Aligning Our Lives with God's Purpose and Kingdom

1) "Earlier this year, I realized that while I was doing my purpose that I'm called to do, I wasn't living my purpose. I was doing what I was called to do, but how I was doing it was out of alignment with my values. And suddenly it made sense, why it was really hard to pick up momentum on things I wanted to change and improve in my life, ways I wanted to grow as a person, as a mom, as a wife, as a pastor, as just a Christian, a follower of Jesus. I was feeling stuck. I was wearing down and wearing out fast. I always felt spent. I felt like I was running on fumes. Any energy or momentum I got was spent really quick." [03:03] (45 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2) "Many of us live lives that are out of alignment, like what I realized earlier this year. Out of alignment with what truly matters. What Jesus has called us to. That purpose that Pastor Kyle was talking about last week. There's the big, big purpose that's for all of us. Humans and all of us even more as Christians once we come to faith in Jesus. Why we were created. Why we were called to give our lives to the Lord. And then our individual purposes that's unique to our gifts. We all have this purpose. And it makes it hard for us to receive life, life to the full in Jesus because we're always busy. We're always distracted. We're always empty. We're struggling with these things at all times." [10:47] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3) "There's a difference between a full life and a busy or rushed life. Jesus was very, you could say, busy. He had a lot of things. There was this one day, he had about 5,000 men plus women and children, and he had to feed all of them. I don't know if that's ever been anyone else's experience, but that's pretty busy, like, rush, hurry. And he was like, oh, let's just go see if there's, like, a child with five loaves and two fish, and see what we can do with that. And the disciples are like, are you kidding me? We can't do that? They bring it, and then it's overflowing. That's full life, abundant, that came out of what seemed to be emptiness and need and hurt." [13:59] (42 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4) "If you don't go Jesus' way, then you'll never get the life you were created for. Matthew 7, 13 through 14, Jesus said you can enter God's kingdom only through the narrow gate. So the kingdom of God is here. It's accessible. Jesus brought it. The door is wide open for us to come in and live and participate in it. It's here. But there's a narrow gate. There's a specific way to get to it. It says the highway to hell is broad and its gate is wide for many who choose that way. But the gate to life is very narrow and the road is difficult and only a few ever find it. It's open to everyone." [17:12] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5) "Think about when you're using an older phone. It still works, kind of, but it's slow. The battery drains faster. There's glitches. The notification pops up that there's an upgrade available. There's a new operating system that will fix bugs, improve the speed. It's going to give you new features that will probably be really frustrating but also shiny and exciting at the same time. You know life will be so much better with the upgrade, right? But you have to choose to accept it. You have to click update. You have to pretend like you read through the user agreement and hit accept and update. A lot of us are living with an old operating system. We're drained. We're anxious. We're stressed out. We don't know why it's not picking up speed. We don't know why we're not making forward progress, but it's because we haven't tapped into the full life that Jesus is offering." [18:38] (53 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6) "So if you get nothing else out of today, what I want you to leave with is this. As long as we're living out of alignment with our created purpose, as long as we're living out of alignment with the way God's called us to live, we're going to feel and be off. It may not be horrid, but we're going to feel off. That causes this low-grade stress, this low-grade emptiness. Why can I not just be content? We're always going to have that. When life's off track, we're out of sync with our purpose. It's stress and emptiness on repeat. But Jesus solves it. Number one today is follow Jesus." [19:26] (39 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7) "We can use this not just as a feel-good verse, but as a barometer of where our lives are at. Whose truth are we living in? What lies are we following versus am I doing well at receiving this full life Jesus has? He talks about being the gate and the door. Don't just go to Jesus. Don't just say Christian on your Facebook profile and then share some fun Christian memes and Bible verses. Don't just go to church on Sunday. Don't just go to Jesus. He says go through me. He's not just the gatekeeper. He says the gatekeeper opens the door. Let me be a gatekeeper to where I open the door for people to walk to and through Jesus. Walk through Jesus. Into the life that he has for you." [30:28] (43 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8) "Receiving is an action. Someone can hold out a gift to you. But if you don't take it and unwrap it and find a place for it and learn how to use it, it's pointless. Or if that person throws the gift at your head and forces you to take it, it's a burden. It's a problem. It's forceful. It's abuse. God isn't an abuser. He's not going to shove it down your throat. But he's offering it and he's hoping you take it and he shows you how to unwrap it and put it into place. But we don't take it. Or we take it and sit it on a shelf or we never open it to see what he has for us. When life's off track, it's because we're out of sync with our purpose. It's stress and emptiness on repeat. But he has a better way for us today." [46:19] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)