MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: WHY ON EARTH AM I ON EARTH? | Joel Gorveatte

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I've noticed over the last several years that I might be the kind of person that just always has a stack of books that I have yet to read. And also a reality of that stack of books is that it's somehow always growing faster than the rate that it can go down. I don't know if you resonate with that at all. Some of you I mentioned books and you threw up in your mouth a little bit. Like it was like, why would you read if you're out of school kind of thing? Uh but I just had this reality, like, I I may never get to where I don't have a stack of books. I'm like, yeah, I'm planning on reading that someday. And one of those books is a book that I encountered recently. It's not a new book by any means, but it's a book that I'm like, yeah, that that should go on the list. And the book is titled The Meaning of Life. Now, as a human being, that seems like a book we should all read, right? The Meaning of Life. It was written by a guy named Dr. Hugh Moorhead, who is the professor of philosophy and chairman of the philosophy department at uh Northeastern Illinois University. He published this book as a 35-plus year research project. The book is not as much of a book as it is a collection of essays, a collection of responses to the question of the meaning of life. And here's how he compiled this over the course of his career. Over the years, he posed this question to renowned philosophers and thought leaders and scientists. And here's how he would do it. Moorhead would buy their book, he would read their book, and he would return their book with a small little insert that said this please return the book inscribed with your answer to this question. What is the meaning or purpose of life? He wrote to dozens of these individuals, and really his responses and the responses that came in came in in four categories. The first you could say is the brutally honest. The brutally honest. These are people that in all their pedigree and all their experience, all their esteem, basically said, Yeah, I don't know. Some people even said, hey, if you find the answer, write me back. The brutally honest. The second would be the subjective. The subjective that kind of said, Man, meaning is whatever we create it to be. Meaning is whatever we form and shape it to be. Another group was the deflectors. They kind of deflected the question and said, that's too simple. That question is too reductionistic. It's too minimal to think about life in those simple terms. And then there's another group that were probably smarter than I am, because I don't really understand this, but said really, you know, we can feel that we have purpose, but really we can't discover it on a cognitive level. We have this connection to each other. We have this connection as human beings, but we can't really discover it in like an experiential way, and to really know it and to get our hands around the meaning of life. Four categories, four groups of responses. And what I take from that summary, and again, I've got the books on the pile. I have yet to read the full book. But essentially the answer to the question, what is the meaning or purpose of life, was we don't really know. We don't really know. It's a question that we should all wrestle with. It's a question that we should all think about and probably have thought about in some level, and not just one time and we set it and forget it, but over the seasons and courses of our life, different moments, different events, different circumstances, different trials prompt us to engage that question. And not just the meaning of life, but the meaning of my life. What is the meaning of my life? Why am I here? What is my purpose? What is my meaning? Today we're going to interact with a guy named Jeremiah in the scriptures. And the moment that we'll see Jeremiah, it's really this purpose-defining, meaning-defining moment that Jeremiah has with God. God speaks to Jeremiah. He's a religious, he's a spiritual leader in the nation of Israel, and his nation is in religious and political turmoil. There's not a bright future. And God meets Jeremiah in this moment, and he shapes the meaning of Jeremiah's life. He shapes the purpose and the intention. He reminds Jeremiah of why he is here. And before we get to the life of Jeremiah, I want you to think about your life. I want you to think about your life. Have you ever asked that question? What is the purpose of my life? What is the meaning of my life? I want to phrase the question in this way. We've been wrestling with a couple of questions each week over the last couple weeks. And today's question is this Why on earth am I on earth? Why on earth am I on earth? And maybe you haven't put that verbiage to it, maybe you haven't put those words to it, but you've wrestled with that, and I've wrestled that. Why exactly am I here? Maybe it's not necessarily been wrestling with the question. Maybe it's been wrestling with the emotions, with the feelings, with the with the results of not having a clear answer to that question. Feelings of hopelessness, feeling lost, at sea, feeling shipwrecked, feeling like you don't have the foundation that you thought you did. And it starts to prompt this question not just what is the purpose of my life, not just why are we here, but why am I here? Why on earth am I on earth? And today I want to do our best together to explore that question and really to lay a foundation. That's that's my goal today. Let's let's lay a foundation for why on earth are you here? Why am I on here? And really propel us to say, what does that look like specifically for me? And I want to answer and address that question, why on earth am I on earth? And I want to start really, really simple, okay? Let's let lay its foundation. Uh the question implies that you are here. That you are on earth. I'm a pretty simple person, I'm a pretty linear thinker. By asking the question, why on earth am I on earth? You are implying I am here. And you got here a certain way. You arrived on planet earth a certain way, and I'm not talking about your mother. And I'm not talking about an accident or a boom or a coincidence. I'm talking about you are on earth because you were created. You're here. I'm here because we were created. I am on earth because a creator put me here. I want to give you a couple just realities of this. Uh, I want you to think about the human body for a moment. Think about the body that you live in, the body that you walk in, all these different systems, all these things working together that are so much beyond just any fluke chance. Think about your blood vessels. An average human body contains around 60,000 miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries. For context, the earth's circumference, okay? One trip around the earth is about 24,000 miles. That means your blood vessels, fully stretched out, could wrap around the earth twice. You ever sing the song, He Got the Whole World in His Hands? You could say, I got the whole world in my veins. You could just say that for a second. Your blood vessels. Oh, think about your heart. The average human heart per day pumps about 2,000 gallons of blood. Think about your lungs. Your lungs are made up of a few hundred million tiny, tiny little microscopic air sacs that are all networked together and work somehow without you even thinking about it. Last time I checked, you didn't have a strategic planning meeting for your next breath. It just happened. It just happened. Think about your brain. Your brain processes tens of thousands of thoughts every single day and can store more memory, can store more information than any computer hard drive ever invented. This is the body that you were given. This is the body you were created with. And to answer the question of why on earth am I on earth, I've got to say, I am here and I'm here for a specific reason. But here's what's true. Many of us would believe that there is a creator. Right? I believe in design, some call it intelligent design. I believe that there's a creator behind my existence. But what's true is you can believe the fact of your creation without knowing the purpose for your creation. You can believe the fact that you were created and still have a void of answering the question, why on earth was I created? You can believe in the fact that there is a creator out there, but you can live without the purpose and the intention of that creator that he imprinted you with, that he encoded you with. And the truth is this. If we're trying to answer that question, if we're trying to say, why on earth am I on earth? We'll never fully find what you were created for apart from the one who created you. He is the foundation. He is the starting point to say, how do I answer that question of why I am here? And some of us we we embrace the reality that we are created, but we don't know what it means to live with purpose, with intention. And some of us we've we've we've attempted to find purpose, we've attempted to find fulfillment, and we've done it divorced from the one who created us. So we've got to come back to this foundation. To find what I was created for, I gotta I gotta get to know, I gotta start with the one who created me. And this is true in your life, it's true in my life, it's true in the life of Jeremiah. So I want to take you to Jeremiah chapter one. Jeremiah chapter one. We see this purpose-defining, meaning-defining moment in Jeremiah's life. It says this the word of the Lord came to me saying, God spoke to me, God, God interrupts Jeremiah, he intersects Jeremiah and says this before I formed you, created you, crafted you, I knew you. I I chose you, I had my eye on you. Before you were born, God says, I set you apart, I I gave you a purpose, I had an intent, I had a plan for your life. And then he gives Jeremiah his purpose. Then he calls him into why he was created. He says, This I've appointed you, I selected you, chose you as a prophet to the nations. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations, a a mouthpiece, a representation, a messenger. And God gives Jeremiah in this moment. There's this interaction, there's this exchange of dialogue between God, the Creator, and Jeremiah. And what he's trying to do in Jeremiah, he's saying, I want you to realize why you are here. I want you to have this assignment. I want it to sink into who you are and why you live. And this is a moment for Jeremiah, but it's not just a moment for Jeremiah. It's not just a moment for a pastor or a preacher or a leader or whoever the super spiritual, super Christian you would think of. It's not just for them, it is for all people of all ages, of all different backgrounds, that God has a purpose. And maybe it's not a prophet, maybe it's not a messenger, but God has an exchange for you. He has a conversation for you. Look at the way the apostle Paul describes in Ephesians chapter 2. He says, This he's not writing to pastors, he's not writing to leaders, he's writing to everyday ordinary followers of Jesus, just like you and just like me. For we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, created anew, made alive in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. You were created, and you were created with intention, you were created for a purpose, you were created with a plan, with a design from your creator. Um does anybody know what this is? Does anybody know? If you know me, you know that this is a dangerous thing because this is like somewhat of a tool, and I am not a handy person at all. Uh anyone just shout out here in Caledonia, in Middleville, if you know what it is, just impress the rest of us. Anybody? It's okay. Some some words I don't understand are being shouted out. Um some kind of some kind of wrench. Anyone get in the this is called a basin wrench or a sink wrench. Okay, you can buy it for $14.99 on Amazon. Uh this is a a sink, and it's basically designed to get in the places that are awkward to get in with other tools and to clamp to things that vary in sizes. Okay, so the next plumbing project you do, the next thing in your sink that's not working, don't call me, just order one of these and go for it. Okay? This is a sink wrench, a basin wrench. Um that's what it's for. It is designed for a certain space under your vanity, under your under your faucet, under your sink. It's not designed to be a weapon, it's not designed to be a musical instrument. It's not designed for 50 purposes, it's designed for about one or two purposes. And it's made, it's it's sized, it's shaped accordingly. This is a little bit uh what Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter 2. For you are designed, you are his workmanship, you are his tool in his hand, you are his masterpiece, and he created you with intention, he created you for a certain pocket of the earth, he created you for a certain plan and a purpose. And so the question is, okay, how do I find that? If I am a basin wrench, if I am a sink wrench, how do I know that that's what I am? And that's what many of us would think of when we think of how do I find my purpose? Why on earth am I here? How do I discover that? How do I exchange and experience what Jeremiah got to exchange and experience with God when God speaks to him and gives him that purpose? And today, again, I want to lay a foundation for us. I want to lay a foundation for you to go on your own journey of that. And for me to go on my own journey of saying, God, what is the unique, specific purpose you've given me? And really, you don't have one purpose, you have two purposes. Your purpose, the reason why you're here, is is twofold. And I want to give it to you, this first part. Purpose, number one, you could say, is this general purpose? General purpose. Or you could say it's it's our shared purpose. This is what all people at all ages at all times, this is why work we were created, and this is what we were created to do. And number one, the the first aspect of this general purpose is number one, to walk with God. To walk with God, to have a relationship with God, to have a friendship with God, to walk, to move through life with the creator of the universe. This is this first piece of this general purpose. Look, look what God speaks to Jeremiah later on in the passage we read. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. God's like, I'm gonna give you the words, I'm gonna be with you, I'm gonna download inspiration to you. Do not be afraid of that. Why? For I am with you. I'm walking with you, and I will rescue you, I will preserve you, declares the Lord. The first thing God calls Jeremiah into is, hey, hey, keep walking with me. I created you, created you to walk with me. God does not send you to go find your purpose, God walks with you to go find your purpose. God is a relational God. The first thing He created you for was to walk with Him. And there's some things that happen when we start to walk with the God we were created to walk with. Number one, our soul finds rest. Our soul finds rest. When we're walking with the God we were created to walk with, there is something about striving in performance in comparison that just seems to die. So I don't have all the answers. I'm not even better than them. I just know that I'm walking with God. I just know I'm his daughter. I just know I'm his son. There's a couple of things that happen when we start to walk with our soul finds our we we find we find joy and contentment. Look what the psalmist said, Psalm chapter 16, verse 11. This is written by David, who walked with God in a variety of moments and seasons and callings. He said, God, in your presence there is fullness of joy. Walking with you, there is fullness of joy. At your right hand, when we're walking side by side, there is treasures forevermore. There's resources, there is blessing, there is peace, there is contentment. In your presence, there is fullness of joy. Somebody, that's your sermon for today, right there. That joy is not found elsewhere, joy is not found in other people, other things. It is found in the presence of your creator. And don't just think the presence of your creator and think about at a journey on a Sunday. The presence of your creator walking with you through the very real circumstances of life. You're created to walk with God. And then look what he says in the first part of the verse, Psalm 16, the first part of verse 11. He says, God, you make known to me the path of life. So when I'm walking with you, I start to see the future a little more clearly. My priorities seem to align a little bit more clearly. I can make better decisions. I can have a better direction for my life when I'm walking with the one who I was created to walk with. You make known to me the path of life. Because here's what's true: walking with God is not just about going on a walk. Walking with God is following where he is going, He's following Him in His mission, following Him in His priorities. And what happens when we walk with God, we learn to work with God. To work, to work with God. Walking with God leads to working with God because God has things He's up to. I learned that I was created not to just walk with Him and have fellowship, but to have partnership with Him. To work with God. We all have and should have a work with God, a place where we create with Him. A place that He's given us to steward and grow and cultivate. A place that is our little slice of earth that we can make look more like heaven. We're called to work with God. To walk with God, to work with God, and what it leads to in our lives and through our lives. We're created to bless the world. To bless the world, to walk with God, to work with God, and to bless the world. Because God's purpose for me is not just about me. God's purpose for you is not just about you. Look what he speaks to Jeremiah in verse 10. See, today I appoint you, I select you, I call you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plan. God's saying, I'm gonna give you a message, I'm gonna give you a Role. I'm going to give you uh uh uh words in in and a declaration from me, and it's gonna be hard because God's people are in a hard place. He's saying, Jeremiah, I want you to go in there. I want you to bring my words, but also bring my hope to build and and to plant and to till up the ground to prepare for what I want to do. He said, Jeremiah, I want to use you to be a blessing to the world, to walk with God, to work with God, and to bless the world, to make a difference, to make it better, to recreate. Look what Tim Keller says about our work as we work with God in the variety of circumstances and scenarios in our life. He says, work is rearranging the raw material of God's creation in such a way that it helps the world in general and people in particular thrive and flourish to bless the world, to bless the world, to walk with God, to work with God in a way that makes the world better. So the question is again: what is my specific purpose in that? Where is my specific lane? If that's if that's the real call of all people who call earth home from Adam to you, to me, to everyone, what is your specific place? What is my specific place for that? And my short answer is I don't know. I don't know what it is for you. Some of you I got some hunches, some of us we've had some conversations, but that is not mine to give you, that is yours to unearth and discover and find out. But I want to give us four starting points today, four places to look to say, how exactly have I been created and crafted and encoded and hardwired to walk with God and to work with God and to be a blessing to the world. How does that specifically look like in my life? I want to give you four starting points. Number one, start how with how you are. Start with how you are. One of the things he says to Jeremiah, he says, Before I formed you, I knew you. And when he's saying I formed you, it's not just the bones and ligaments, like we're all created relatively the same in terms of our bodies. Okay? So God wasn't so much interested in right, I where should I put the heart, right? Like, where should I put the lung? No, God had a little bit of a template he was working from. We are unique in our personalities, in the things that make us tick, in our passions and motivations. So God had a little bit of a template when he was working with when he created your body, but man, I think he had a big whiteboard when he created your mind and your will and your emotions. Like, man, the possibilities, the combinations are they're endless. They're endless. Think back to your your childhood. Who were you in that raw, pure form? What's your personality? What what got you excited? What do you what do you dream about? What's your personality? Are you introverted? Are you extroverted? What drives you? What energizes you? Look, look how you are. Look at your abilities. What things have you just been naturally able to do? Look at your ability. Look what the things you're the you're good at. And not in a weird way, but what are you good at a little better than other people? Look at your ability. Look at the things that come easy to you. Look at the things that people seem to ask you to do repeatedly. What did people just find their way asking you to do? Is it to comfort? Is it to support? Is it to use something like this? Is it to give words of encouragement or wisdom? What do people seem to affirm about your ability? Start with how you are. Because those are created, those are crafted on purpose. They're crafted with a design. Start with who you are, how you are. Number two, start with what you have. Start looking like what do I have? This is about resources. This is about what's in your hands. And not just talking about money. But what has God put in your hands? Some of us, we have an abundance of relationships. It's like you've got connections on connections on connections. Your people know people who know people. You just surrounded people. God's put people in front of you. Some of us, God's put time in front of us. It's a new season of life, it's a job change, it's a different work rhythm where there's flexibility and there's time. What has God given you? Has He given you ideas and wisdom? Has He given you words of comfort and care? What has He put in your hand? What do you have more of than others may have? What has God seemed to uniquely give and entrust to you? And how can those things be used to walk with God, to work with God, to bless the world around you? Start with how you are, how God's already wired you, how He's already designed you, and start with what you have. And then number three, start right where you are. Start where you are. Because when God calls us to a specific purpose, most often that that takes place in a specific group of people. And God's trying to reach everyone, He's trying to reach the world, but to do that, He calls us most often to a specific slice. He calls us to a specific circle. And maybe one day, maybe one day, God will call you somewhere. Maybe He will. Across an ocean, across the globe, across the country, but He calls all of us across the hallway, across the driveway, across the table, across the room, across the friend group. Where has He already put you? Where has He already placed you? Has He placed you among students and kids? Has He placed you around broken families, single parent households? Has He placed you around leaders, around people who shape people who shape people? Has He placed you in a specific circle that you'd look and say, man, I think this is a unique place that is true about my life. For this reason or another, God has put me here. From trying to find why on earth am I on earth? Start with, man, God, what have you already put in me and what have you already given me and where have you already placed me? Often finding our purpose, finding the answer to that question starts with looking where we already are. It starts with our backyard, starts with our job, starts with our family, starts with our opportunities, starts with the place God has already put us. And we see that through the lens of how am I walking with God and working with God and blessing the world around me. I start with how I am, what I have, right where I am. The number four, the starting point, don't start or don't look alone. Because God's plan for you, his purpose for you will always be for other people. It's often discovered among and with other people. It's not a solo journey that we go in the desert that we go on a retreat for three years and come back, and now I found it. No, it is a process that we mine, we discern, we discuss, we collaborate together. Invite a friend, invite a leader, invite a small group, invite a team into it. Get connected, a journey for the sake, not just of uh of helping out, but of discovering why am I here? Why am I called to this place? Why got why has God put me here and what has He called me to do? Don't look alone. It's why we created uh some resources. We'll put a QR code on the screen. Uh, and if uh if it doesn't work for you, we'll send it out, okay? So we'll we'll get it, we'll get it to you, uh ASAP, if you got a little problem with the the QR thing. But really, it's just a list of a list of resources. List of resources. We want to want to help you be equipped to take a step in. There's there's books there, there's there's a list. Did it work for everybody or no? It worked for you? Took you somewhere? Okay. It's not spam? Okay, we're good. We're good. Just use a resource. Find welcome another voice, welcome other people. Don't don't look, don't look alone, don't journey in it alone. Don't try to discover it alone. Why on earth am I on earth? I am I am on earth. You are on earth to walk with the God who created you, to work with him, to bless the world. How do you start to find that? How do you start to unearth that? I just start, man God, how have you wired me? What have you given me? Where have you placed me? I want to take you to the words of Jesus in Matthew chapter 5. He says this. This is the message paraphrase. He says, Let me tell you why you are here. When the God of all creation says that, I listen up a little bit, right? The word became flesh, the one who was born from the Virgin Mary, Jesus, he had already healed people and saved people and done some miracles. When he says, Let me tell you why you're here, I'm just gonna lean in a little bit. Says you're here to be salt seasoning. That brings out the God flavors of this earth, to enhance the world, to enhance the earth, to bless the world. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Here's another way to put it: you are here to be light, bringing out the God colors in this world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as city on a hill. If I make you light bearers, you don't think I'm gonna hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand, shine. Keep open house, be generous with your lives, bless other people, give to other people, open up to other people by opening up to others. You'll prompt people to open up with God. This generous Father in heaven. Jesus says, Why why are you here? Why are you here? You're here to be salt and light. You're here to make a difference. You're here for other people, you're here for the world that I love and that I've created. And how do we be salt and light? We seek to walk with God and work with God and bless the world. Walk with God and work with God and bless the world. Jesus said, I've I've made you like salt. I've made you like light. It's the mom who has fostered and adopted and just has this heart and this passion to help other moms who and families who are fostering and adopting. It's the man recently retired who just has a knack for the financial world. Praise God for those people. And who wants young families, individuals to grow in their stewardship of the finances God has given them. It's the hairdresser who uses the hours she gets with the same people to be hours where people are loved, heard, and spoken into. It's the young accountant who wants people to succeed not just in their money, but in the whole of their lives. It's people that would say, I want to walk with God and work with God and bless the world. I want to be salt and light. And so let me ask you the question: what about you? What about you? Where has God invited you to be someone who walks with him and works and creates with him in a way that blesses the world around you? What about you? What about you? And and don't don't just think about the whole or entirety of your life, although that's good. Think about this week. Think about this week, then the next seven days, before we're together again. How has God called you to walk with him, work with him, and bless the world? And to find the specific purpose of that, to find the specific wiring God's given you that. I want to give you three crush questions. Three questions to find find that, see that, step into that purpose this week. Number one, how has God created me? How you are? How you are. Start with how how you are. How has God created me? Number two, what what has he given me? What has he given me this week? This week. What has he given me? What does he put in my hand? What has he trusted me to steward and not just steward by keeping safe, but stewarding well by investing well? What has he given me? And number three, where am I already going? Where am I already going? God knows the conversations you'll be in before you do. He knows the people you'll rub shoulders with, you'll interact with this week more than you do. He knows how this week's going to go more than you do. And Parvicts say, God, I wanna I wanna walk into it yielded and aware and surrendered to you. How you created me, what you've given me, where I'm gonna be.