Sunday, August 23, 2020

My End Goal


My End Goal
The end goal is not to write a book, not to become popular, not to become well liked, but the end goal is LOVE, the same as the beginning.  The beginning is beginning and the end.  God is the start and the finish, and because we serve a God of love, He calls us to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  When Jesus called me to preach the gospel free of charge, at the very beginning I remember some guy in church telling me, “You should get all your ideas out on paper, you should write a book, people would want to hear what you say…”  BUT, the end goal is not just to get our thoughts on paper, it’s not just to write a book that will sit on someone’s shelf, it’s to put people in the hands of their Creator, that they can walk in LOVE, that they can walk in righteousness, that people can be reconciled with their Creator.  That’s why it’s written somewhere in the scriptures that our ministry is the ministry of reconciliation. (2 Corinth. 5:18) Then end goal is not to impress people, not to be just an articulate speaker, but our goal is LOVE, to love the Lord our GOD with all our heart, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  If we are not loving God first, then we are failing.  A lot of people can love your flesh.  A lot of people helped me when I was in church, they helped me buy my house, they helped me buy my vehicle.  People can help navigate your life, the government does that, they provide food or people, all kinds of social programs, but they DON’T help people’s soul.  The way to help someone’s soul is to point them to Jesus.  And if we point someone to Jesus and put their hand in their Creator’s hand, then out job is done.  Our only job is to continue to love others, to love the Lord our God with all our heart.  But we can’t lead other people.  Our job is not to bring people back to ourselves.  You know, a lot of pastors want to be people’s Holy Spirit, they want to be people’s shepherd, so they continue to ask people for money, for tithe, for offerings, for donations, to help their building projects, and they want people to continually come back to them, that they can be the teacher.  But we should NOT be many teachers, as it says in James. (James 3:1 KJV) We Are not called to be many teachers.  We are called to point people to Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is the One and only Teacher and our job is finished if we put people, if we reconcile people with their Creator.  Obviously, we have to continue to love others and love the Lord our God ourselves, but we don’t call people to continually come back to us.  Because no one is the source of truth.  We can encourage others in love and righteousness and in good deeds, but we ourselves are not the truth.  Jesus Christ is the Way the Truth and the Life and we need to point others to Him that they can be led by their Creator.  The end goal is love.  Are we really loving the Lord our God and are we teaching others to go to Jesus, to be led by Him, to be led by the Good Shepherd, to hear from Him, to have fresh food from Him every day?  Or do we have other motives that motivate us, money, fame, you know popularity, things of this earth, the things of this kingdom.  Or is our kingdom truly of the Kingdom of God and are we winning souls to the Kingdom of God out of LOVE because we love people, we love their souls, we want to save people.  Remember Jesus called us to be fishers of men, to call people to repent and come into the newness of life.  Do we really love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves?  Or are we just fooling others and fooling our self? We need to self-evaluate, do we really have the love of Jesus in us, or do we have the love of the world?  May the grace of Jesus be with you.