What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose (6 page)

We all feel as if we are wasting our lives at times, but when we know we are in His will and He is pleased with us, we have power in our hearts. He is watching and it counts. Life is not in vain. When we know we exist for His pleasure and we will never be satisfied until we satisfy Him, we become preoccupied with pleasing Him.

We are motivated by both pleasure and fear. When we realize that life is short and there is a judgment day on which we will stand before one man and His opinion is all that matters, it profoundly motivates us to please the one who judges. Both the pleasure of pleasing Him and the fear of coming up short keep us locked into His eyes. Even though we fail many times, we return again and again to that locked, steady gaze.

The apostle Paul’s dream was unbreakable. He could be in prison, he could be in front of a multitude, or he could be suffering great persecution. Still Paul had a deep desire to be pleasing in Jesus’s sight, and he kept his eyes on this prize knowing that wisdom would be justified (Matt. 11:19). It was his primary goal, and he often spoke of it and wrote about it. This was the dream that kept him steady through persecution and promotion. He counted it all as loss—the good and the bad. This desire to be pleasing in Jesus’s sight creates humility and steadfastness in a man.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

—P
HILIPPIANS
3:12–14

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A person who lives before Jesus’s eyes, determined to give Him what He is looking for, is able to become eternally great no matter what this life has given him (Matt. 5:19). This is true liberation. No one can touch a man or a woman who lives like this. Their money can be taken, they can lose relationships and positions, and they can be thrown into prison, persecuted, or even martyred. Still they will attain what they are aiming for. A person can be uneducated and unattractive, sitting on the back row where nobody notices them. This person has the same capacity to be as eternally great in God’s eyes as the person who is the most educated, beautiful, and seemingly successful in the eyes of man today.

God does not measure us as men measure us. Paul knew this. Church history is full of men and women who were free because they lived before Jesus’s eyes even when they were thrown into prison for their faith. History proves that living before the eternal eyes is the power and worth of a person, and anyone and everyone can do it. I love Jesus’s ways! Anybody, everybody, who wants to be eternally great can be, and we are not at the mercy of the rise and fall of external favor and blessing. Our definition of greatness is not affected by our assignment in life. We have assignments that are important, and we serve in these assignments with faithfulness, but the measure of success in these arenas is not in our hands. We cannot build our confidence on them. Our confidence is in serving in our assignment before the Audience of One.

The issue is whose applause we are living for. We may do the same assignment, but the Lord wants us to readjust our hearts. People do not burn out because their assignment is too difficult. They burn out because they are doing their assignment before the wrong set of eyes, looking for the wrong applause. The heart is often revealed when we are criticized. If we are thrown off by criticism, we are living before the wrong eyes.

Failure is another test. When our life assignments seem to fail—we lose money, our ministries shrink, or our relationships fail—of course we feel the pain. But if we are devastated by these things, concluding our whole life is a failure because of them, it is proof we are not living before the Audience of One. We are living for the applause of man. Many times Jesus will test our hearts in this way to show us where our true value lies. We realign ourselves again and again to live before His eyes.

M
IKE

I have often heard Mike Bickle talk about his primary definition of success and greatness is to be well pleasing to Jesus. He has made it his aim to live before the Audience of One, knowing that he will be evaluated by the measure of his heart responses to Jesus.

He tells the story of the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. There was a sign on his wall in the church prayer room, prophesying about the House of Prayer that would one day go nonstop twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, with singers and musicians. For about fifteen years before it actually started, people would ask him what it meant, and he would say, “It’s something we will do some day.”

Then the time came for IHOP-KC to start, and people would come up to him and say, “You did it! You have your dream!” He would answer them by saying, “IHOP-KC is not my dream. It is my assignment. My dream is to go somewhere in God and to live before His eyes, pleasing Him.” He says, “IHOP-KC can grow and be successful in the eyes of man or it can get smaller and be unsuccessful in the eyes of man. Either way my dream is not affected because my dream is to touch the heart of Jesus and be pleasing in His sight, not to build a big ministry. This is my assignment, not my dream.”

Our assignments are important, but we are not meant to find our primary identity or purpose in them.

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AT

The story that moves me the most is that of Pat Bickle, Mike’s brother. He was paralyzed from the neck down after an injury he suffered while playing football in high school. Toward the end of Pat’s life, after being paralyzed for thirty-three years, he got very ill and ended up unable to speak or even drink water. His mind was alert, and he was the same man he had been his entire life, full of wit and love for people, but he could not communicate. For weeks he lay like this.

In the meantime Mike’s ministry was growing and thousands of young people were coming to his conferences. He had traveled the world preaching. He had written books, taught thousands, and impacted many people.

As Pat lay there in the last few weeks of his life, Mike went to see him almost daily. On one of these days it was just Mike and Pat in the hospital room. Mike looked at Pat as he lay there, suffering more than most humans ever suffer, unable to speak, move, or drink. He said, “Pat, right now today, you can fulfill the will of Jesus for your life as much as I can. His will for you today is that you love Him without offense and that you believe He is watching you even now. You can please Him and touch His heart as much as I can today. He sees your love for Him as much as He sees mine.”

Tears were streaming down Pat’s face as he dared to believe that even in suffering, he could do God’s will even if it meant just loving Him in that horrible situation. These months in his life were not in vain. There was a purpose for his life, even in that place of great suffering. Jesus was watching him and promised to reward him for every movement of his heart. Pat can be eternally great as much as his famous brother can be, because Jesus evaluates us based on our heart responses to Him and our love for Him, not on the size of our ministry or business impact.

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This primary purpose of our lives to please Jesus must become our compulsion and our consuming dream. We want to be preoccupied with Jesus and less occupied with the opinion of man. This is the prize that is set before us, and it must be the anchor of our souls. Nothing can take this dream away from you when it is your primary motivation, and it can be attained no matter what life circumstance you are in.

It doesn’t matter what sphere you have been given. You could be on the backside of nowhere and have only two or three people who are listening to you, or you could be on a stage in front of millions. You could be healthy, full of charisma and charm, so that people naturally follow you, or you could be ill and unable to communicate clearly. You can be rich or poor, beautiful or not. You can be educated or uneducated, from any nationality, any social background and still fulfill the vision Jesus has for you and therefore be eternally great and successful at fulfilling your life purpose.

Eternity is the great equalizer, and the true measure of a man is found in Jesus’s eyes. You can have the hardest past, full of abuse and pain, or you could be the one who caused others pain by abusing, yet you can still today turn things around and fulfill the dream of His heart for your life and live with confidence that your life is not in vain.

You may never be great in the eyes of man. You may live your whole life overlooked, but there is one man who sees, and He is so attentive to you that He knows your thoughts and your deepest emotions (1 Cor. 4:5). He sees all and judges all, and His evaluation is what matters. You will be standing in front of Him, face-to-face, in a very short amount time, and His evaluation of you will be what defines you for billions of years.

This makes life today powerful. Not only is there a Man who is fully God who is attentive to you, but also He promises to reward you. Every act of love you give Him will be rewarded in the age to come, and only then will the truth about you be seen.

Your life is hidden, and you will not appear until He appears in glory. The fullness of your greatness is hidden even from your own eyes in this age, and it will not be revealed, even to you, until Jesus is revealed (Col. 3:3–4). You do not see the heights of your dignity or the depths of your depravity by your natural eyes in this age. Only Jesus can see the end from the beginning, and He knows who you will be millions of years from now. He knows where this is going. In the age to come we will see the full truth about all the glory Jesus has given us. It is glory we possess now in His eyes, but we cannot see.

The billionaire and the pauper are the same. They are evaluated by the same set of eyes and the same standard of Jesus. Eternity will tell the truth about who we are, and one day what is real about us will be seen. Right now you are in the “womb of eternity,” and you are being fashioned for a day that is yet to come. The pressure, the pain, the pleasure, and the blessings are all part of the Creator’s plan to form and fashion you into the image of love equally yoked to Himself in wholehearted abandonment in love. But it must be love defined by Jesus, not by humanism. He is looking for love on His terms. What is that definition? What pleases Him? Our life is found in answering this one question.

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LIVING FOR LOVE?

T
HE MEANING OF
life is found in the eyes of the One who initiated our lives, and only He has the standard to measure us by. What pleases Jesus? The answer to this question shapes our primary motivation. He not only told us what He was looking for, but He also demonstrated it by the way He lived and died. His entire life is an answer to the search for meaning. By examining His life, we discover the anchor for our existence, purpose, and destiny. We then make it our life aim to find what is pleasing to Jesus, live accordingly, and bring others into that same locked gaze, persuading all men to set their hearts to please Him.

It is not a secret what Jesus is looking for. From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, over and over again, He has made His desires known. Anyone who wants to please Him can. We can know what pleases Him. Take the Scripture, “the transcript of His soul,” and eat it, feast upon it, and live by every word.

In my search for meaning and purpose I began to devour the words of Jesus and longed to imitate Him in His lifestyle, to walk out every word He had spoken. He not only showed us how to be human by demonstrating perfect humanity, but He also taught us how our own heart fully comes alive. The Scripture is like an instruction manual for humanity. The more I read, the more I began to get caught up in something bigger and Someone greater than me. I am not saying I was caught up in ecstatic experience or euphoria, not at all. Little by little as my view of God changed, my view of the world changed, and inevitably my view of myself changed. As I began to know and understand Jesus, making Him my primary life occupation, my entire life was turned upside down.

L
OVE
?

I was on this treasure hunt for meaning, and I was discovering the personality of Jesus. I became gripped with His words that summed up all I had previously read and known. He taught that all the law and prophets are summed up in love (Matt. 22:37–40; Rom. 13:8–9). There it is! He summed up the entire purpose of Creation in love. When I first started to see that not only the golden thread woven through Scripture is love but also that love is the lens from which all of life is seen, I was thrown off. I would read through the Gospels, writing down everything that He told me “to do,” and then commit to do it. I wanted to be a doer and not just a feeler. Life to me was pragmatic as well as romantic. How could all of life come down to love? It seemed so emotional and not very practical.

Let me stop here and say what love is not. As I am writing, I wish I had another word other than love. In our society
love
is often a cheap word that typically means a strong like or fondness of someone or something. We use the word
love
to describe our most intimate relationships as well as to describe our favorite hamburger place. To some the word
love
means passivity or an acceptance of sin. Others think love is the absence of absolutes in the name of tolerance. To some it is even a representation of their lust.

The kind of love I am talking about has nothing to do with these things. I am talking about the burning desire that pulsated in the heart of the uncreated, causing Him to create an earth filled with a garden and then create mankind out of the dust of that garden and put mankind right next to Him with affection and desire. I am talking about God’s story and the dream of His heart. We cannot jump into the meaning of life without getting into His story. When I talk of love, I am talking of holy, transcendent love that is the fountain of all desire and the source of all that exists because it is God Himself. When Jesus said that all of the law and prophets are summed up in love, He is saying that they all define love and facilitate love for Him. It all hangs on love.