The Believer’s Destiny
Owen Furr // UGA Student & Kids/College Ministry Intern
I volunteered to write the blog post on February 7th, full of excitement for the words to come and the ideas I would share with you guys. Here I am, March 17th, three days before the blog is due, fumbling with the words to describe the beauties our insurmountable God has taught me over the past year. I’ve wrestled with what to share, and what most of those reading would resonate with. I concluded that I can only speak from my story, and to the few of you (or maybe many of you) who resonate with it, may the Lord speak life into you in new and profound ways.
My story of the past year has been one of confusion. I was confused how someone, namely myself, could serve the Church in so many ways yet feel so distant from a God who claimed to send his one son to die for us who did not deserve it. I was confused how I could “pursue” a loving God in such “religious” ways, yet not feel an ounce of the love He claimed to have for me. I felt the pains of prayer that had gone unanswered, and the silence of God who I thought was living. I was lost and painfully aware of my brokenness.
I had grown to worship a God who was more concerned with what I was doing than who I was becoming. The God I thought I knew was more of a constructed deity I had pieced together than he was a relational being who knew me deeply and invited me to deeply know Him. I had begun to measure the quality of my faith on how good my quiet times were, or on how many times a week I was serving at the church. Ultimately, it broke me.
The Lord was faithful amid it all and guided me through some hard questions I had to ask myself and allow for others to speak into. On that note, I want to thank a lot of the guys in my life, y’all know who you are! Thanks for giving me the space to work through the tough questions.
I do not have the word count to tackle all my questions, but there is one question that specifically comes to mind at the center of all other questions I asked myself.
Question: What is our purpose?
So often, we tend to view our lives as a sort of broken waiting period we must get through until we get to the end, either Heaven or Hell. We are so focused on the ending of our lives while Jesus is so focused on our current lives. Our current lives are not just a period of 70-80 years of hunkering down until we go on to eternity. Our current lives allow for a glimpse into the Heaven that Jesus promises us. We can experience a form of Heaven on Earth in the ways that we relate to the Lord, the ways we commune with others, and the ways we pursue Christlikeness.
As a church, it is so easy to perceive our purpose in life as a list of Christianese tasks, such as sharing at Tate once a week from 3-4, serving in kids or youth ministry once a week, telling someone the Gospel every now and again. What if these tasks are not our purpose but instead means through which we achieve our purpose and are molded more and more into the image of our beautiful savior Jesus Christ?
What if our lives are not a list of things to do, but instead a person to become?
When we think of purpose, we need to see it through the lens of why we live our lives in the way we do. We find our answer in Romans 8:29- “For those he foreknew (which is us) he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
We are “to be conformed to the image of his Son…” We are to grow in our Christlikeness. We are to grow in the ways that we love the one anothers in our lives. We are to stake our lives on Christ and in turn His greatest commandments: “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:36-40). We are to run the race with endurance and l trust that at the end of the race is a Savior with His arms wide open ready to receive us as any good good Father would.
My question to all of you is how are you growing more like Christ?
A.W. Tozer writes, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Tozer reminds us that how we see God directly influences the ways we live. If you view God as a God of judgement, you in turn will become a person of judgement. If you view God as a God of anger, you in turn will become a person of anger. If you view God as a God who holds a record of wrongs, you in turn will become a person who holds a record of wrongs.
As the Singaporean contemplative Hwee Hwee Tan puts it: “you become what you contemplate.”
In my story, I was not contemplating the love of Jesus that in turn leads me into love. I was contemplating the things I had to do, the ways I was serving, the ways I wanted people to perceive me, the ways I fell short, all of the ways I was not becoming like Jesus. Ultimately, I was not becoming more like Jesus in any sense of the imagination. I could pull off the bit, make my life look pretty to those looking in, but my heart was so full of malice, spite, hurt, envy, and pain for the ways I was looking for God but could not find Him.
When I think of viewing God as a loving Father, I am reminded by Tyler Staton in his book Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools that, “our hearts are Peter Pan-forever young, never growing up. We never outgrow the need to be reminded by the day, by the hour, sometimes even by the minute, ‘You’ll always love me no matter what, though, Dad.’ Because the second we forget that, the second it’s diluted into a trope or held in the intellect while a story of our sufficiency or control or performance lives in our bones, our lives unravel, and so does our faith.”
Your Father loves you, and Heaven on Earth is found in dwelling in the love of God day in and day out. It is found in knowing that for those in Jesus, there is no condemnation. No mistake, no flaw, nothing can ever separate you from the love of God in Jesus. You will never be more loved than you are right now by our Father, and the finality of that love was sealed for us all on the Cross in Jesus Christ.
This past week at Tribe, Kaitlin Minter shared a piece she wrote that was such a sweet exhortation to live like followers of Jesus. I had to get special permission to break the word count, but I promise it’s worth it, and nothing in our lives will bring more fulfillment than being more conformed to our savior day in and day out. As N.T. Wright wrote in his work on Paul- “love is the believer’s destiny.”
“You do not belong to darkness.
You do not belong to your past.
You do not belong to your future.
You do not belong to disappointment or failure.
You do not belong to your grades.
You do not belong to gossip or rumors.
You do not belong to social media.
You do not belong to divorce.
You do not belong to a relationship.
You do not belong to your addiction.
You do not belong to porn.
You do not belong to grief or anxiety or heartbreak or depression.
You do not belong to your enemies and you DO NOT belong to sin
You are a child of light, so live like it”
Owen is a fourth year student at the University of Georgia. He is studying Elementary Education, and hopes to one day be a principal! He is a third year intern and has served predominantly in the kids and college ministries. His hobbies are anything sports related (except pickleball, sorry), reading, and hanging out with friends!
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