Simplicity

I have been enamored with thoughts about our purpose, specifically mine. I have been consumed with thoughts about what God has for me in the here and now and in the future. I have wondered many days about whether what I am doing is what God desires. I have spent many hours thinking and praying about career, real-life, plans, direction and guidance. Yet how often do I complicate my thoughts and the tendencies of my heart with these hypothetical scenarios and misplaced worries? In this complication, have I missed the simplicity of the gospel?

I have deep within me those same longings that you do for the beautiful world around us. I have had that same emptiness that you have. How often have I filled my life with activities, goals, worldly possessions and other junk? I have experienced enough life (yet nowhere near what most of you have nor what Solomon did) to know that these things I try to fill that emptiness are only a temporary fix. In this filling, have I crowded out the necessities of the Christian life?

I have been reading Knowing God by J.I. Packer and he presents some thoughts on the simplicity of our purpose.

“Once you become aware that the main business that you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall into place of their own accord.

            What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective; something, which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance; and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God?”

I have often felt that a job or career will never be enough for me. I guess I do not want to come to the end of my short life only to look back and see that my life has been about nothing more than surviving, in essence. I want some epic cause or noble purpose to lose myself in, not a safe, comfortable job. I want to go to Africa and start an oil company to give away all of the profits for gospel-centered humanitarian aid. I want to quit my job and head to a remote jungle to tell an unreached people group about our God who has come to save us. I want to go to seminary to become a pastor or a church planter. I want to forsake all worldly purposes to get lost in the big purpose that is spreading the fame of our great God.

God, through Packer’s writings and His Word, has awoken my heart to the fact that there is no higher, or compelling goal than to know God and make Him known. Ultimately, no matter the course of life that I find myself on, my purpose remains the same. Knowing God and making Him known. That simple, yet large purpose needs all the room my heart can muster. I want to stand at the end of my life and be able to say that I have known God.

Packer continues to sketch out simply what it looks like to know God and for Him to know me.

“What, then, does the activity of knowing God involve? Holding together the various elements involved in this relationship, as we have sketched it out, we must say that knowing God involves, first, listening to God’s Word and receiving it as the Holy Spirit interprets it, in application to oneself; second, noting God’s nature and character, as His Word and works reveal it; third, accepting his invitations and doing what He commands; fourth, recognizing and rejoicing in the love that He has shown in thus approaching you and drawing you into this diving fellowship.

            There is, certainly, great cause for humility in the thought that He sees all the twisted things about me that my fellow humans do not see (and I am glad!), and that He sees more corruption in me than that which I see in myself (which, in all conscience, is enough). There is, however, equally great incentive to worship and love God in the thought that, for some unfathomable reason, he wants me as His friend, and desires to be my friend, and has given His Son to die for me in order to realize this purpose.”

Will I give everything I have for this? Will I have the discipline to train myself for godliness (1 Tim. 4:7)? Will I allow the grace of God to train me in righteousness and holiness (Titus 2:11-14)? Will I draw near daily, yea hourly, to this Majestic and Holy God (James 4:8)? Will I be transformed by the renewing of my mind (Romans 12:1)? Will I remove the snares of sin and run with endurance (Hebrews 12:1-2)?

It’s pretty simple. Let’s don’t complicate this.