There is one nagging question that every human being seems to wrestle with…particularly when we reach our young adult years…that question is: “Why Am I Here?

In our attempts to discover the answer to this important question, we are often inadvertently misdirected from the true answer.

When we are young, our parents ask us what we think we will be when we grow up.  And as children, we may answer Fireman, Policeman, Nurse, Doctor, President, or Astronaut. 

When we are in High School and College, we struggle with what vocation we will choose, mistaking thinking that our future careers must be the answer to our nagging question…Why Am I Here?

The answer to Life’s Nagging Question has far less to do with “what you do” than with “who you are”.  You see, God created us to be in a relationship with him, and through that relationship, founded through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ we are identified as the “friends” of Jesus.  However, friendship with Jesus has serious consequences.  Look at the words of John 15:12-16…

“12My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.  13Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.  14You are my friends if you do what I command.  15No longer do I call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.  Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.  16You did not choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.  Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”

Let’s extract just two highlights from this passage and focus in on them:

1. Jesus calls us his friends because we know all about the Master’s business.

And he also tells us that…

2. We were chosen by God to bear fruit – fruit that will last.

So what do these two main points tell us about Life’s Nagging Question?  The answer is simple yet profound:  “WE ARE HERE TO KNOW OUR MASTER’S BUSINESS AND TO SUPPORT HIS BUSINESS BY BEARING FRUIT THAT WILL LAST”.

I find the reference to “business” to be very intriguing.  It is one thing to know about a business, it is another thing to be successful in a business.  I remember when God moved me out of direct pastoral ministry as a church planter, and opened the door for me to join a national Christian technology company as Director of Product Development and Marketing.  Before I started my job, I was excited and had grand ideas of how I could help support the business.  By the end of my first day of work, I was humbled and overwhelmed by how much I did not know and needed to learn.

This principle also is true for many Christ Followers.  We know about the Master’s Business.  We know that his grand mandate is that we should Make Disciples of all Nations.  However, not many of us know how to participate in our Master’s business in a manner that enables us to “bear fruit that will last”.  And after all, isn’t lasting fruit what it’s all about?  Who wants to invest their life into things that will not last?  I don’t.  So how can we position ourselves to not merely know about our Master’s business, but to be effective at helping his business thrive?

The John 15 passage alludes to two simple principles that we need to apply if we are going to position our selves to bear lasting fruit in our Father’s business:

1. Principle #1: We Need To Know Ourselves
2. Principle #2: We Need To Sacrifice Ourselves

We Need To Know Ourselves:

Let’s first explore our need to truly know ourselves.  In John 15, we find Jesus challenging his disciple’s sense of personal identity.  He clarifies who they are in relationship to the Master’ business…they are not merely servants they are friends because they know the Father’s business.  But Jesus goes one step further…these particular friends were “chosen” for a very important missional purpose.  They were chosen to bear good fruit – fruit that will last.

The Apostle Paul picks up on the theme of being “chosen” by God in his letter to the Ephesians.  In Chapter 1:4 Paul tells us that God “Chose us in him before the creation of the world”.  In Chapter 2:10, Paul continues to tell us that “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do”.  In short, God wired us up in a specific way, for a specific purpose.  In the design world, we refer to objects as having a “Form Factor”.  An object’s Form is determined by the Function for which it was created.  So, for example, a writing utensil, such a pencil, cannot not weigh 100 lbs nor be 20 feet tall…the object’s Form Factor necessitates that the pencil must be small, light, and easy to manipulate.

You and I also have a Form Factor.  God, in his infinite knowledge and wisdom, chose you from before the creation of the world, to accomplish a mission for which you were perfectly designed.  Your Form Factor is your personality.  Yet most people do not understand their personality well.  In fact, most people understand themselves so poorly that they even resent their own nature.  We all have a tendency to look at people we respect and wish that we could be more like them.  Or, maybe from childhood we received the negative message from our parents, “why can’t you be more like you brother or sister?”  I sincerely believe that the Evil One does not want us to know and appreciate our Form Factor, because once we do, we are on our way to answering Life’s Nagging Question, “Why Am I Here”.  As long as you and I cannot answer that question, we cannot effectively be about our Master’s business bearing fruit that will last.

In my own life and ministry, I always new God did not wire me to be a “typical” pastor.  I was too task-focused and vision-driven.  I excelled at creating ministry programs, systems, and structures.  My personality suited me well for planting new churches and starting new ministry programs. 

Who I was as a pastoral person was fundamentally challenged when the church plant I pastored underwent a split.  A woman, who I learned later had destroyed three other churches in Arizona, was now seeking to destroy the church I pastored.  The church survived the split, but the people were deeply wounded.  My denominational Superintendent counseled me to spend the next 12-36 months working on allowing the church to heal, rather than continue pursuing the church plant vision.  Whether that counsel was wise or not, I still am not sure.  But I submitted to his counsel.  This meant that I needed to change the way I pastored.  I could no longer function as a pastoral entrepreneur.  The congregation now needed me to be a pastoral shepherd. 

For a few months I was able to function as a Shepherd.  However, soon, my stress level rose to an unbearable level and my satisfaction level plummeted to an all-time-low.  I pleaded with God to help me be a “kinder and gentler pastor”.  I wanted to succeed at being a Shepherd…but God never made me to be a Shepherd.  God made me to be a creator of new ministry organizations, systems and programs.  I could no more be a Shepherding pastor, than a Shepherding pastor could be a designer of new ministry systems.  Only later would I learn that personalities are either task-dominate or people-dominate.  A task-dominate person will minister through systems and structures that mobilize others for ministry.  A people-dominate person devalues systems and structures, and prefers to minister to people directly.  I realized, that the reason I was so stressed, was because I was dishonoring God, by dishonoring who he made me to be.  This was a sin.  I also realized, that if I truly cared about my congregation, I needed to sacrifice my welfare (meaning, my steady income) for their welfare…they needed a pastoral shepherd.  And so I resigned my pastorate.

Years later, I created the ePersonality assessment program because I believed it is crucial that every Christ Follower should know and honor the personality God has given them.  Our personalities define how we perceive the world around us, how we relate to people, how we make life decisions, and how we interpret the information we gather.  Once we understand this fundamental truth, we must also understand that the fruit we bear will differ greatly from person to person based upon the way God wired us up.  One person bears luscious apples, another person bears juicy grapes.  My fruit, and your fruit, will be as distinct as apples are from grapes, because our God ordained personalities are also distinct.  So, do you know what kind of fruit God created you to bear?

We Need To Sacrifice Ourselves

Our second principle, if we are going to answer Life’s Nagging Question, is that we must sacrifice ourselves.  A grape or apple cannot be enjoyed until it is sacrificed and eaten.  In John 15, Jesus calls his disciples to love one another.  Jesus upholds his own future crucifixion as the epitome of love…that we should lay down our lives for our friends.  Rarely does Christ ask us to lay down our lives, but consistently he asks us to lay-down our…

• Selfish Ambitions
• Self-Centeredness
• Self-Justification

In fact, all that seeks to promote self is antagonistic to “God’s Business” and healthy “Fruit Bearing”.  Do you want to know the answer to Life’s Nagging Question?  The answer is that you are here to sacrifice self for the benefit of God and others.  If you find your heart recoiling at this answer, then you can be confident that “SELF” is in the way, and the fruit God wants you to bear will likely not be enjoyed by others.

When I was a child, my mother had a basket on the table filled with fake plastic fruit.  I always thought that having a basket of fake fruit on a table was kind of strange, but apparently it was in vogue in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  However, the funny thing is that today, when I take my family to visit grandma, she still has this basket of plastic fruit in her kitchen.  When my children were just toddlers, each tried to eat the fruit and quickly found that plastic fruit was not eatable.  Plastic fruit does last a long time, but it is only good to look at, as if it crying out for attention, “look at me”, “look at me”.  Plastic fruit is not “fruit that lasts” which Christ was speaking of.  Good fruit, when sacrificed and ingested, gives humans the vitamins and nutrients we require too remain healthy. 

Our ministry service…the good works that God prepared in advance for us to do…is the good fruit that if ingested by others, will help keep the Body of Christ strong and healthy.

Galatians 5:22 and 23 tells us “the Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.  Against such things there is no law”.

Conclusion:

Are still troubled by Life’s Nagging Question?  This brief lesson is only a simple introduction to the answer.  Each month this blog and podcast will seek to flesh-out the answer more fully.  Subscribe to this blog, or use AssessME.org’s FREE podcast reader to stay current.  The purpose of these lessons is to equip you to mobilize healthy and effective ministry teams.  Future lessons include:

• September 2006: A Team Building Webinar – A Multimedia Presentation On How To Assemble Highly Effective Leadership Teams
• November 2006: Spiritual Formation Impact Ministry Mobilization – A Spiritual Formation Strategy Must Lay An Essential Foundation For Ministry Mobilization.
• December 2006: The Power of Passion – Identifying and Mobilizing Passions Constructively
• January 2006: A Context for Ministry – A Deeper Look At How the Personality of Your Church Impacts Your Team Building Abilities
• February 2007: Beyond Assessments – Developing A Team-Based Equipping Strategy For Your Laity
• March 2007: Born Leaders – Leadership Incubation Strategies Based On Style and Passion
• April 2007: The Gift That Keeps On Giving – Perseverance, Burn-Out, And Succession Planning
• May 2007: Highlights from David’s Soon-To-Be-Released Book: “Made for a Mission”
• June 2007: Highlights from David’s Soon-To-Be-Released Book: “Made for a Mission”
• July 2007: Rest for the Weary – Structuring Ministry Teams for A Spiritual Sabbath.