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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Alistair Huong

A Purpose Driven Life

The title of our message is called a purpose driven life sound familiar My purpose today in this message is not to discuss the materials contained in the best-selling book by author Rick Warren from Saddleback Church here in California.

Neither am I trying to jab at him or discredit him in any way.

I just like the title and it fits with what I'm trying to present today.

But what we're going to do is we're going to look at the book of books that can give us a purpose-driven life, and that's this 1 right here, the Bible.

But before we go any further, let us bow our heads for a word of prayer.

Father in heaven, I ask that as we open your word, as we study about a life of a purpose-driven individual, help us to find the divine purpose you have given to each 1 of us.

And may we learn to live our lives surrendered to that purpose.

By the end of this message today, I hope it is instilled, ingrained in each 1 of you that God has a purpose for your life.

Whether you know it now or not, He does have 1 for you.

And I'm going to propose that our willpower, our power of choice, is greatly determined by an understanding and our surrender to the will or the purpose that God has for us.

I am proposing that the strength of our will is directly related to the understanding that we have of our purpose in life.

What you need to understand is the true force of the will.

This is the governing power in the nature of man, the power of decision or of choice.

Everything depends on the right action of the will.

How much depends on the power of the will?

We continue reading, the power of choice God has given to men.

We cannot of ourselves give to God its affections, but we can choose to serve Him.

We can give Him our will and He will then work in us to will and to do of His good pleasure.

Thus our whole nature will be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ.

This thing right here, the frontal lobe, where decisions are made.

So when I use the word will and decision and choice, they're all synonymous.

And today in this world, we see that suicide is at an all-time high.

We also see that depression and emotional and psychological diseases are on the rise.

We see a significant number of, or level of, attrition or backsliding from Christian churches.

There are less and less inhibition in general towards evil, against evil I should say, and immorality.

Ultimately, the reason for this, the reason why people do these things is because they choose to do it.

Well there might be physiological and you know psychological reasons that are outside of their control, yes.

They allow themselves to become controlled by circumstances and they choose to allow depression to set in.

Why do people become violent and immoral?

Whether we like it or not, We have responsibility.

We can choose what we do, how we think, how we live, what we do, what we say.

People make bad choices Because they have weak wills.

The power of the will is not trained to go against the natural tendencies of human nature.

And 1 reason, I'm not trying to be exhaustive in my explanation today, but 1 reason I believe why humanity is losing their willpower is because they have no purpose in their life.

Besides, why should I restrain my appetite if there is no good reason for me to have good health?

Why should I love my wife, stay faithful to her, if there's no good reason to do it?

Why should I overcome sin and temptation if there is no reason for me to overcome?

If life is just living on this planet, life is just living until I pass into the grave and I can never be perfect and I can never find favor with God anyway, why do it?

Why should I not let circumstances get the best of me?

Why should I not get depressed and discouraged if there's no reason for me to be otherwise?

Why should I give forth my best effort to be full of integrity, to do my work so that I am faithful even when nobody's watching if there's no good reason for me to be faithful?

So do you see how it is integrally connected the 2 things having a purpose in our lives and ability for us to make good and right and moral decisions if we have no purpose and Might I say if we don't have the right purpose, which is God's divine purpose, we cannot, will not make good and right choices.

And so what I want to do today is I want to look at the character Joseph.

And this is good because we just went over it an hour ago, so it's fresh on our minds.

And we can look at the story while it is on the tip of our tongue and we can identify qualities in Joseph or look at situations events in his life that perhaps can help us gain an understanding of how to live a purpose-driven life and in turn make good decisions.

So Joseph, did he have a purpose in his life?

And if so, what was it and how did he find it?

Turn your Bibles with me to Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis chapter 22 we begin reading in verse 17.

God here is speaking to Abraham who is the great-grandfather of Joseph.

Notice what it says, God speaking, in blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sandwiches upon the seashore and thy enemies shall possess the gate of his and I see shall possess the gate of his enemies verse 18 and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

Sojourn in this land and I will be with thee and will bless thee for unto thee and unto thy seed I will give all these countries and I will perform the oath which I swear unto Abraham thy father And I will make thy seed to multiply as the stars of heaven, and will give unto thy seed all these countries, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

Genesis chapter 28 beginning in verse 13.

And behold the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father and the God of Isaac.

The land whereupon thou lies to thee will I give it and to thy seed.

And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth and thou shalt spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed." This was speaking to Jacob.

All through his family history to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Joseph remembered, he learned, he heard that God had given his family a divine purpose.

God said, in your family, through your seed, shall the entire world, all of the earth, be blessed through the seed of Abraham.

He was, he had very early on got it instilled in his mind.

I am in this world for a very special and specific purpose.

I want to look back, however, at another passage in Genesis chapter 15.

And we're going to just touch on it now and we'll come back to it in a little bit.

God is speaking to Abraham, Abraham actually, but he was Abram at this time.

And God said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them, and they shall afflict them 400 years.

And also that nation whom they shall serve will I judge, and afterwards shall they come out with great substance." So another promise was given that before the nation of Abraham's family will become this mighty nation that will bless the whole world, they will be in bondage for 400 years to a different nation in which they are strangers.

And after the 400 years, then they will come out with great substance.

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A Purpose Driven Life

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