Summary & Key points
How many of you actually have done jigsaw puzzles before? The key thing to a jigsaw puzzle is to know how it looks, isn’t it? The hardest and possibly the most impossible task is if somebody were to give you a jigsaw puzzle, let’s say 1,000 pieces all broken up, not assembled yet, and they don’t give you the final product on how it’s supposed to look like. Do you think you can solve it? Possibly, but with great difficulty, right? You’d probably try to sit down and look for all the colors together and maybe try to do the outline first, and then try to guess, “Where is this blue going to be? Is this actually a scene of a sea? Or is it a mountain scene? Or is it a clock tower?” You know, you’ve got many things, isn’t it? It’s impossible to complete a jigsaw puzzle unless you’re very lucky. It’s impossible to complete a jigsaw puzzle without knowing how the original looks like. It is impossible to complete the jigsaw puzzle without knowing the end in mind.
That’s what we want to share today. That’s what I want to encourage you today. I would like to encourage all of us that as we step out the door after this service—we came to worship the Lord—but I also want to deposit in you some ideas that you can take back that will be life-transforming and life-changing. God wants the best for you, and God wants things which are only good for you. He’s not there just to take from you, but He wants to give to you. He wants to pour into your life. One of the things we need to realize is that for us to live purposefully, we must have the end in mind, in the same way as a jigsaw puzzle. The problem with that is that there are many ends in our lives, right? I’m not talking about the end of our life, but I’m talking about the purpose of our lives. There are many things which tell us how our lives should be, whether you’re a student, a homemaker, a mother, a worker in a company. There are many things which tell us, “Hey, you should be this kind of student, you should be this kind of worker.”
But today, we want to look at the right end. We want to begin with the end in mind first and then talk about what is the end with our lives. There’s so much pressure out there for us to conform, and a lot of it boils down to money, to dollars and cents. The more eyeballs a company has, do you know what that means, right? The more eyeballs—that means if you are on the internet and you have a company and you start a website—nowadays, every website or every company must have what they call a social media presence. So it’s either TikTok if they are out for the younger generation, Instagram for the older generation, and Facebook for the ancients. Those of you still on Facebook, like me, you know how old you are, but it’s okay. It’s not an insult, but that’s the idea, isn’t it?
All these companies, you know, when TikTok first started, when Instagram first started, it was a way to connect with one another. But then they realized, companies realized, “Hey, the more people look at my product online, the more chance I will have for them to buy my product.” That’s the law of sales, isn’t it? Those of you who know sales, right? It’s the law of numbers, isn’t it? The more approach, the more leads you have, sure, you can have some conversions. I’m not talking about spiritual conversions here, okay? The more leads you have, the more people you approach, there will surely be some who will actually take the bait and buy a product of building community, which they still do, but it has also taken a very strong commercial tone. It has taken a very strong commercial tone because, at the end of the day, the more people look at your product online, the more people will buy. Companies are willing to invest millions of dollars into their social media platforms.
But here’s the irony, you see, and here’s the worrying thing for them: they cannot make it too obvious because if they say, “Come and buy my shoe now,” everybody will say, “Oh, this is a promo.” So what they do is they get people in the advertising line. In my previous company, I remember, they called these guys K’s, right? A K, which in my ignorant state as an HR person back then, was sitting in a meeting and they just said, “Hey, we got this K to come in.” K? I had to ask, “What’s a K?” The whole room went silent. Next time, I know, I just quietly messaged the guy on the side, “Okay, no need to ask publicly. What’s a K?” “Oh, K is key opinion leader.” On the internet realm, in Instagram, in TikTok, there are certain people who are what they call K’s, key opinion leaders. I know one of my students when I was teaching, she’s now a key opinion leader. I wouldn’t tell her name, I don’t give her free promo unless she pays me. You think I cannot play the game, is it?
But she’s a key opinion leader. She doesn’t go and really promote products, but she promotes lifestyles. A lifestyle, “Oh, look at, today I am wearing the outfit of the day and this is what I’m going out with,” and so on. They’ve got different pictures of themselves. “Today I’m traveling here,” or “I’m eating this, I’m eating that.” When you’re a key opinion leader, people follow them and they realize, “Hey, that’s cool. Wow, looks interesting what she does, what she’s eating there. Oh, I need to go and check out that store or that shop, or what kind of outfit, where does she get this from?” That’s how it starts. Eventually, companies realize that there are people out there who actually have an opinion, and they lead other people in that opinion. That’s where the name comes from, key opinion leaders. Then they realize these people actually can influence people to buy our product, and hence they pump money, they pump products into these individuals. When we see, we realize, “Wow, that’s so cool, isn’t it?” We pick up the subtle nuances, the way they behave, the way they say, the kind of food they eat, and we realize, “That’s who I want to be,” without realizing it. They don’t call them social media influencers for nothing. They influence us to be like them, they influence us to talk like them.
There are social media influencers out there who are actually—they don’t seem to be promoting any product, but they crack jokes, they do funny things with their friends, right? You follow them, and you follow. I do scroll quite a lot also at times, and I realize, “Oh, okay, I’m actually being influenced. I just talked like the guy talked that day. The guy thought about something that way. Hey, I find myself also thinking that way.” But that’s their job. Their job is to influence opinions, to influence us. Today, I want to tell you that to live purposefully, we need to be aware of all these influences. I’m not saying they’re bad. Every company has a responsibility to excel in what they do, to increase their sales, and if social media marketing is one of the ways, they should do it. But we have the choice to say, “Am I going to be influenced to their end, or am I going to be influenced to God’s end?” They have got a lot more ulterior motives on why you should follow them than God. God has only one motive for you. God, in living purposefully with the right end in mind, has only one thing for you, and He says in Deuteronomy, He wants the good and the best for you. I can’t say the same for the rest. I can’t say the same for the other K’s online, the other companies online, because I know their motives can be mixed. But we know God is different. When God writes the Bible and He tells us certain things we should and shouldn’t do, it’s for our own good. It’s so that we can have the best life possible. I love quoting this verse, John 10:10. It says, “The devil comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I have come,” Jesus has come, “that you may have life and life to the fullest.” Everybody’s after that, isn’t it? We want a full life.
I think after our society gets richer, then we realize, “Hey, having too much riches also may be not that good, so we want a full life.” A lot of times in social media, you see, “Oh, traveling, okay. Food, all right.” These are called lifestyle products, and that’s what we want. “Okay, I want to make sure I’ve got my bucket list of five places I want to travel to. All right, make sure I’m going to eat at the top three steak places in KL, for example.” That becomes your life goal. You can, but have a little bit more than that. Have a little bit more than that. Is that all? Have a little bit more than that. This is what I’ll be sharing with you today. You don’t want to wake up at a certain age, mature already in life, and say, “Who am I? Who am I?” You don’t have to be older to wake up and realize, “Who am I?” You can be a teenager and actually wake up and realize, “Who am I? Who has influenced me to become the person I’ve been? Who have I let into my life subconsciously without knowing it to be this person?” When I wake up and realize, I don’t recognize myself in the mirror anymore. To avoid that, we need to actually, like Stephen Covey says, this statement of having the end in mind. “Begin with the end in mind” is applicable to all our lives as well because if you don’t have the end in mind, if you don’t have your end in mind, somebody’s end will be placed upon you.
In order to live life purposefully, we must have the end in mind. More importantly, we must have the right end in mind. That’s why there’s so much opposition nowadays against the Bible and against followers of Jesus because we are coming into a situation in which we believe there is a right way and a wrong way. Yes, there are some things which are not really—you don’t have to be too dogmatic about them. Some things in life, there’s no right and wrong, like this chest, for example. It can be black, it can be gray. There’s no right or wrong as far as this context is concerned. But we believe, as far as moral character, as far as values are concerned, there is right and wrong. Because of this stand we’re taking, there’s a lot of opposition coming from all over the place, all over the internet, saying that, “No, that’s not the way it should be.”
So when we talk about having the right end in mind, we need to take that on board. There is a right way of doing things, there is a wrong way of living life. We cannot say, “Never mind, as long as it’s good for me, it’s okay. As long as I feel good about it, it’s okay.” The Bible tells us, “You can live that way, but that way leads to destruction.” You can have a certain attitude, be stubborn about certain things, be angry about certain things, and keep being that kind of person and not wanting to change. You can, but the Bible tells us what’s the right way of behaving and what’s the wrong way of behaving.
If you don’t do this, if you don’t believe that there is a right end for you, somebody else will step into your life. Some other social mirror will come. This is what Stephen Covey says, “There are many social mirrors out there.” That means there are many pressures from out there wanting us to be like them rather than us wanting to be what God wants. A lot of it, of course, from the internet, that’s one. But society itself, there are many social mirrors to behave in a certain way. “Oh, I’m of this culture, therefore this culture, we do things this way.” Yes, there’s some good, we keep the good, but we throw out the bad. Let’s see what God says about it. “Okay, I’m brought up in this kind of situation. My past is like this. My parents have told me to be like this even though I know it’s bad, but never mind, I’m just going to follow the example and be somebody I don’t want to be as I grow mature in life.” I can take the example of my parents, for example, be grumpy, be stubborn, and realize that, “Oh, that’s not who I should be.”
Social mirrors are pressures out there coming in different forms, asking you to be somebody you’re not. In the business world, it’s the same. Whether you’re in construction, whether you’re in sales, whether you’re in retail, there are certain ways to do things, and not all of them are right. My friend who’s in construction tells me he’s a contractor, and he works for developers, and he says it’s horrible, some of the kind of bribes they have to give, some of the kind of rubbish they have to put up with from developers. He has the choice of doing the same thing to others or doing something totally different with the right end in mind. We are all given that choice today.
So the question I want you all to come out of here with is this: if you are a student, what kind of student do you want to be? That’s what I mean by having the end in mind. If you are a worker working in an organization, what kind of worker do you want to be? We said this, having the end in mind is important, but you can have many ends in mind. As followers of Jesus, we believe that there is a right end in mind. Does that make sense to everyone? There is a right end in mind. If you’re a student, what kind of student should you be in God’s eyes? What does God say about you as a student, as a university student, a college student, a high school student? What does God say about who you should be? If you work in an organization and you have a boss, what does God say about your role in that organization? What kind of person do you want to be? If you’re a business person, you’re a homeowner, you’re a mother, you’re a father, you’re a husband, you’re a wife, what kind of husband, wife, homeowner do you want to be? What kind of husband, wife, homeowner, father, son, etc., does God want you to be?
That’s where I’m leading to today. Yes, we want to be something, but it has to be what God wants us to be. Why? Because at the end of the day, God wants what’s best for you. Living purposefully with the end in mind asks us the question of what the end is. Who determines the end? We say, “Okay, God, and where do we get that information from?” “Okay, God, okay, fine, you say that I should live with the end in mind, all right, let’s do it. So what is the end in mind?” That’s why we turn to the Bible. If you are new to coming to church, you’ve been here a few times, you realize we quote a lot from the Bible because this is our guide. The Bible is wisdom over thousands of years condensed into this book over here. Not just this specific Bible, any Bible, your app, as long as it’s the Bible, it is condensed there, and it actually can tell us what
works and what doesn’t. The authors of this Bible have seen it all before. They have seen it. They have seen different lifestyles. They’ve got kings there, they’ve got prophets there, they’ve got shepherds writing, they’ve got fishermen writing, and it’s condensed in this. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we believe that the Bible came together through God’s influence and God’s power as well, and it is now in book form. It gives us a solid grip on the right end.
When we’re talking about what kind of student, what kind of person I want to be, we need to go back to God’s word to find out. Here we are, this is what we’ll do today. It is not what we think, it is not based on our opinion on what kind of business person I should be, what kind of husband I should be. It is not based on our opinion because our opinions can be wrong. It’s definitely not based on the opinion of others or somebody we’ve seen online, but more importantly, it is based on what God has in mind. God has given us different perspectives on what the end means. Let’s go through a few Bible verses here and see what the Lord says.
2 Corinthians 4:18: “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” That’s the first major golden rule we have here. We can take back from the Bible, and it says this: put your focus, put your energy, put your efforts not on what is seen. That’s so different from what the world tells us, isn’t it? The world tells us, “Okay, your appearance is important.” I’m not saying it’s not, but how much focus do you want to put in it? How much effort do you want to put in it? How much effort do you want to put into showing yourself to others? How much effort do you want to put into your material collections, your material wealth? Put effort, yes, but that’s not the ultimate focus. Why? Because it says here there is something unseen which is going on. Life is not just all about here and now, our physicalities. There is an unseen element there. Why? It goes on to say, “For what is seen is temporary.” Agree? What we look around us is temporary. Our relationships, whether you like it or not, will one day come to an end when we die. Whatever we collect will one day rust. The nicest car, when I first bought my first car, which was a Proton Wira, even though second hand, I thought this was the best car ever. No, actually my first car was a Proton Iswara, best car ever. Nice manual, okay. After a while, the automatic window went down so slow. Then after that, to go back up, I had to pull it up and at the same time press the button. I guess you’re laughing because you have the same experience, right? Sometimes you close the central locking, not all locked. Then you have to go around the car and check, “Oh, this one is open.” Then you open and close. That didn’t happen when I first got it. But the point here is this: “For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
The Bible here is telling us, put your energies and efforts into things which go long-term, forever. That means there are things in our life which will last forever. It is eternal. There’s an unseen dimension in our lives which is much more important. The lives we see and appear physically are temporary. Don’t focus on them too much. We often live our lives as if this life here is all we have. Have you heard that statement, YOLO? Those who laugh, you know their age also. Those who are like, “YOLO? What’s he speaking? What language is that?” YOLO is “You only live once.” Correct. And “once” is spelled with an O, not W. Once. You get it? Once, w-o-n. No, never mind. You only live once. That is a statement nowadays. You just go online, just type YOLO, y-o-l-o. Sometimes they wear their shirts. That’s not true. The Bible tells us that it’s not all about just living on Earth. There is more to life. There’s an unseen, there’s an eternal element for you.
Rick Warren says this, I like what he says, “Our lives here are actually in preparation for heaven and in preparation for eternity.” When you die, it is just a stepping stone to the next phase where eternity starts. The question is, is your eternity going to be with God or going to be without God? Because if it is with God, God has great plans for you and long-range, long-term plans for you, not just on this Earth but in heaven. That’s the first major shift I would like to encourage all of
you to take today. Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re plowing your energy into, change the focus a little bit. Change the focus and not just think that, “Okay, my business deals, I’m just going to make sure I squeeze as much out of this.” But today the Lord tells us that, “Hey, there’s an unseen element, there’s an eternal element. Will you make a difference? Will you set yourself up and prepare yourself as if your long-term life is in heaven? How is that going to change your dealings? How is that going to change your relationships?”
Isaiah 55:8 says this: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. Now what He’s saying here is this: we need to change the way we think. Often we are so influenced by that around us, the cultures around us, which we forget that at the end of the day there’s an eternal perspective. God doesn’t—God is not confined by time and space. God doesn’t live as if, like, now it’s about 11:45. God doesn’t live, “Okay, He doesn’t know what’s coming on at 11:46.” He sees time as one vast canvas. He sees everything at one time. In the same way, we know now that God’s idea of a successful person is different from what has been told to us by our social mirrors. The world tells us, isn’t it, being successful means what? Being a successful businessman, what does it mean? Bank account number, your bottom line. As a student, the number of A’s, right? As a worker, your bonus, your appraisal. Are you “meet expectations” only or you exceed expectations? You want to succeed, you must exceed expectations. Now I’ll come back to that in a short while.
God’s perspective of success is this: at the end of the day, we need to know what is God’s measure of success. What does God say about you being successful in every area of your life, whether you are all these different things which I’ve mentioned? It is actually found in the book of the Bible, and it is found in Deuteronomy. Let’s look at Deuteronomy chapter 10, and we’ll start with verses 12 and 13 first. Here we go. Shall we read it together, everyone? “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all His ways, and to love Him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul?” Mind, we hang on first. Just back up a little bit. Thank you. “And now, Israel…” Let me just tell you a little bit of background of this verse, right? So Moses, basically, he broke the first Ten Commandments. You know, he broke it, all right? God said, “I’m going to give you another one. Don’t be so clumsy.” If you watch that show, Mel Brooks, I don’t know if you’ve seen that, “History of the World,” they show him actually carrying up these two tablets, and by the time he came down the mountain, he tripped a bit and God gave us the Ten Commandments, broke. What really happened, we don’t know. But the reality is, then God had to actually give them another Ten Commandments, the same one, of course, written down, and He put it into the Ark,
right? This was a very important time for Israel because what God was doing with Israel is, “Okay, now, everybody, time for you to gather up everything and start going into the Promised Land.”
What that means is they were all, as a nation of people, supposed to march into this Promised Land, which was where they eventually settled, fight the people there, kick them all out, and actually settle there. It was going to be a very difficult and trying time for them. Here we see that after the Lord said, “Okay, now it’s time to go already,” this is what the Lord says after that. He says, “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you?” That means He’s telling them, “When you go into this new place, remember what’s really important. Remember what I want you to do, what I require of you.” That’s the word here. “What I would want you to focus on, what I would want you to put your importance on, what I would want you to put your focus on.” This is it: “Fear the Lord, walk in His ways, love Him, serve the Lord.” Why did He do that to Israel? Why did He say this to Israel? Because God knows that when Israel came into a new position, into a new situation, it’s very easy to be influenced. It’s very easy to lose focus on what’s really important. In the same way, this verse speaks to us as well. In the culture we are in, in the various social mirrors which are pressing for our attention, this is what we need to keep
in focus at all times. This is what the Lord requires of us. That’s why this verse, even though written many years ago and said many thousands of years ago, is applicable to us today. The God of Israel is our God and requires us, number one, to fear God.
Sometimes we think this idea of “fear God” is, “Okay, God is there, He’s waiting with a big stick, and He’s just waiting for you to mess up and He’s going to come and hit you with it.” This is not the meaning of fear we’re talking about. That word “fear” in Hebrew has a second meaning, which is “in awe.” It means, like, have you seen something so great before? “Wow, that’s awesome!” I first went to Sabah and I saw Mount Kinabalu, I said, “Wow, that’s awesome! It’s amazing! It’s huge!” That’s the word, the fear here, that God requires us to put Him in such high regard. He’s amazing, the Lord is awesome, He’s amazing, and I want to fear Him in that way. Not like He’s some headmaster, which a lot of us got bad experience with, or some teacher somewhere. I mean, I had an experience with a teacher, this was a colleague. The students didn’t hand in the paper on time, he came into class, he stood there in front of the students, and he didn’t say a word for 55 minutes. He just stood there, and then he left. We all were like, “He did that? Yes.” Students were panicked, “Oh, what’s going on? Oh, how?” So scared, you know, because “What’s going to happen in the next lesson?” Anyway, we sorted it out and so on and so forth. But the point is that we’ve got these experiences, you know, we think we fear, “Oh no.” But no, this is the reverence and fear God wants us to have, that when we know about God, we think about His great mercies to us, we think about His love, we will say, “Lord, You are amazing, and I want to put You first in my life because of what You’ve done.” Amen? Amen. This is what the Lord requires of us. This is what I mean by living purposefully with the end in mind, but more importantly, the right end in mind.
Number one, that in our lives we must have this reverent fear of the Lord. He’s a God of good, He’s a God of righteousness, and in the same way, whatever we do, we must have that in our DNA. Now you know what I mean by DNA. DNA, the way we do things, okay? It’s in our genes. They say not Levi’s jeans, okay? But okay, in our genes, in our DNA, what makes us think this is who we are.
The second one is to walk in all His ways. You know, the Bible tells us a lot of times, gives us an example of people who are walking, all right? You can walk the narrow path or you can walk the wide path. The narrow path leads to God’s kingdom, the wide path leads to destruction. Another example the Bible gives about people who are walking are there are some who walk in the ways of sinners, walk in the ways of the wicked. But here the Bible tells us we must walk in His ways. So what’s the difference? In Psalms, it says this: “Blessed are those who do not walk in the ways of the wicked.” That means actually, if you want blessings in your life, if you want a good life, if you want a full life, don’t walk in the ways of the world. Don’t walk in the ways of all those people you see there who are telling you, “This is what cool should be like, this is what business should be done, this is how your sales should be obtained.” But walk in what the Lord tells you, in wisdom, with values, with character. We say we walk in all His ways, and that is our end.
The next one, to love Him. So we have “fear the Lord,” you all know where I’m going here with this, right? Live with the end in mind, there’s a right end, and that right end involves, number one, fearing God, number two, walking His ways, number three, to love Him. Now, loving Him,
contrary to watching the movies where people fall in love, the idea here in the Bible is always to choose to love. There are many people in our life we don’t fall in love with. We fall out of love, but we still love because we choose to love. It’s the same way here. It says here, “Walk in all His ways and choose to love Him.” It says, “To love Him” means “choose to love Him.” In Deuteronomy 30:20, it is repeated, “You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying Him, and committing yourself firmly to Him. This is the key to your life.”
In our DNA, when we live purposefully with the right end in mind, part of having that right end in mind is to choose to love God, not only on Sunday, but we choose to love Him on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and back to Sunday. Every day of our lives is a devotion to Him. There are many ways we can do that. Sometimes we wonder, right? “Okay, I don’t see God, where’s that?” That is the challenge. That’s true. The Bible acknowledges it’s not so straightforward because God is Spirit, isn’t it? But there are many things we can do, and one of the things that God has told us to do on how we can love Him more, love Him every day, is to pray regularly. Like Pastor says, and it’s not only just Pastor, from the Bible, actually, “Pray constantly, pray unceasingly.” Do you do that? It’s not just praying to thin air. No, you’re praying to God. In your day, when you wake up, do you talk to the Lord? Before going into a meeting, come on, just share with the Lord how you’re feeling about this meeting. Maybe it’s an appraisal. Share with the Lord. Or you’re anxious about doing some collection, or you’ve got an exam coming up, or you’ve got no mood to study. Share with the Lord. He’s not going to hit you with a big stick. He wants you to share. He wants to hear you. That’s what it means to love Him. Include God in your life, not just on Sunday and Monday, totally different. Prayer is one thing we can do. “Pray unceasingly,” it says in the Bible.
We continue to have spiritual songs in our life. Listen to Christian music. I mean, there’s this example I’ve given you, and it’s not a good example. I remember I have this friend whose mother was delivered once from an evil spirit, and after that, she was so grateful to the Lord that she just put on worship music in the house the whole day. I’m not saying you should do that. It worked for her. It may drive you nuts, but the reality, the point I’m trying to make here is this: have that reverence, have that worship music, have that feel in your life. Sometimes, just to circle the music, I realize that there is a correlation between my choices and the kind of music I put on in my car. If I’m always listening to secular music—and I’m sorry to label it this way, but basically non-Christian music—and I’m saying that’s okay, but there should be a balance. There should be times when either we’re walking, we’re driving, or we’re just sitting, having lunch, have some Christian music there. We remember God’s love. What is Christian music? Christian music is basically love songs to God, rather than talking about a jilted lover or love songs to some dog. Christian music is love songs to God, and that’s what we play to encourage ourselves. When we get on the internet, come on, search for some sermons, maybe look for some Christian music videos, something to enrich our lives in that area. That’s what it means, to a certain extent, to love Him. We put Him first in our life.
The last one is to serve the Lord your God. Do you see where I’m going at right now? We have a right end in mind. I’m going to end soon. To serve the Lord your God means that in whatever we do, there must be that element of service. Let me just round this up a little bit. What does God require of us? That means, what is the right end? Number one, whether you’re a student, a
business person, your daily life must have Him. He must be a big part of it, and your decisions must take into consideration that you fear this awesome God who knows everything, and you want to just be reverent by making right choices. You want to study hard because you want to glorify God. You want to make sure you don’t cheat because you want to walk in His ways. This is what I mean: begin with the right end in mind.
If you are a husband, what kind of husband do you want to be? One who fears the Lord, one who walks in His ways. If you’re a wife, what kind of wife do you want to be? There’s a right kind of wife, one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways, who loves Him. All of us, in our different vocations and in our different lives, whether you’re selling food or preparing the home, you can apply all these things because this is what the Lord requires of us. At the end of the day, it is for our own good so that we can be happy. Often, when we take life into our own hands a bit more, it’s very unpredictable, the results.
Serve the Lord. How am I going to do that? That’s what the church is for. That’s what this organization, this group of people, is for. We can be your expression of service to God. Yes, you can do it outside of the church, but a lot of times, opportunities are here already. It’s not just about Sunday. Our church isn’t just Sunday. A lot of the activities take place on Sunday, yes, but we’ve got connect groups on Fridays. Sometimes midweek, you can go out with somebody, pray with somebody, encourage somebody. Monday, for example, tomorrow, you can send a chat to somebody and just encourage that person. Say, “Brother, I’m praying for you. Sister, I’m praying
for you.” That’s in the service of the Lord, and anyone can do it, whether you’re a photographer, a student, whatever. Anyone can do these things, and that’s what the Lord requires of us with all our heart and with all our soul.
Let’s bring this time to an end. Can we have the musicians? Let’s take a couple of seconds right now and ask yourself, in your current situation, what do you want to be? What kind of worker do you want to be if you’re working for somebody right now? Or if you’re a student, what kind of student do you want to be? Let’s have the end in mind, right? But I want to add something on to you: what kind of student does God want you to be? Can you picture it right now? Some of you are husbands and wives. What kind of husband does God want you to be? Come on, have that picture. Trustworthy husband, high moral values, always trying to do what’s right, hardworking, gentle, caring, kind. If you’re a wife, loving, positive, not destructive with words. If you’re a father, what kind of father does the Lord want you to be? If you’re a mother, what kind of mother does the Lord want you to be? If you’re a son, what kind of son does the Lord want you to be? If you’re a daughter, what kind of daughter does the Lord want you to be? If you’re a student, let’s be one who works hard, who puts in the effort, but God is always first. God is always first. We try not to cut corners with the Lord. Time for exams, let’s forget about Him. There are certain times, yeah, we don’t want to be too dogmatic about that, but the Lord is always there. Say your
prayer before you start studying. Commit your time to the Lord when you’re studying. Before an exam, say, “Lord, can you help me in this one? Okay, I didn’t study too hard here, maybe I need a little bit more supernatural brain power.” Husbands and wives, the Lord wants you to be godly, letting your relationships be a light for others. Protect the marriage, keep centered on God. Workers, do not cut corners. We work hard for our bosses, but we can still say no because our bosses are not God. God is God, and we know who’s first in our lives. Business owners, we are the gold standard in integrity, fair in our practices, but firm at the same time, conscious of those who are weak and needy in society. Our financial success flows out of love for those in need.
This is our final end. Let’s read this together: Colossians 3:23. “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters.” Sometimes we think all Christians, okay, never mind, we are standard. God doesn’t really say so much about this, but God gives us a bigger standard right now in here. “In whatever you do, if you’re plowing the fields, you do it hard, you do it well, as if you’re working for God, not for human masters.” That’s what I mean by having the right end in mind. We live purposefully. If you’re a student, this explains a lot already, right? If you’re a business owner, this explains a lot. If you work for someone, this explains a lot in our excellence, in the way we look.