An attitude check.  We are all called to be sent - do you have an attitude of love or is it one of obligation?  Your attitude will speak from your heart.  Stop and do your own attitude check.

God has a mission for your life.  God has a life message he wants to say to the world through you and he’s got a life mission for your life.  The most important thing is that I complete my mission “…the work that the Lord Jesus gave me–to  tell people the Good News about God’s grace.”

You Are Called to Bless.  You’re called to bless other people.

How do you do that?  You bless other people when you serve them.  It may be physical assistance.  It may be financial assistance.  It may be emotional support.  It could be relational support.  It could be practical support.  There are a thousand different ways that you can serve the people around you.

When you serve others, the Bible says, you actually bless them.

So what I want to do this weekend is take the five different passages of the Bible that compare life to a race and compare becoming who God wants you to be to a race and draw out from them eight principles.  I call this the Marathon to Maturity.  This is how you get to where God wants you to be in life.  God doesn’t want you to stay the same.  He doesn’t want you to be in spiritual diapers your entire life.  He wants you to grow up.

This week we look at the second calling of life and it is this: You have been called to not just be loved; you’ve been called to belong.  To belong to God’s church which is going to go on and on forever in eternity.

To understand your life purpose and understand your life calling you have to begin with God, because God created you.  You can’t tell yourself what your purpose is.  Only your Creator can tell you what your purpose is.  Your purpose, your calling in life, actually begins in the nature of God. 

The Bible tells us that God is love. We’ve talked about this so many times.  That God doesn’t just have love, God doesn’t just show love.  God is love.  Love is the nature, the character, the essence of God. There would be no love in the universe if it weren’t for the fact that God is love.

In Purpose Driven Life, Forty Days of Purpose, we looked at the word “purpose.”  But actually the word “calling,” which refers to the same thing, is used ten times more than the word “purpose” in the Bible.  Ten times more to refer to your assignment, your purpose, the reason you exist, why God made you, what on earth am I here for. In the next six weeks we’re going to look at, why am I alive and what am I supposed to do with my life.  If Forty Days of Purpose was kindergarten, now we’re moving a step up and we’re going into the advance class on God’s calling on your life.

Ryan Millers testimony on his last Sunday.