What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose

WHAT IS
THE POINT?

Misty Edwards

M
OST
C
HARISMA
H
OUSE
B
OOK
G
ROUP
products are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Charisma House Book Group, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone (407) 333-0600.

W
HAT
I
S THE
P
OINT?
by Misty Edwards
Published by Passio
Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group
600 Rinehart Road
Lake Mary, Florida 32746
www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked nas are from the New American Standard Bible, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (
www.Lockman.org
)

Copyright © 2012 by Misty Edwards
All rights reserved

Cover design by Justin Evans
Design Director: Bill Johnson

Visit the author’s website at
www.mistyedwards.com
.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012912454
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-61638-601-6
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62136-037-7

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

First edition

I want to dedicate this book to my parents Robert and

Donna Edwards. It would take pages to write of all that

I have learned from you, but the thing I admire the most

is your wholehearted devotion to Jesus and to your family.

Both of you have given your lives unreservedly to love.

I am moved by your radical obedience and extravagant

devotion. I have rarely seen people who are so tenacious

in their pursuit of God and love for people, not just for a

year or two but for decades! You just don’t stop, and I am

eternally indebted to you for showing me the way to follow

Jesus with all that I am and to love people selflessly.

I would also like thank Mike Bickle. I have heard you

teach since I was a teenager and words cannot express the

gratitude in my heart for all that you have given me and

many others in the knowledge of God. My view of God,

myself, and the world has been shaped by your wisdom,

and this book is filled with truths I have learned from you.

Thanks for letting us take your stuff and run with it!

To the end!

CONTENTS

Foreword
by Mike Bickle

1 Why?

2 What Is God Looking For?

3 Before His Eyes

4 Living for Love?

5 The Inside-Out, Upside-Down Kingdom

6 Fire of Love: Sustained by God

7 As Demanding as the Grave

8 If You Don’t Quit, You Win

9 The End of the Story

Notes

FOREWORD

T
HIS GENERATION IS
filled with “seekers.” They are men and women, both old and young, who are seeking real answers and looking for the deeper meaning and purpose, not only for their individual lives but also the purpose of Creation and the whole of human history. Many of them have grown up in the church or in various religions, and others have no religious background at all, but one thing they have in common is that they feel restless in their search.

It is in the heart of all people to find the meaning of life and of death, and this search is meant to lead us directly to Jesus and His profound wisdom. One of the reasons that there is much dissatisfaction and emptiness in the hearts of even those who call themselves Christian is there is often a tragic lack of the knowledge of God and of His story. Therefore they lack of vision and purpose. People today are crying out for more than easy self-help answers to the meaning of life. They want more than to be merely propped up in their own self-pity and confusion. They want to be caught up in something bigger then themselves. There is a purpose for life and for all of human history. It is only found in the heart of the God who created everything and then gave Himself so fully to bring us to Himself. Misty Edwards says, “Until we find what God is looking for, we will never find what we are looking for.” The answer to the seeking heart is found in a deeper discovery of God and His heart and plan for us.

Misty Edwards is one seeker of truth. Even as a child she could not just take what she was taught at face value but went on a persistent quest to seek for truth and real purpose behind life and history. I have watched Misty since her youth wrestle with truth and have seen her seek passionately to resolve the tensions of life and to better understand God. She is one who isn’t intimidated to ask the hard questions and one who doesn’t give up until she finds the answers. In this book,
What Is the Point?
, Misty gives a few of the conclusions that she has come to as a seeker of wisdom and purpose. I know Misty to be one who not only talks about truth but also seeks to live it wholeheartedly and to love Jesus with all her heart and even all her mind.

—M
IKE
B
ICKLE
D
IRECTOR
, I
NTERNATIONAL
H
OUSE OF
P
RAYER

1
WHY?

W
HAT’S THE POINT?
I’m eighteen years old, living in the middle of nowhere. Time is running out! I’m going to die one day, and I have nothing to show for my life. I’m doing nothing! Time is ticking, and I’m sitting idly by! What’s the point?”

The desire for impact was like a pulse pounding in my soul. I was pacing in the hallway of our small home in Sundown, Texas, ranting and raving. There I was again in one of my frustrating outbursts that came from hours of
thinking
. My mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner, and with a sigh she was telling me to calm down.

“Calm down? How can I calm down? I’m doing nothing! I’m going to die soon, and I have nothing to show for my life? What’s the purpose? What’s the point? I can’t calm down!”

I felt as though I were racing down a train track on a runaway freight train while surrounded by a slow-motion film of life in Small Town, USA. I was flying through my life at a rapid pace and could already see my end in sight, but all around me people went on with business as usual, living as though we weren’t going to die. I knew death was inevitable, I knew life was short, and I was desperate to find the purpose for it.

From as far back as I can remember I have been full of questions, asking why and searching for the purpose behind the “what” of life. I don’t know how many times I found myself saying, “What is the point? What is the purpose of all of this?”

I grew up in a Christian home and had parents who loved the Lord. I am from a small town in Texas where the majority of the people said they were Christians and attended one of the many churches in that small community. I believed in God and had a sincere love for Jesus but could not understand Him or His reasoning behind Creation. I trusted that I was going to heaven when I died, but I could not figure out why I was alive. It wasn’t a question of where I was going but why I was here. I once asked the Lord, “If the whole point of life is to get me into heaven, then why didn’t You just kill me when I said the sinner’s prayer and accepted Your forgiveness?” I wanted to know why I had to go through the process of life and what was the purpose of these few years I would live on the earth.

I remember multiple times sitting in the backyard on the porch swing looking up at the vast west Texas sky and seeing the stars, feeling the impulse that is in the heart of all humans, that there is a God and He is watching. I would look up and say, “Who are You? Where are You? Are You listening? Can You see me? Why am I here?”

Even as a Christian who believed in Jesus, my mind had many questions. Often those questions were met by disapproving leaders who would tell me to “just believe,” as though faith is a blind walk in the dark. This answer never satisfied my questioning but only further agitated my deep desire for understanding.

The list of my questions was long and always playing in the back of my head. I wanted to know why God was invisible. I reasoned, “If He wanted me so badly, why didn’t He just stand in front of me?” Was He really that interested and that involved? I wanted to know why He created us in the first place. What was His original intention? What was the purpose of putting us in an environment where we have a proneness to sin and then giving us a sin nature that we were sure to use? Why did He let bad things happen? Why the suffering of so many in the world? Why the wealth and arrogance of others in the world who had forsaken Him without any seeming consequence? Why the boredom of life where every week seemed to repeat itself in a haunting monotony? Why the lack of passion in righteousness but a seeming invigoration in evil? Why evil at all? The devil? On and on and on my questions came almost constantly
.

I drove my parents crazy with questions, and I was rarely satisfied with their answers. My heart pulsated with a deep desire for understanding and a frustration at the lack of it from those I looked to for advice. I was an agitated, melancholy seeker of the absolute with a deep desire for the truth.

I didn’t want a blind faith or a trust that lacked reasoning. I couldn’t just take what I was taught at face value and assume that someone had thought it through. I had to know for myself. I had to figure this thing out so that I had confidence in what I believed. I wanted life and God to make sense, and I wanted the contradictions resolved. I can honestly say that wisdom and understanding are of far more value to me than gold or silver. I wanted true faith, the kind that is backed up with evidence and substance, more than I wanted pleasure or comfort. I craved the truth. I ached for it.