I'm to communicate with God my very life. I am to praise Him. I am to thank Him. I am to communicate with Him with my feelings, with all that is within me, with my sight, with my hearing, with my taste. Oh taste and see that the Lord is good. We are to offer back to God. We are to bring our consciousness into worship.

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Jack Morris: You see Jesus is with us. Jesus has connected with us. And that's the second thing we must do. We must not flounder as God's people. We must know where God has planted us, where God has baptized us. We must know who we belong to and who belongs to us. We're part of the bride of Christ. Like it or not, we're part of the bride of Christ.

I love the Lord but I don't love some people in the church. Well, if you were to come up to me and say, "Pastor, I love you but I'm not sure I really love Corinne." Now what kind of relationship do you think you and I would have? Isn't that right? I love Jesus but I don't know that I really love the bride of Jesus, the church. See, the church is the bride of Jesus.

Years ago there was a minister, a friend of mine. I liked him a lot. I respected him. But I didn't like his wife. Well, I better take that back. I won't say I didn't like her. I'll put it this way, I couldn't stand her. I liked her but I couldn't stand her. But you know if you're going to have fellowship, there's always going to be a quirky person here or there.

But they love the Lord. The Lord loves them. And they're going to look at us, sometimes they think we're sort of quirky too because we're not quite like them. But we're in the body of Christ. And you don't break fellowship. Sometimes I think Corinne's a little quirky. Sometimes she thinks I'm a little quirky. But we don't break fellowship. We've been put together. We stood up there publicly. We made a commitment before God and man.

That's what the Lord is saying here. What a fellowship, what a joy divine. Leaning on Jesus and we're leaning in fellowship with one another. Fellowship, commitment. I love my wife more than I love my own soul. It's been going on for 50-some years. And it'll go on for eternity. And that's how we are to love one another in the church.

Even when people disagree and they have different opinions, that's no excuse. When the rapture takes place, that person that doesn't agree with you, they'll be raptured also. And if you really want to please the Lord, listen, don't talk about one of God's children. You hurt the Father when you do that. Let us love one another. Love one another. That's the second.

The first one is to bring pleasure to God through worship. The second purpose of life is to fellowship with one another, to experience life together in fellowship. When we get this straight, friends, when we get this straight, we're really truly worshipping God and we're really truly connected with God's people, unashamedly connected with God's people. Now we're getting life in order. Things are going to start straightening out.

Things are going to move more smoothly. So that is the second purpose of life. Okay, number three, the third purpose of life is to become like Jesus, become like Christ through discipleship. Write down the word discipleship. That means to grow spiritually. We now are connected to God, we're worshipping Him, bringing pleasure. We're now connected to His bride, the church, and we are enjoying fellowship, blessing those we're connected to, they're blessing us.

And now we want to grow. We want to grow in discipleship. Now how do we grow? Well, we're going to grow through some of the very natural ways. The Bible, we're going to read the Bible. The Bible is the milk, the Bible is the meat to the soul, milk to the soul, it's the Word of God. We're going to read it. We're going to come to church to hear it.

We're going to go to maybe the small group or the Sunday School class or whatever. We're going to listen to it. We're going to grow that way. We're also going to grow through service. Now we're in the church, now we're going to be able to serve the people we love. How can I help but serve you if I love you? I've got to make my love evidence in some way.

So I'm going to serve you and you're going to serve me. We're going to serve one another. Tell me what you want and I'll die trying to get it for you. Why? Because I'm serving man? No, because I'm serving God. You belong to God. You belong to God. And I see Christ in you and I've been united with you, I've been bonded with you. We've been baptized into one body.

We do this together with joy. We do it with joy. And then through prayer, we talk to God in prayer. We commune with God. We talk to Him. He talks to us. He hears and answers our prayers. Now those are three things that we know right off ways of growing spiritually. Here I'm going to give you three things that may seem a little unusual, but we also grow spiritually through trouble.

But who wants trouble? We're praying, "God deliver me from trouble, deliver me from trouble, give me peace, let everything go smoothly, get me beyond it." But trouble has a way of stretching our faith and causing us to look to the Lord and to develop in the Lord. There's going to be trouble in this world. You can't get out of this world without having trouble.

Trouble is here. It's going to be here until Jesus comes. Believe me, Jesus had plenty of trouble when He was here, didn't He? And He would pray all night to the Father. He would take the disciples together, they would go apart and be together and He knew how to live beyond the present trouble that was facing Him. He wants us to learn how to live beyond.

So trouble is going to come. Temptation is going to come. And we grow even through temptation. Now how do we grow through temptation? God never tempts anybody to sin, let me tell you that right now. He never tempts anybody to sin. I'm talking about trials now. He will put us in a trial. He will test our faith. Not that He could find out what is in our faith, but so that you and I can find out what's in our faith.

You see when a trial comes or a temptation comes we have to make a choice. It's a crisis type experience. We have to make a choice. And we make a choice at that time to say no to the temptation and yes to Jesus. And every time we say no, that makes us stronger. It was just like the trial that came to our first parents, Adam and Eve.

They had a choice and they made the wrong choice. If they'd made the right choice we wouldn't be in this life of sin that we're in today. And so you're going to have to make choices and when the temptations come God wants you to know which way you're going to choose. And when you make the right choice that will help you to grow stronger in the Lord. Also trespasses come.

Now when I talk about trespasses God uses trespasses to help us to grow in Him. And by that I mean people are going to hurt you. People are going to hurt you. Even Christians are going to hurt you sometimes. Most of the times it'll be unintentional. People don't really mean to hurt one another.

But I think if we would listen to the words we're going to speak or the words we're going to write and look at it on paper and say, "Hey, I'm going to send this letter to Jesus. I think I better change some of those words." Because Jesus reads that. Jesus hears that. And we really want to serve the Lord Jesus Christ and bring glory to the Lord.

There's a way to do it. So when people hurt you then you need to forgive. Jesus on the cross, "Father forgive them." Friend, listen, you're never more like Jesus than when you forgive. Hasn't He forgiven you? Hasn't He done that? Now trespasses are going to come. People are going to hurt you. Just remember how many times you hurt Him. How many times?

And He has forgiven and forgiven and forgiven. So He's going to allow things to come into your life to let you know do you really indeed have My spirit, the spirit of Jesus within you. And if you do you'll be able to forgive. And so He's teaching us, we're learning, we're growing in the Lord. So the first purpose of life is to please God through worship.

The second purpose of life is fellowship. The third purpose of life is discipleship. We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. That includes trouble. Trouble is all things. We also rejoice in our sufferings. Why? Because we know that it's developing the very character of Jesus within us.

So that's what I'm saying. If you use your head and think these scriptures through you will know that this is an opportune time through trouble, through trespasses, through temptation to develop and to grow in the Lord. The fourth purpose in life is to share the good news through mission. Write down the word mission.

All right, real quick review. First purpose of life: worship. Second purpose of life: fellowship. Third purpose of life: discipleship. Fourth purpose of life: mission. We're going to read Acts chapter 1 verse 8 together in unison. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth."

Jerusalem. Where were the disciples when Jesus told them that they would be witnesses? They were in Jerusalem. So He says start right now where you are. You don't have to cross the ocean or even cross the street. There are people in our own household, our own families that need saving. They need to be brought to Christ. They're lost.

There are spouses who are lost, children who are lost, parents who are lost, cousins, aunts, uncles who are lost. So in your Jerusalem. And then Judea. Judea, now you push it out just a little bit more. That's where you may work or where you vacation or who you play golf or bowl with, the people that are further out.

And then Samaria. That's people of different races, different cultures. Wherever there are people Jesus died for those people and He wants those people to be brought into His kingdom that He might love them. And then to the ends of the earth. Wherever there are people we are to reach them for Jesus, reach them for Christ.

Friends, we don't have forever to do what we're called to do. Now's the time. Some of us are still trying to find our purpose, find our place. Yes, we're saved, but we're just spinning our wheels. We're really not engaged in the work of the church that the church is commissioned to do. Yes, He put His spirit within us, which means the very power of the Holy Spirit.

But according to Acts 1:8, it's to cause you to have the strength and power to win one more for Jesus. And we're still trying to make up our minds who we are, where we fit, why we're here, what's the purpose of life. Friends, we have learned it. We have learned it. Now I want you to go to point five in your outline.

Write down the word service. Serving God by serving others. Listen, when you've done it unto the least of these my brethren, you've done it unto me, says the Lord. Take your outline, Ephesians 2:10 together: "For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do."

We're created. You're His workmanship. Like I said the other week, you're a piece of work. God's work. To do good, to look for opportunities to work, to serve, to do it with praise. Now you see there are three lines down there at the bottom, three blank lines. On the first line write down the word available. If you're going to serve others you have to be available.

Now listen friends, I'm going to ask you something. I'm going to ask you not to waste your life, but to invest your life. You only have one. Isn't it best to give it to Jesus? Give it all to Jesus. Okay, friend, listen to me. God made you. I want you to say that. "God made me." God made you. Just as much as He made Adam, He made you. You are no freak accident of nature. God brought you into this world. Right now you're breathing His air.

Guest (Male): (Singing) Wherever He leads I'll go...

Jack Morris: You can't exist apart from God. God made you. Number two, God made you to last forever. Say, "God made me to last forever." Not only in this life, but in the life to come. God made you. You see, you matter to God. You really do. You matter to Him. And He's going to take you to heaven someday to be with Him throughout all eternity.

Why is He going to do that? Why is God going to do that? Because He wants you near Him. You're His babies. You're His darlings. You're His child. He's going to take you to heaven. He made you to last forever. And number three, God made you to love you. Say that. "God made me to love me."

God made you to love you. He made you to love you forever. He made you to be with Him forever. If you forget everything else and remember that, it's been worth it.

Guest (Male): What an important message from Pastor Morris today. Our time on earth is brief, but what we do for Jesus echoes forever. When we give our lives to God's purposes—knowing Him, growing in Him, serving Him, walking in fellowship and sharing His love—we invest in what truly matters.

Are you looking for a way to deepen your connection with Jesus this Christmas season? We're excited to share a brand new resource with you. "12 Gifts from Jesus: A Countdown to Christmas". This inspiring eBook takes you on a spiritual journey through the Advent season, unwrapping the incredible gifts Jesus has given us, like grace, healing, peace, and salvation.

Just visit thehealingword.com and click on resources to download your copy. Let this season be filled with joy and the boundless love of Jesus. Don't miss out, download "12 Gifts from Jesus" today. Thank you for joining us today. Be sure to listen to the next Healing Word program as Pastor Morris begins a brand new series titled "The Lord Restores", based on the moving events found in the story of Ruth and Naomi. See you next time.