“This one thing I do,” the apostle Paul said.  “This one thing.”  Frankly, I envy the clarity, the conviction, the focus, don’t you?  Who wouldn’t want just one thing to do?  One thing to worry about, budget for, plan for and be responsible for.  Just one thing!  Wouldn’t that be something?  Maybe that’s why Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life: What on earth am I here for? has sold 21 million copies and counting.  He must be scratching where a lot of people itch.

Purpose Driven Life has cut across geographic, religious, denominational and socio-economic lines with that question to reach a broad spectrum of people who must have some interest in knowing why they’re here.  When Scott Peterson was arrested for the murder of his wife Laci and their unborn child, among the missing person posters in the trunk of his car police found a copy of Warren’s book (Prosecutor’s rest their case against Peterson,” CNN.com, October 5, 2004).  Too bad the book was locked in the trunk.  Then there was a time in Mitch’s life when that question came up.  Remember when he and Curly were riding across New Mexico on horseback in City Slickers?  Curly, the old, leathery, saddle worn cowboy told Mitch that the reason he was so miserable was because he didn’t realize that there was only one thing he was supposed to do in life.  “What’s that?” Mitch asked.  Sticking that big old gloved index finger in the air, Curly told Mitch, “That’s what you have to figure out,” Curly said. 

So, whether it’s Rick Warren or the apostle Paul or Scott Peterson or Curly and Mitch, it’s pretty safe to assume two things about most people.  Most people want to believe there is some reason for their existence.  That they are more than just a cosmic accident looking for a place to happen.  And, most people want to know, personally and with deep assurance, what that purpose is.  Eventually, everyone, in one way or another at one time or another, will come to the end of a career or of a life’s dream or of a marriage or of something asking the same thing Peggy Lee did in the song she popularized in the 60’s, Is That All There Is?  They’d like to believe, I’d like to believe, that there is more than just getting from one end of life to the next.  So, is there more?

Joshua once said to the people of Israel at a very formative moment in their history, “Choose this day whom you will serve . . . but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).  We know, or should know at least this much.  Whatever God’s purpose for your life or mine, neither Joshua’s nor Warren’s nor Paul’s choice can be ours.  Certainly the most sacred responsibility God ever gives any human being is that of choosing whom to worship, whom to serve, to live and die for.  Have you made that choice?  Or, have you defaulted by letting the course of life and daily circumstances determine it for you?

Rodney Daingerfield died this week.  Those of us from the Caddy Shack generation are going to miss his humor.  Daingerfield is the comedian who made famous the line, “I don’t get no respect.”  His humor was self-depreciating, common, down to earth.  He said that, when he was born, he was so ugly the doctor slapped his mother.  When he was a kid playing hide and seek, he said that the other kids wouldn’t even look for him.  And, when he finally got into show business, one of his first gigs was in club so far out that they reviewed it in Field and Stream.  No matter where he turned, he couldn’t “get no respect!”

To listen to Daingerfield’s humor, you’d think he might have actually believed what he joked about.  Like many comedians, professional and otherwise, Daingerfield might have been using his humor to mask a deep, tortuous pain from childhood.  His father abandoned him and he didn’t believe his mother, who had to work multiple jobs to survive, loved him.  He endured three failed marriages and moved from one dead end job to another until stumbling into stand up comedy sometime in his early 40’s (“Rodney Daingerfield dead at 82,” CNN.com, Wednesday, October 6, 2004).  Do you think that what drove Rodney Daingerfield to professional success was a desire to find the respect that had so eluded him in virtually every other area of his life?  If so, he’s not that different than most of the rest of us who believe that making it in the right career, getting married right or achieving some kind of public success will finally secure for us the respect from others we so desperately want.   

Here is the real danger with that kind of thinking.  Whatever we believe will finally bring us respect from others, the feeling that we are important because of who we belong to, who belongs to us or what we possess - whatever we believe will bring us that respect we will sacrifice our lives worshipping and serving.  What if we’re worshipping a false god?  Reality can be a brutal awakening.

Like someone wrote about the dream infatuation creates versus the reality love delivers.  Infatuation is when you think your husband is as handsome as Tom Cruse, as amusing as Rodney Daingerfield, as intellectual as Albert Einstein, as devout as Billy Graham and as athletic as Hulk Hogan.  It’s not so easy to live with when you discover that love means accepting the fact that your husband is as handsome as Albert Einstein, as intellectual as Hulk Hogan, as devout as Tom Cruse, as athletic as Rodney Daingerfield and as amusing as Billy Graham.

Reality can be a brutal awakening.  However, if you have discovered that what you have been living for isn’t worth the sacrifice of your life then it may well be that you’re on the verge of the best discovery of your life!

During this next six weeks, during our 40 Days of Purpose Campaign, you might discover the true purpose of your life for the very first time.  Not because of this campaign, necessarily, but because of the promise of Jesus.  “‘Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.  For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’” (Matthew 7:7-8).  Those words are the promise of God.  Do you believe them?

At the outset of this very important time in our church’s life, it is essential that we settle something.  Whether or not we discover meaning and purpose in our lives is not a question of how badly God wants it for us.  So, Rodney Daingerfield couldn’t “get no respect”.  Maybe it wasn’t his to “get,” or ours to “get” either, as much as it is something we’ve been given at the outset. 

Just this week, a penny sold at auction in London.  It was just a penny, but it brought $490,000 at auction.  It was a 1200 year old penny bearing the name of King Coenwulf of Mercia who ruled in southern England from 796-821.  An amateur using a metal detector found it just north of London (“Ancient coin worth a pretty penny,” CNN.com, Thursday, October 7, 2004).  It’s just a penny.  You might think it is just worth one cent.  In truth, it’s worth what someone was willing to pay for it.  That means that one penny is actually worth $490,000 because that’s what someone was willing to pay for it. 

If respect, the sense that we are of value and worth to someone else who is important to us, is what someone is willing to pay for us, then what are we worth?  “‘For God so loved . . .’” you “‘. . . that he gave his only Son . . .’” (John 3:16).  If you are worth what someone is willing to pay for you, then that means you are worth nothing less than the price of the life of the son of the God who created you.  Put another way, if what you are looking for is respect, it doesn’t get any better than that.  Right now, just the way you, you have the respect of the holy creator of all the universe.  Do you believe that?

Jesus once said it this way.  “‘It is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of (his) little ones should perish’” (Matthew 18:14).  You are so valuable to the God who created you, it is not a question of how badly he wants you to know his purpose for your life, or mine, or anyone’s.  It’s only a question of how badly we want it, whether we want it badly enough to ask, seek and knock.  For the apostle Paul, that was a settled question.

“This one thing I do,” he wrote, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” 

What is interesting to me is that it appears Paul came to this moment of clarity in what you and I would call midlife.  Early in his life, he was caught up in something else altogether.  The book of Acts tells the story of a younger Saul who was so very passionate about his beliefs that he was willing to destroy other people on the altar of his religious idealism.  It was during what we know of as the Damascus Road experience that the light finally came on for him and Jesus revealed to him why he had even been born into this world (see Acts 9).  Have you ever seen that light?  What drives your life?  What is that one thing you’d be willing to die to have?

I’ve just finished reading Into Thin Air, the story of the ill fated spring of 1996 which turned out to be the deadliest climbing season in the recorded history of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.  That year, some twelve climbers lost their lives and several others were maimed for life, including local physician Beck Weathers.  Everest is a brutal mountain to climb.  No matter how skilled or athletic or determined a person may be, if they decide to attempt to summit Everest, the odds are one in four they will die trying (Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air, Anchor Books, 1997).  One in four!  Why would anyone be willing to try something when the odds are one in four they’ll sacrifice their life doing it?  What if, when they get to the top, they find out what they’d sacrificed their life for wasn’t worth it?

A friend of mine who is at least ten years younger made his millions by the time he was 30.  One day, he walked into a colleague’s office and said, “I’ve got to find a new reason to come to work.”  He didn’t have to work anymore for security.  He could have retired then and there and never worried again about money.  But, once he made his money, he discovered he needed a new reason for living.  It shouldn’t surprise us when some people make it to the “top” of what we think is success, only to yell back down to us, “If you’re looking for life’s purpose up here, you might as well turn around now and start back down.” 

On the other hand, aren’t we all trading the days of our lives for something?  Is whatever you are sacrificing your life for worth it?  Is it worth what it’s costing your health, your marriage, your children – maybe even your eternity?  If God has put you here for a reason, is that reason what you are living for?  Do you know what it is?  Like Paul, has the light broken into your darkness to show you the way?  Have you seen that light?

When we went on our cruise to Alaska a few weeks ago, I had a number of first time experiences.  I had never seen humpback whales or dolphins or mountain goats in the wild.  But, there was something else I’d never seen.  I didn’t even know it until I saw it. 

I’d never seen a lighthouse at night.  I’d seen lighthouses before, during the day, most of them nothing more than museums.  But, in Alaska’s Inside Passage, where ships have to maneuver through dangerously narrow and shallow inlets just off the Pacific Ocean, the lighthouses are essential to safe navigation.  One night as we were sailing, I was looking out the window toward the bow of the ship.  It was so dark that it was impossible to tell the difference between what might be the horizon and the side of a mountain as it plunged into the ocean.  Suddenly, miles away out in the darkness, there was this tiny blinking light.  I stayed focused on it.  Every so many seconds it would blink again.  I finally realized that I was seeing a lighthouse, the light turning slowly around at the top.  I’d never appreciated until that moment how important a light could be in the darkness.  Not quite like that.  And, how important it is when the night is as black as ink, to be able to find your way because of one tiny light. 

I’ve seen that light in other ways before.  Jesus said, “‘I am the light of the world’” (John 8:12).  I’ve seen that light.  Have you?  When I was a little boy and first understood the gospel, I saw that light and I prayed to Jesus and he forgave my sins and gave me a new beginning.  When I was confused about what to do with my life as a teenager, I prayed to Jesus and he gave me light to follow in the darkness.  When we couldn’t have children, I prayed to Jesus and he lighted our pathway to adoption, which gave us our two sons.  When my marriage ended in divorce and the darkness was the darkest it had ever been, I prayed to Jesus and, slowly but surely, in the darkness, I saw a light and found my way again.  One day, when I thought that all of my life’s dreams were forever gone, I prayed to Jesus and, suddenly, out in the distance, somewhere out there in the darkness where the sea and sky meet, I saw a light.  And, I followed it and I kept following it until it got brighter and brighter.  When I finally got close enough, I realized that the light I was seeing was coming from a lighthouse named Cliff Temple and my life has never been the same since! 

This coming few weeks I will not promise you fill-in-the-blank answers for life’s most complicated questions.  I will promise you these two things.  In Christ, I have seen the light of life and hope and eternity.  And, if you will give yourself to it, if you will truly open your heart and your mind to the possibility, you can see that light, too.  Actually, that’s Jesus’ promise, not mine. 

The promise that, if you will but open your heart to the possibility, you, too, can discover the one thing for which you were born into this world.  Would you do that?  Would you open your heart to Jesus today?