(audience cHeers)
- If you take out your message notes, I'm so
excited about the year 2020. I've already gotten into February, on the notes.
(audience laughs) If you'll note, the date
says February 11th and 12th. I'm really excited to get into this year. So we're just zooming through January. This month is our 40th birthday
as a church family, so. (audience cHeers) Yeah, we're celebrating and
we are really gonna celebrate but we're reviewing, why we do what we do. This is a good time to
always stop and ask, why do we do what we do? Last week we talked
about what is the church and why is it important? Why do you need to be a
part of a family of God because it's the only thing
that's gonna last forever. Nothing else on this planet is gonna last. No business, no government, no nation but God's family is gonna last forever. So I, I, if you're gonna bet on something in the future, bet on the church. Bet on the church. It's the only thing that you can count on that's gonna last, 'cause God
created the universe for it. Now this week, I want us
to look at what on earth am I here for? The most classic, basic
message of this church. When Kay and I started
Saddleback Church 40 years ago, I said, "God, give me a phrase "that we can build on as a foundation.". And He gave me this phrase, a great commitment to
the Great Commandment and the Great Commission
will grow a great church. The Great Commandment
and the Great Commission are two of the most famous
statements of Jesus. There are five verbs in
those two statements. Each verb represents
one of the five purposes God has for your life. God has five purposes for your life. They are modeled in acts two, they are explained in Ephesians 4. Jesus prays about them in John 17 but they're best expressed
in the Great Commandments and Great Commission. God doesn't have six purpose for your life or two purposes or nine, He has five. He has five. And Saddleback is called
a purpose driven church because this church was
built on these five purposes, for 40 years. The other day a guy
said, "Have you ever done "a google search on the
phrase purpose driven?". I said, "No". He said, "You ought to,
you oughta see the impact "that this church has had around the world "in the last 40 years". So I simply typed in first
"purpose driven church". You know, I wrote a book
on that back in 1995, sold over a million copies. The number of times that
"purpose driven church" is mentioned on the internet,
here's what it says. Google "purpose driven church"
almost 49 million times. On the internet, "purpose
driven church" is mentioned 49 million times. So then I typed in "purpose driven life". It only brought up 550 million
references on the internet. Half a billion references
to "purpose driven life" around the world. Friends, there's a word for that, impact. Only God could've done that. I couldn't do it, you couldn't do it, nobody could do it,
only God could do that. Today, we're gonna review
the single most basic message of this church. What on earth am I here for? It's time, if you've been
in any one on one class, this is taught. It's the first session in class 101. What is the purpose of my life? And I just thought, if it's
out there 550 million times, we probably ought to do it here in review, (audience laughs)
and just remind ourselves what God put you on this planet for because it is impacting,
literally, continents. Mark Twain was the guy who said, "The two most important days in your life "are the day you're born and
the day you figure out why". Those are the two most important days. Most people go through life
never knowing God's purpose for their life but He's very clear. He's not trying to hide it. If you want to know the
purpose of your life, you have to begin with God. God has never created
anything without a purpose. No plant is without purpose. Every plant has a purpose. Every animal has a purpose. Every rock, every tree has a purpose. Every human being, if
you're heart is beating, there is a purpose for your life. Since you're alive, it
means God isn't through with his purpose for you. Now, if you want to know your purpose, if I were to hold up an invention here that you'd never seen and I said, "What is the purpose of this invention?", you wouldn't have the slightest idea. Now you could guess. Philosophy classes guess, "Well I think life's this and I think", but you're just guessing. You're just guessing. Or you could do the popular look which is "Look within and know your purpose". Friends, someone needs to stand up and say "That doesn't work, I looked
within and just saw a mess, "I was more confused". I don't know about you,
you can't tell yourself what your purpose is 'cause
you didn't create you. That's just illogical. It's just nonsensical. You'll never know your
purpose by looking within, 'cause you didn't create you. The only way, if I Held up an invention, you would know what the
purpose of that invention is, it's either A, talk to the
inventor, the creator who made it or B, read the owners manual. That's the only way you'd know. The only way you'll ever
know your purpose in life is A, talk to the creator who made you and read the owner's manual. So let's go quickly through some verses, here on the screen. The bible says, Ephesians 1, "It is in Christ that
we find out who we are and what we're living for...part
of the overall purpose He, God, is working out in
everything and everyone". God doesn't just have a
purpose for your life, He has a purpose for every life. He has a purpose for history. It's all coming to a conclusion. It's all part of the plan. Look at this next verse. The bible says in Colossians Chapter 1, "Everything, absolutely
everything got started in Christ "and finds it's purpose in Him". So you're never gonna
know the purpose of life without talking to God
and reading his manual. Now, let me just summarize this. You're made by God and
you're made for God. Until you understand that,
life's never gonna make sense. You were made to last forever. God has long range plans for your life. You weren't made for 80 years on Earth, you were made for trillions
of years in eternity. God has long range plans. You're gonna spend more
time on that side of death then you do on this side
of death, here on Earth. This is a temporary assignment. It's only at the most 100 years but you're gonna spend
trillions of years in Heaven, or Hell, either one. Life, here on earth, is
preparation for eternity. This is the get ready stage. This is the warm up act. This is the preschool before
the real school begins. This is the first lap
around the race track before the real race begins. This is the dress rehearsal for eternity. God wants you to learn five
things while you're here on earth to get you ready for eternity and in this temporary assignment, you are deciding, by your choices, which place you're going in eternity. This is the get ready stage. God wants you to practice
on earth what his goal is for you to do forever in Heaven. So today, we're gonna review the five purposes for your life. It's a part of Saddleback's DNA and we've spread it all around the world. But first, I want you to watch a video 'cause the other thing I'm doing, this anniversary month, is I'm introducing you
to some of the pioneers, the original members of
Saddleback, who are still here, 40 years later. One couple is named
Jerry and Marian McFadden I want you to just watch this and we'll get into the message. Hi everybody and this week
I've got another couple of original founders of Saddleback Church, Marian and Jerry McFadden who are here, my best friends from literally 40 years and during this series, I'm
introducing you to pioneers of the church who still happen to be here and so they have the distinction
of being one of the couples that I married. - Yes.
- in this church. And that was a big deal. Let's just start off with a
question I asked Lee and Cynthia last week and that is,
what has it been like to watch 40 years of this church
family, from the ground up? - Well for me, it was amazing
to come in before there was a hundred people
- Right. - And it was just like,
within a couple of weeks, we had to start setting
up chairs in the aisles, which were against the fire code but you said
(laughs) "Don't worry about it,
we got a fireman here". - It's easier to get forgiveness
then permission (laughs). - Yeah and to go from like
tens to hundreds to thousands over the years, actually,
it happened very quickly. It was amazing to see so
many people wanting to hear God's word, in a simplified way
which was really good for me and to worship. I was amazed that there
was that many people, having that kind of
interest and it spoke to me. It changed my life, for sure. - There was a lot of energy. - There was back then, a lot. - A lot of excitement, it was new. A lot of things we were doing then, other churches weren't doing. - True.
- But they're all doing them now like for instance,
praise bands were unheard of. Nobody had drums in their church. I mean, maybe one percent
of Christian churches had drums and stuff like that. What about you Marian? - I think for me, because I
came in, I wasn't a Christian and I got saved and then
I came to the church, I think it was, it was just so different and being small then, when
I look at what it was then to what it is now, I was going
through some of, as you know, I have my original notes
from 1980 of your sermons, every sermon, we didn't
have hand outs then. - (laughs) You could publish them and probably make some money.
- I probably could, I probably have more notes then you do from 1980
- I'm sure you do. - Because they're all
handwritten and I thought, He didn't start giving us
handouts for a couple years. - Five years, I think, almost five years. - 'cause I have a 1980, I
have that notebook also. But as I was reading
through and I thought, I also found some original like, birthday cards
- Yeah. - From an original notes, thank you notes, handwritten notes, things and also, we hand wrote notes to people
- Right. - And I think the difference is some of those same caring things are in place today
- Mm-hm. - in the bigness of the church. It's just done differently. - Yeah, we have to systemize it all. That's the thing is a lot of it we were just kind of doing
it, oh let's do that. It's the loving thing to do. - Yeah, it's true. - You know, I remember
the very first picnic and I was thinking pot luck,
that everybody would bring like a dish. Nobody brought a dish. Everybody brought something
from Kernel Sanders or Taco Bell or Haagen Daz and I go, okay, this is not the Midwest here. - Orange county way. - Orange county way of picnic. - But we were all mostly unchurch people and I didn't even know
what a pot luck was. - No, of course not, of course not. - We weren't brought up in churches so a lot of the churchy
kind of things were new. - No, that's exactly right. Good point. So let's talk about, what
were your first experiences? How did the church cause
you to step across the line in your spiritual growth and
in your walk with the Lord? - Well, those days for me, you were teaching the
pastor class, six week class and I have those original notes also because we didn't have hand outs and so I had to write
everything but you taught us about the importance of the
word, the importance of prayer, how to have an effective quiet time, things that are being taught in 201 now and the classes that they got developed so for me, it was really all new to learn about concepts like
fellowship, what does that mean and what does worship
really look like together as a body of believers? And so that caused me, I
think mostly for me the class and trying to understand
brought me to that place of wanting to make a commitment. - Jerry? - Well, with Marian it's class,
it's note and everything. Not me. But for me it was just
seeing what was happening and you really were more or
less forced into service. We have to fill up the trailer. - It's an inscription. - Yeah, if you came
here, you have to work. You know, we had to set up
chairs, we had to do take down at the auditorium and when
I saw everyone chipping in, it's not like you really had to look for people to volunteer, they just did it and I remember the prayer request cards. It got bigger and bigger and I was like, who's gonna read all these cards? You know? It was just something for me to see and the way you shared I
think spoke to me the most, you know, it wasn't very complicated about how to be saved and
how to have a relationship with the Lord. I think that was the
biggest issue with me. It wasn't difficult to
understand or want to be a part of that type of a lifestyle. - You know, it's interesting because before I started
Saddleback with Kay and you guys and Don and the original
crew and everybody, I had been preaching for
hmm, almost 10 years, eight or 10 years and so I had a backlog of about 100 different
sermons that I could've used when I started but when I came and we did that original
survey asking people what's gonna meet your needs? And a lot of people were saying
give me something on Sunday, I can use on Monday. I went back and I read
through every sermon I had preacHed up until that date and I threw them all away except two and started a whole new way of preaching, which is kind of more like
animated conversation. - That's true. - You know? And trying to start with a
felt need that people had. - Mm-hm. - Okay, we're gonna come
back to Marian and Jerry. I've asked them about
some of these purposes, not all of them but there are
five purposes for your life. Write these down. Number one, first God
planned me for his pleasure. God planned me for his pleasure. Many, many scriptures deal with this. Let me show you some. Revelation 4, verse 11. "You, God, created everything
and it is for Your pleasure "that they exist and were created". You were made so God could love you. You were made for His pleasure. If God hadn't wanted to love
you, you would not exist. You were made for God's pleasure. Psalm 149 verse 4, "The Lord
takes pleasure in His people". How many of you are parents? Let's see your hands, you're parents? Okay, do you take pleasure in your kids? You say sometimes. (everyone laughs) Yeah sometimes but the truth is, when they're sleeping at night, they may have been devils all day, they're angels while they're asleep. (audience laughs) And I used to walk in and sit
down and watch my kids sleep and I would sit there
and watch my kids breathe and I would watch their little bodies, their rise and lower. Watch their cHest rise
and lower, rise and lower. I got so much pleasure out
of watching my kids breathe as little kids. Why? Because I am their father. (audience laughs) I created them. They didn't have to be
doing anything spiritual. They didn't have to be
memorizing bible verses, winning people to Christ,
you know, studying scripture, they were just sleeping. This is the way God feels about you. God gets pleasure in watching
you be you, all the time. I'm not talking about your sins but I'm talking about
when you just be you. When He wired you to organize
and you know how to organize a closet or a garden or something. When He made you to be a salesperson and He watcHed you make
a good sale, He goes, "That's my girl" or "That's my boy". When He sees you do art or
music or math or mechanics or whatever. It's not all the spiritual stuff. God just enjoys watching you
be you, 'cause He made you. You were planned for God's pleasure. You've heard me say this many times. You can't make God stop loving you. You can try but you will fail because God's love isn't
based on your perfection. It's based on who He is,
it's based on His character. Psalm, excuse me, Ephesians
1:4 on the screen. "Long before He laid down
earth's foundations", that's how long ago God thought of you, "God had us in mind,
and He settled on us", not horses, not cows, not
ants, He settled on us, human beings, "as the focus of His love". You were planned for God's pleasure. How many times, over 40
years, have you heard me say, "God doesn't just have love, He is love"? The bible says God is love. It is His character, it is
His essence, it is His nature. Now as I've told you
before, He didn't need you, He wanted you. It was His love that wanted to create you. Now the difference between us and animals is unlike animals, we're
made in God's image, which means you have the
ability to love back. Cows don't love. Ants don't love. Slugs don't love. Fish don't love. Only human beings love
because only humans are made in the image of God. Your first job is to let God love you and your second part of that job is you to learn how to love Him back and the more you understand
how much God loves you, the more you're gonna love Him. When you say, I don't love God enough, that's not your problem. The problem is you don't
understand how much He loves you because if you really understood how God created the entire universe to create you, to love you, you can't Help but love God back. You don't know how much God loves you if you don't love God. You just don't get it yet. One day Jesus is walking down the street and a guy walks up to Him and says, "Lord, what's the most
important commandment "in the whole bible?" and Jesus says, "Well that's not a big deal, "I can answer that in two sentences, "I can summarize the
whole bible", He says, "all the law and all the
propHets in just two sentences. "Love God with all your heart
and soul and mind and strength "and oh, by the way, love
your neighbors your so". It's all about love. Why? Because the first purpose of your life is you were planned for God's pleasure. He made you to love you and He wants you to
learn to accept his love and to love Him back. Jesus said this, on the screen, "Love the Lord your
God with all your heart "and with all your soul
and with all your mind. "This is the first and
greatest commandment". This is the first purpose of your life. To let God love you and to learn to love Him back in response. The most important thing in
your life is to know God, to know that He loves you and the most important
thing to do in your life is to learn to love Him back. So every morning, I
suggest you do what I do. You can kneel or you can
sit on the side of your bed but before I get out of bed, I usually just sit on the side of my bed and I'll say something like this, "Lord, I know you made me to love me, "thank you and I love you and Lord, today, "if I don't get anything else done, "I want to know you a little bit better "and I want to love
you a little bit more", 'cause that's the first
purpose of my life. If at the end of the day, I don't care how many problems you had, how many sins you committed, How many things went wrong in your life, if at the end of the day you
know God a little bit more and you love Him a little bit better, that was a successful day. On the other hand, it doesn't
matter how many things you accomplish, how much money you make, how many times you get
your picture plastered on some magazine or billboard or whatever, how famous you become, it doesn't matter if you don't know God a little bit more and love Him a little bit
better at the end of that day, you just wasted that day because you were not put on
earth just to mark things off your to do list. That is not the purpose of your life, to mark things off your to do list. Now this first purpose
of life, write this down, is to know and love God. He planned me for His pleasure
and so the first purpose of my life is to know God and to love God. The bible word for knowing and
love God is called worship. Worship. Worship is letting God love
you and loving Him back. Anytime you're expressing love to God, you're worshiping. Worshiping, a lot of
people think is music. Music is a way to worship but you can worship in silence,
you can worship in giving, you can worship in listening, you can worship in a
hundred different ways, worship is simply
expressing my love to God. You could be building
something for the glory of God and that's worship. It's expressing your love
for God in any different way. Now the alternative to
worship, you know what it is? It's worry. The opposite of worship is worry. Worry is the warning sign
you stopped worshiping. Worry is the sign that
you got the focus on you, not on God. So everyday, you have a choice, every single minute of your life. Am I gonna worry or am I gonna worship? If you worship, you won't worry. If you worry, you won't worship. One or two will be in
your brain, all the time. Look at this verse on the screen. The bible says "People who don't know
God are always worrying." Why? 'Cause they're not focused on
his greatness and his love, they're focused on their
problems and insecurities. That's the first purpose of your life, to learn to worship. The more you learn to worship, the less you'll worry in your life. Number two, second purpose of your life. God not only planned me for His pleasure, God formed me for His family. God formed me for His family. You were made to be a part of his family. Now last week we spent an
entire message on this. God's family is called the church, so I'm gonna zoom through this 'cause we spent an entire week
looking how God formed you for His family but let's look
at these verses, real quick. Ephesians 1:5. "God's unchanging plan has
always been to adopt us into His own family by
bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ.". And this gave Him what? Great pleasure. When you get in the family God, when you get in God's church, then that brings God great pleasure. God wanted a family and
created you to be a part of it. God never meant for you to
go through life all alone. God hates loneliness. The very first thing God
said was wrong with earth is it is not good for man to be alone. God hates loneliness. Now I'm not, whether you marry
or not, you need a family and a spiritual family, as
we talked about last week, is gonna outlast your physical
family 'cause it's eternal. First Peter, chapter one, verse three. "God has given us the
privilege of being born again "so that we are now", notice,
"members of God's own family". You're not in God's family if
you haven't been born again. You're loved by Him,
you're created by Him, but you're not in His family. There's only two ways to get in the family and both of these ways mention them. You got to be adopted or born in it too and Jesus says, "I'm doing both". I'm adopting you and you're born again so that's how you get into God's family. Now, you're automatically a part, when you're born physically, you automatically become
a part of the human race. You don't have any choice. When you're born physically, you automatically become
a part of the human race but you're not part of a local family until somebody makes a
decision to bring you home. It's a choice. The same is true spiritually. When you are spiritually born again, you are born into God's universal family but you're not a part
of His physical family, called the church, until you too say that's
gonna be my family, that's gonna be my home, that's
gonna be my spiritual base. What is God's family? We looked at it last week. First Timothy, chapter three, verse 15. "That family is the church, "it is the church of the living God, "the support and foundation of the truth". Church isn't an
institution, it's a family. Now God's purpose for your life includes not just believing in Him, but belonging in His family. So you could say "I'm a believer" but you could also say "I'm a belonger". Because being in the family of God is what makes you saved. Being a part of His family. Now notice, it said there, "That family is the church, "the support and foundation of truth.". What happens when a building
has no foundation and support? It collapses. We've seen that in California
a lot 'cause of earthquakes. You need the spiritual
support of a God's family and you need a small group to support you when you go through the
earthquakes of life. What's the support
structure for your life? The church. God's spiritual family. First Peter 2:17, "Love
your spiritual family.". That's what it says. Love. That's about as clear as you can get it. You were commanded by God to
love your spiritual family. If you don't love this
family, just find one. Choose a church family. Say that's a church family I'm gonna love. You know, when you get to Heaven one day, you're gonna do two things in Heaven. You're gonna love God and
you're gonna love His family. What does God want you to do
while you're here on earth for 80 years? Practice. So when you get to heaven,
you practice loving God and loving other believers in His family. Why? So when you get to heaven
you're not a doofus. (audience laughs) You already know how to love God and you already know how
to love other Christians who often, were not always lovable and you aren't either, by the way. All right? To dwell above with those we
love, that will be a glory. To dwell below, with those we know, well that's another story. (audience laughs) You know, we love people in the ideal but we don't love them in the real because we all have warts
and problems and we mess up. God wants us to learn to love real people, not ideal people. That's why He put the people around you who are sitting next to you. Don't look at them. (audience laughs) Be cool. Okay but God intentionally
allows people in your life to sandpaper your rough edges. Okay so don't go home and say, honey thank you Heavenly sandpaper. But you know what I'm talking about. Hebrews 10, verse 25 on the screen. The bible says this. "Let us not give up the
habit of meeting together, "instead, let us encourage one another". God wants worship to be a habit. Notice the word habit,
circle the word habit on your outline. God wants worship to be a habit but He also wants
fellowship to be a habit. Now here's the second purpose. The second purpose of life
is to learn to love others. The second purpose of life. The first purpose of life
is to learn to love God. The second purpose of life,
now that's called worship. The second purpose of life
is to learn to love others and that's called fellowship. Like two fellows on a ship,
you've got to get along. You're headed in the same direction, you may as well get along. You know, Marian and Jerry McFadden, as I said I did their
wedding, I led them to Christ, I baptized them but at one point, they went away and were
serving in another church, in another church but they came back when Jerry had some cancer
and he's gonna explain that. I want you to hear why they came back because of the support they
thought they'd get here. Listen to this. Now guys, you know from
the very beginning, we've emphasized small groups, we've emphasized relationships,
the 58 one anothers. I want to invite you to share in 40 years, I can't imagine all
the problems and crisis that you've been through, we've been through together,
talk to me about the importance of relationships in the family of God. - The importance is almost hard to explain but I know that we still
are connected to couples from 40 years ago.
- The early times. - They still come into our-
- You've walked through life together.
- We have and I also saw the support
the church gave you, in prayer and in council and just, the church was really a church. It was really a family and we
called that our home church and as you mentioned,
problems that you go through, to have that church and
to have that fellowship, one of the reasons that
we're at the church now is eight years ago, I
was diagnosed with cancer and the prognosis was not good and at that time, we were serving, anytime we did leave Saddleback
we served at other churches but we always came back, you
know, we always came back or just for a Sunday or
whatever it might be, but this time that we came back, we started coming back
after I was diagnosed and Marian said, "Is
Saddleback our church home?". I said, "We started here
and it's gonna end here, "we are here for good now". And part of that reason was I didn't know what my prognosis was gonna be. Actually, it was pretty
bad and the Lord healed me, for sure. The prayers of the people and
my faith that had built up from church but um. - You wanted your wife in
the family that would protect her too.
- That is why we came back, because I really thought,
well I might not make it but if I don't, I'm gonna
bring her back to the place where I know she will be taken care of. - What did I tell you
when I did your wedding? - Well, that's not a good
time to mention that (laughs). I had cancer. But anyway, he said, "I baptized
you and I married you both "and I'll probably bury you both". - (laughs) That's not a prophesy, it was just a thing I said. - We have to get in on it
now because we thought, yeah, we thought it might be time. - But I'm healthy again, by the way, but it's where we needed to be
and where we're going to be. - And you knew you'd
get that support here. - Absolutely and we
already knew people here and it was just the place to be. - I just, the thought came to my mind about when I broke my arm some years ago and I couldn't drive, I
couldn't dress myself, I couldn't do anything and when I find
- Couldn't cook, couldn't clean.
- Go ahead. - When I finally started being able to go to physical therapy, I had to have people drive me and the physical therapists
office I went to, no one in there were believers and I remember them constantly asking me, "How come you know so many people? "And all these people pray for you "and you have so much support.", so not only was it
important to be connected and have that support to carry us through, but it was a light for the world to see that with that kind of fellowship and with Jesus in your life and having close relationships, we're there for one another so I thought it was two fold. - That's great. All right, purpose number one, I'm planned for God's pleasure. He made me to love me. Purpose number two, I'm
formed for God's family. He made me to go through
life in a church family, not to go through it by myself, where you get support in the tough times. Number three, purpose number three, God created me to become like Christ. I was created to become like Christ. God created me to become like Christ. Now, once you understand
this third purpose, a whole lot of life's
gonna make more sense, particularly all the
problems and the trials and the troubles you go through because God wants you
to grow up spiritually. His goal isn't to make
life comfortable for you here on earth, that's heaven,
that's coming some day, this is the school, this
is where you're learning. This is where you want
to grow in character and He sent Jesus Christ to be the model of what He wants every
woman and what He wants every man to become. He wants us to think like
Christ, to act like Christ, to feel like Christ, to treat
other people like Christ, to be like Christ in our
attitudes and in our actions and in our thoughts. Jesus Christ was the perfect human being. We're never gonna achieve
perfection here on earth but that's our model. You were created to become like Christ. Starting now, here on Earth
and when you get into Heaven, Gods gonna finish it in Heaven and you're gonna be completely
transformed into perfection. Now as I said, once you understand this, a lot of life's gonna make sense. God is far more interested
in what you are becoming then what you are doing. He's much more interested
in what you are in life then in what you do in life. People are always worried,
does God want me to do this? A job or that job or that job. Does God want me to have
that career or that career or this career? God would probably say,
"Really your choice. "What I'm more interested
in is the kind of woman "you become while you're in that job. "What kind of man are you becoming "while you're in that job? "Are you becoming more Godly, like me?". Now you're never gonna be a God. That's the oldest lie. Satan said eat this
fruit and you'll become, you'll be your own God. That's the new age, you're your own God. You're not a God. You're not even a mini-me God. (audience laughs)
Okay? You'll never be a God. If you're a God, you can't
solve your own problems, much less the problems of the whole world but God wants you to become Godly, that means, like Him in character. He wants you to be loving
and kind and patient and all these different things. So, why is God more
interested in your character then your career? Why? Because you're not taking
your career into eternity but you are taking your character. You're taking the kind of
person you became on this planet into eternity so what you
become is far more important than what you do in your life. You could do a lot of different things but the key issue is are
you growing spiritually? Are you becoming like Christ? Romans 8:29 says this. "From the very beginning "God decided that those who came to Him "and He all along knew who would, should become like His Son". This is the third purpose in
life, to become like Christ. You are created to become
like Christ in character. Colossians 1:15 says "We look at the Son "and we see God's original
purpose in everything created". He's the goal. Friends, what I'm telling
you right now is not Plan B. It's been God's plan from the
very beginning of creation. The very first thing God said was "Let's make man in our own image". Sin marred that but His
God's plan has never changed, to make you in His image, to make you have His character. To be as loving as He is,
to be as truthful as He is, to be as patient as He
is, to be as wise as He, God wants you to be made in His image. Not a God, but Godly character. Now we, the question I've
been asked for 40 years, more than any other question is this, "Why is this happening
to me?", or version two, "Why is this happening to me now?". The answer to both of
those is what I just said, the third purpose. In order to make you like Christ. That's the goal. God's goal is not to make you comfortable, God's goal is to make you like Christ and we don't change when we see the light, we change when we feel the heat. The greatest lessons in your life, you will learn out of pain. I have learned nothing from success. Zero, zip, nada. I have learned nothing from fame. Everything I've learned in
life, I learned through pain, conflict and suffering. It's the greater teacher. When things go your way,
you don't learn anything. You just think, I'm just really lucky or I'm just really smart and
you get on a big ego trip. The greatest lessons, the
greatest ministry of your life, the greatest lessons of your life will often come out of your deepest pain. God speaks to us, whispers
to us in our pleasure, He shouts to us in our pain. Now, how does God make us more like Jesus? The bible says this. Philippians 2:5. "In your lives you must think
and act like Christ Jesus". That's the third purpose,
that as I get older, hopefully I'm thinking more like Christ. Not like myself, but like Christ. How does God do that? In the first place, what is Jesus like? Well the perfect picture of
Jesus is Galatians 5:22 and 23, the fruit of the spirit. The fruit of the spirit is
love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness,
goodness, faith, neatness, faithfulness, self control. Those nine qualities are
perfect picture Jesus and God wants to build
those things in your life, often by putting you in the
exact opposite situation. How does God make us like Christ? Am I, like, God wants
me to be more loving. I want to be a great lover in life. I want to love people deeply. How does God build love in my life? I'm just walking down the street one day and all of a sudden, zap! All of a sudden, I'm filled
with love and I love everybody. (audience laughs) Nah, it doesn't work that way. How does God teach me real love? By putting me around
some unlovable people. It's easy to love people
like you who are cool but if God's gonna teach you real love, He'll put you around some unlovely people. How about joy? How does God teach you joy? Joy is different from happiness? Happiness depends on happenings, happen stance, circumstance. Disneyland's the happiest place on earth, I go to Disneyland I'm happy. When I come out I
realize how much I spent, I'm not happy. (audience laughs) It's circumstantial. Happiness doesn't last, joy is internal and joy is eternal. You learn joy in the middle of grief. That's where Kay's great
book says you choose joy. Joy is a choice and you learn
it in the middle of grief. I wish I had time to go
into each of these but. How about peace? How does God teach peace? Not with everything going your way. You're out fishing, fly fishing in Alaska, you go man, it doesn't
get any better than this, this is great. Anybody can be peaceful there. How does God teach you real peace? Everything is going wrong in your life and you're under pressure
and the phone rings and the doorbell and
the baby just threw up and the dog bit the cat, cat
bit the head off a barbie, beans are boiling over,
it's all happening at once and you got diarrhea. (audience laughs) That's where you learn real peace. God allows you in the
exact opposite situation. Now becoming like Christ is a journey. It's gonna take your entire life. You're not gonna become
like Christ overnight. I'm still not there. But I can say, like Paul, thank God I'm not what I used to be. Thank God I am what I am right now. Thank God I'm not what I'm gonna be and that's true with you too. It is a journey. This is the third purpose of your life. Now, write this down. The third purpose of life
is to grow spiritually. To grow up, to grow up spiritually and that is called discipleship. We've talked about worship,
fellowship, discipleship. These are loving God, loving His family and growing up like Him. Knowing Christ, growing in
Christ, loving His family. God wants you to grow up. Every problem in your life has a purpose and if you'll trust me on this, trust God's word, don't trust
me, trust God's word on this, you can learn from any situation in life, no matter how bad, how evil
it is, how painful it is, you can learn from any situation in life if you'll have the right attitude and that's how you turn
your scars into beauty marks in your life. That's how you watch God
transform and turn beauty from ashes and restore all the years that have been messed up. The bible says in Hebrew 6, verse one, "Let us go on and become mature", this is God's goal for your third purpose, "Let us go on and become
mature in our understanding "as strong Christians ought to be". Is it possible to grow
old without growing up? Oh baby, do we all know people like that who grew old and never grew up and they're still self
centered, self serving, cranky, bitter, as little
old men or little old ladies. You can grow old and not ever grow up. This is the fundamental
problem in our culture, in America and literally
all around the world today because we have an
incredibly immature culture. It's full of spiritual babies. You say, why do you say it? Babies are self absorbed,
it's all they can think. They can't think about
anybody else but themselves. Babies are self absorbed. Babies are impatient. They want it now. They don't understand the
difference between no and not yet. Babies cannot delay gratification. If anything describes our culture. I want it now, I want sex
now, I want to buy it now, I want pleasure now,
I want everything now, I'm not willing to wait for anything. The inability to delay
gratification has destroyed one culture after another
for thousands of years and we're in that cycle right now. Babies are focused on their feelings. Today it doesn't matter what the truth is, it's what I feel and if I
feel it, it must be true. I feel I'm this so I must be that. Well your feelings lie to you all the time but focused on feelings and
focused on short term emotions and short term goals, not long term. We have an incredibly immature culture but God wants us to grow up spiritually. Hebrews 5:12 says this, "By
now you should be teachers. "Instead, you still need
somebody to teach you.". You know, I got to thinking today, when I was listening to Jerry and Marian in our interview yesterday, I may have been a little too
soft on you in later years, maybe in my old age I'm getting soft because I don't know
that I've stretched you, like I did. The groups, and you heard,
you know, everybody says, "We were immediately put to
work, the moment you're saved, "you go to work". And Marian said, "I learned
truth through service, "I learned it that way", so I intend to correct that this year. (audience laughs) So, I'm gonna be really mean. How could I be mean to you, I love you? All right, number four, fourth purpose. God shaped me to serve Him. You weren't just put on
this earth to take up space, use resources, breathe,
use water, retire and die. No, no, no. You were put here to make a difference. You were put here to make a contribution. You were put here to make
an impact with your life. God planned for you to do
certain things with your life to make the world a better place. God shaped me to serve Him. I say, "How can I serve God? "God's invisible.". We serve God by serving others. One day, you'll serve
God directly in Heaven but here on earth, the
only way you can serve God is by serving others. God put you on this planet
to make a contribution and He has uniquely shaped you, uniquely shaped you for the service or the ministry that He has. Now, here's what the bible says. Psalm 139, Verse 13. "You shaped me first inside and then out". God's wired your personality
before He wired your body. "You shaped me first inside, then out; "you formed me in my mother's womb". You were a prescription baby. God prescribed you before you
were born and He shaped you. We have a whole class on this. This class is now taught
at Saddleback every month but it's taught literally, in tens of thousands of other churches but it was just invented here. It's called "The Shape Class: "Discovering my Ministry in Life.". Where my niche is, where my impact is, where my contribution is
going to be on this planet and we talked about your shape, S.H.A.P.E. Your spiritual gift, your
heart, your abilities, your personality and your experiences. God wired you, all these things and in your experiences God
uses educational experiences and He uses family
experiences, good and bad and He uses personal experiences, He uses spiritual experiences,
educational experiences but the things He uses
most is painful experiences and as I said, God never wants
to waste a hurt in your life. God doesn't have to
cause hurt in your life, there's plenty of hurt in the world. It's broken but God will use
the hurt in your life for good. You're gonna hurt in life,
the only question is, are you gonna use it for good or not? Everybody hurts in life,
whether you're Christian or non Christian or anything else, everybody hurts in life. The question is are you
gonna use it for good or not? Are you gonna let it build your character and make you more like Christ? Ephesians 2:10 the bible says this. "God made us what we are. "And in Christ Jesus, God
made us to do good works", you were created to do good
works while you're alive on this earth, "which
He planned in advance "for us to live our lives doing". These good works, there's
another word for good works, it's called your ministry or your service and this is the fourth
purpose of your life. Worship, fellowship,
discipleship, ministry. Your ministry, not everybody's a pastor but every body has a ministry. It's the way you serve
God by serving others. It's the way you make your
contribution to the world. It's the way you leave
the world a better place. It's the way you use,
anytime you use your talents to help other people, that's
called ministry, all right. The bible says in first Peter 4:10, "God has given each of you
some special abilities; "be sure to use them to help each other". It doesn't say be sure to use
them to make a lot of money. "Be sure to use them to help each other, "passing on to others God's
many kinds of blessings". You see, there's a misunderstanding most people misunderstand about heaven and I've joked about this with you before that if you think heaven
is what they show on TV or the movies, it's no wonder
you don't want to go there because heaven looks like the
most boring kind of place. First thing, everything's white. How boring? We live in a world of color. Why would God make his
perfect place only one color? Dumb. God who created sunrises and sunsets. In Heaven, the humanistic idea of heaven, it's all white, everything
is white, there's no color, you got fog up to your knees, okay? (audience laughs) You're walking around in fog
so you can never tie your shoe, because you can never see your shoe, you're in a white robe,
you got angels wings and you're playing a harp and I've said many times, to
me that would be hell, okay? That would be hell. I can't imagine spending
eternity doing that. No, no, no, the God who created the surf and the God who created Cinnabon (audience laughs) and the God, and the God who created sex and the God who created
mountain peaks and beauty and all the variety of
colored fish in the sea, believe me, heaven is not gonna be boring. This is an imperfect place, it's broken and it's still beautiful. Just imagine what heavens gonna be like. We can't even imagine,
because the dimensions of it, our brains are too small, like an ant trying to
understand the internet. You can't, you don't have the capacity. There are other dimensions
you don't even know about and I don't either. Just like an ant can't
understand a human being. If you could understand
all there is about God, you'd be God. But the fourth purpose
of life, write this down, the fourth purpose of life is to serve God by serving others, is to serve God by serving others. That's called ministry
and here at Saddleback, in over 40 years now, all right, 40 years, over 500 different
ministries have been started by people, in the church. Not me, I didn't make them up, I made up maybe three or four of them but people go, here's
a need, here's my gift, here's my talent, we're
gonna start this ministry and that's how Saddleback
has 500 plus ministries to the community, helping
people in all kinds of needs. You got a need? We got a ministry for it. What's the motivation? Why have over 40 years,
thousands of members, right now I think about 25 thousand people serve in different kinds
of ministry in this church, about 25 thousand and
they volunteer their time. Nobody pays them. Nobody even knows what they're doing. You don't even know and
you're in the church. Why do they do that? One motivation. Gratitude. Gratitude to God for
creating us, for saving us, for keeping us forever, ready for Heaven. It's gratitude. The bible says this, Psalm 116 verse 12, "What can I give back
to God for the blessings He's poured out on me?". That verse isn't simply about diving, that verse is about your life. "What can I give back
to God for the blessings He's poured out on me?" I asked Marian and Jerry about
their 40 years of service, volunteering, and here's
what they had to say. Watch this. Now guys, we, you know,
of our five purposes, ministry or service is
one of the five purposes. From ground zero, from the
beginning of this church, you've been involved. You mentioned it earlier Jerry, about all the different ways,
everybody had to do everything but as the church got bigger, we were starting able to specialize. So talk about some of the things, then you start doing what
your heart tells you to do, not just where am I needed. Talk about that. - I think the first part was to see so many men come together to help build up the church and then to branch out
as Lee Hensler said, good friends of ours,
about Habitat for Humanity, we did that. I've also done a couple
of weeks in Katrina, when that happened but you
see, you see the strength of the men together and
to me, and men's retreats. I coordinated the first men's retreat and you may not remember but
we didn't have enough money for you to have your own room (laughs)
so I had to call you. I was the coordinator and I said, "Rick, I don't have enough money "for you to get your
own room at that time.", and you said, "Well I
don't want to be alone.". - No, of course not.
- "I'll roommate with you". I said, "Oh my gosh, now
I'm really nervous.". (laughs) But anyway-- - Then there was a time I
called you about a card, do you remember that? - Yes, He would call my house
frequently to talk to Marian because there was a lot going on. She was very involved with the church and I picked up the phone, "Hi Jerry, it's Rick, is Marian there?". "Yeah", I get Marian. But one day He called up and He said, "Jerry, I know you are
connected with Laguna Woods so I need a cheap car with low miles". (laughs)
So I started looking. I found a yellow Oldsmobile, it was a - (in unison) 1972. - And he bought it. - Yeah, for 500 bucks.
- For 500 dollars. - Took it to Mexico in
Tijuana and had it painted for 500 bucks.
- Drove it for quite a while. - Yes.
- Yep, yep. - La Bambo we called it. - But there was always,
always in the church, there was always for me,
the men to get together and back then, when we
were doing retreats, when the church was smaller, the men's worship was probably
what spoke to me the most. To hear all these men
- Voices of men. - Swinging and worshiping
the Lord together, that was unbelievable.
- I remember one time that was really meaningful
to me, you may not remember but when we were over at the
Vista Paint Plaza building for our office there,
- I remember that. - And I called, I was going
through a real tough time on my health, this
particular year, in 1981. You know what a rough year that was, can I put one foot in front of the other and I called all the men on
a Wednesday night to come and I sat down and I said,
"Guys, I know God's called me "to pastor this church but I
don't have the physical health "right now to do it, so
I just need your support "and when you see me wiping my head, "you start praying for me.",
and Jerry stood up and said, "Well, let's pray for Rick right now" and they all came around
and laid hands on me and prayed for me and it was
at that moment I thought, "Okay, I'm here to stay because
these guys have my back, "and when I'm feeling weak"
- Yeah. - And it was maybe 90 guys,
maybe 90 or a hundred guys in that room who gathered
around me and prayed and I just thought, "If they're with me then we
can get this thing done.". - We can do it.
- So Marian? - Um, my first experience in ministry was you asked me to help
Andmanalda with children's church. (laughs)
I had no children, I did not know anything
about the bible, but-- - You had a warm heart. - I did and I loved the
kids but even to this day, I still use a children's bible when I get too much in my head and I need to go back to the word. So I learned the bible
through serving also but my primary--
- That's a good thing, she learned the bible through serving. - I did.
- Yeah. - And um, most of my
ministry at Saddleback has been around food, both
physical and spiritual. - Well you were the head
dietician at Saddleback hospital for many, many years. - Yes and when I left,
I started doing catering for church events. We didn't have a building
then so I did catering there and then I started writing bible studies and feeding people the word
of God and teaching, so. - Yeah, yeah, still feeding. - Still, yeah, so. - Two a week, two bible
studies a week in our home. - Yeah, yeah, so
- Amazing. - It's been great. - Well, you guys represent
all the best of Saddleback and I thank you. - Thank you Rick.
- Aw, thank you. - All right, you were
planned for God's pleasure, you were formed for God's
family, you were created to become like Christ, you
were shaped to serve God by serving others. There's one other purpose
and the fifth one is this, write it down. God made me for a mission. God made me for a mission. First God put you on earth to know Him, then to learn some things,
then to become some things, and then to do some things. God has some things for
you to do with your life and that doing part is
called your mission. Last couple of verses on our outline. John 17:18, Jesus said, "In
the same way that the Father "gave me a mission in the
world, I give you a mission "in the world.". Acts 20, verse 24, Paul
says this, "I consider "that my life will be
wasted unless I use it "to complete my mission, "my mission and finish the assignment "that the Lord Jesus has given to me". And what was His assignment? "To tell everyone the Good
News about God's grace". I want you to write this down. The fifth purpose of my life
is to pass on the good news. The fifth purpose of my life,
somebody passed it on to you, who are you passing it on to? The fifth purpose of your
life is once you know the purposes of life, you need
to pass them on to others. Once you know Christ's forgiveness, you need to pass it on to others. The fifth purpose of life
is to pass on the Good News. The bible calls that
witnessing or evangelism. The Greek word, evangelism
literally means share good news. When you think of evangelism
you think of some loud preacher on TV, no, no, no, no. Evangelism is a good word, it
just means share good news, in Greek, that's what evangel,
euangelion means actually, in Greek. Witness, God doesn't want
you to be His attorney, God doesn't want you to be His lawyer. You don't have to convince people. Your job is just to be a witness. What's a witness? This is what I saw, this
is what happened to me. A witness is an authority
on one thing, themselves. Nobody can be a witness for you. Only you can be a witness for what God has done in your life. I can't, I can't be, God hasn't called you to
be an attorney for Him, He has called you to be
a witness which means, this is what I saw, this
is what happened to me, this is how bad things were in my life and this is how they got better. This is what Christ has done
in my life, in my family, in my job, in my health, in my finances. That's called witnessing
and the bible says that the fourth or the
fifth purpose of life is that God made you for that mission. Look at these verses, on the screen. Second Timothy 2:2,
"The things", Paul says, "that you've learned from me
I now want you to pass on", circle that, "pass on",
that's the witness part, "I want you to pass on
to other reliable people, "so that they can pass it
on to even more people". Somebody passed on the Good News to you. Did it end with you? Are you a dead end? Is anybody gonna be in
heaven because of you? Or are you just gonna accept the Good News and not share it with anybody else? That's criminal. Somebody, for generations
now, the Good News has been passed on from
generation to generation. Is it gonna end with you? Have you told anybody the Good News about what Christ can do? That's part of your mission. Somebody passed it on to you,
it's your responsibility. Second Corinthians chapter
five in the bible says this, Verse 18 and 20, "Through
Christ, God has made peace "between us and Himself",
that's what Jesus did by dying for our sins,
"and He gave us the work", this is our mission, "of
telling everyone about the peace "that we can have with Him,
so we have been sent to speak "for Christ". That's your mission. Let me show you one more verse. On the screen, Proverbs 11, verse 30. "God's people are like trees
that bear life-giving fruit.". That's what God wants to see in your life, life-giving fruit. God's people, Godly people, good people "are like trees that
bear life-giving fruit. "They show their wisdom by saving souls.". "He who wins souls is
wise", the bible says. In other words, how do you
prove you're a wise person? By bringing other people to Jesus. They prove their wisdom by winning souls. God's people have life giving fruit. What is the fruit of a tomato plant? Other tomatoes. What's the fruit of a potato? Other potatoes. What's the fruit of a berry vine? Other berries. What's the fruit of an apple tree? Other apples. What's the fruit of a Christian? Other Christians. How do you know when you
are spiritually mature? A little girl and a little
boy aren't considered mature, until they go through puberty and they have the ability to reproduce. The ability to reproduce is
the mark of physical maturity. The ability to reproduce spiritually is the mark of spiritual maturity. You may have been a
Christian for 30 years, if nobody's come to Christ through you, if you haven't had any baby Christians, then you haven't reproduced. It is the mark of maturity. The ability to reproduce. Is anybody gonna be in
heaven because of you? Now, at Saddleback, our
model for everything we do is the bible, it's this book. We don't make this stuff up,
we get it out of God's word and this month, we're looking
at why we have church. Why do we have church? The purpose of the church is the same as the five purposes for your life. God has five purposes for your life. Worship, fellowship,
discipleship, ministry and witness or know Christ, love
Christ, grow in Christ, love His family, serve
Christ, share Christ. Now what's the purpose of the church? Help you do the five things for your life. That's a purpose driven
church helping you lead a purpose driven life. The purpose of the church
is simply to help you do what God put you on earth to do. Nothing more and nothing less. Now, this isn't something we just made up, this is what they did in the bible. Let me show you the very first church, we'll end with this. On the screen, acts chapter
two, verse 41 to 47. This is the very first
church, in Jerusalem. "Those who believed", why
don't you circle these words when I ask you to circle it? Circle the word "believe". First you got to believe. Then, those who believed were baptized. Circle the word "baptized". Then you gotta be baptized
and "added to the church". Circle the word added. So you gotta be believed,
then you're baptized then you join the church. "They joined", you can circle
that, "with other believers "and committed", you can
circle the word committed, "themselves to the apostles' teaching". What's the apostles' teaching? It's the bible. "And to fellowship",
there's another purpose. So we got discipleship, we got fellowship. "They shared everything with
each other", that's ministry. "They worshiped together", that's worship. "Regularly in the temple and
they met in groups in homes", that's fellowship. "And every day the Lord
added to their number", that's evangelism, that's witness, "those who were being saved". You see the five purposes
in the first church? They're all there. Worship, fellowship,
discipleship, ministry, outreach or witness. They're all there. That's what the first
church did and that verse, can you put that back on the screen again? Look at that. That is the history of Saddleback Church. That, every one of those
things has happened with us, including the adding
to their number daily, those who have been saved. Do you know how many people
have been saved in this church? Almost an average of 10 a day, since the first day of this church. (audience claps) Almost 10 a day, okay? Now, we can't say that about
a lot of other churches but I do know that this church
is a new testament church, like that. We do all five things and as a result, we have the results that
they had in the Jerusalem, the Lord added daily to the church. I want to end with just a very brief clip of Marian and Jerry where I ask them, what would you say to the
next generation of members? Watch this. So you guys, you've been with
me all these four decades. What, um, what would you
say to the next generation that's here now? What word can you say to them? Jerry, why don't you go first? - I have to say that in
all of the years now, as a Christian, I wonder
how people can do it, without the Lord. One of the things for me
was this built my faith, in a very strong way
and I see young people, one of my ministries has been to mentor, mentor young men and um, I still do that. - Okay.
- But it's something that I think without the
Lord, the chances of that joy and that peace in your
life are really slim and we are all gonna have
those trials in our life and when I see someone in
a trial without the Lord, such as cancer, which I
could talk about later but it's a whole different
story when you know the Lord and I think that's the
biggest change for me is feeling--
- You feel there's greater pressure today then there was 40 years ago?
- Oh no question, no question. - So they need the Lord even more. - They do and especially the young people trying to make it today. It's a tough one. The Lord, maybe it won't make it easier but you'll have more
peace and less stress. I also would suggest, for young people, not just men, the girls too,
have a mentor in your life. You could have strong Christian parents but let me tell you, I know there's things you won't talk to your parents about but you might talk to an
uncle or a mentor about and it's really, really important. I have been asked by parents, "Hey, it's okay for
you to take my son out, - Talk like this.
- "take Him out and yeah "talk to Him."
- Share with Him. - And I've seen changed
lives because of it and I think that's the
biggest issue for me. I won't ever stop that. - That's neat. Well it's a ministry that
you pretty much just started, - Yeah.
from scratch and just saying, "We're gonna, I'm gonna
care about these young guys "and particularly help them get centered "in all the different
areas of their life". - That's right and prayer. - And prayer. - First of all, I want to
say the youngest generation we see at church, we are so blown away by and so proud of. I mean, to see young people worship God, it's so exciting. So what I would say to that generation is stay the course, stay connected
with people of like faith because as the line of
demarcation gets thicker between the world and our Christianity and our culture, we need each other more and those young people need
to stay strong and connected and they need to have
older people in their life, to cheer them on, to pray for them. I mean, the older we
get, the more we pray. It's good. - That's a good point,
that's a really good point. Okay, what I just taught
you is the first session of Class 101 that I wrote 40 years ago so I want you to turn to the
person next to you and say, "Congratulations, you
finished session one!". Go ahead, turn to
somebody, congratulations, you finished session one! I'm giving you a boost
because all this week, every night this week, you can
take the rest of the class. Everybody take out this card,
it says membership week. We've never done this in 40 years. Never, in 40 years, have we
had a week of 101 Classes back to back. Why are we doing this? Because I want your name on the roster of the founding members of Saddleback in the first four decades and we're only 15 days
left, or 13 days left, til we end that roster. We close that roster
from the first 40 years. When you get to Heaven, Gods gonna say, "How did you do?". "Well, I was at Saddleback". "Did you join?" "No.". "Wait a minute, I put you
in one of the great churches "in church history and you didn't join? "What were you thinking? "What were you thinking? "I put it right there in your door step.". Pick out the date of the rest of the class you want to take this
week and next weekend, I'm gonna baptize you if
you haven't been baptized and all of our church campuses
and all of our campus pastors will be baptizing. We'll probably baptize, I don't know, 500 or a thousand people next week. I wouldn't be surprised. Over 50 thousand, as you know, have been baptized in this church, so fill this out and then
rip off the bottom part, take this part home and
drop this in the basket so I have your reservation. Let me pray for you. Father, you have given
us a great privilege. First, you created us. We wouldn't be breathing right
now if you hadn't made us. You made us for yourself,
as Saint Augustine said, "And we will never find our rest "'til we find our rest in you". Thank you. We were planned for your pleasure. You made us to love us. Thank you that we were
formed for your family. You don't leave us alone,
you put us in your body, your bride, your church, your family. Thank you that you created
us to become like Christ. We don't have to stay stuck
in our self centeredness. Thank you that we were shaped to serve you by serving others and you've
given us gifts and talents that some of us, we don't even know yet but we're gonna discover
them as we try out using our lives for the
benefits of other people, making a difference, making an impact. Thank you that we were made for a mission. Somebody passed on the Good News to us, may each of us pass it on
to somebody else this week. May each of us pass it on. May there be somebody in heaven because we didn't break the chain but we passed on the Good News to others. I pray that every person here,
their life, their family, their relationships, their
finances, their health, will be blessed by you. Make this next year the
greatest year in our history and I pray this blessing,
in the name of the Father and the son and the holy
spirit and everybody says. - [Audience] (in unison) Amen. - I love you guys. (audience claps) Good night. Jerry and Marian McFadden. I asked them, you can
stand up for them, come on, stand up for them, that's fine. You need to stretch anyway. I asked you guys this
before on what you would say to the next generation but
I want to give you another chance again, this is your
church, this is your church. What do you want to say to them Jerry? What do you want to say to them Marian? - Well Marian said,
"You're talking first". (all laugh) But uh, I came out here
when I was 23 years old, I moved from New York
and I left a very large, loving family. Came out to California,
which what I told my parents would only be for a year. (Rick laughs) But I met a lot of friends here, friends that I still have
today and some of the family moved out here and that has grown. I think I might have
more family out here now then I have in New York and
that's been a blessing for me but most importantly, the
family at Saddleback Church, that's where the real difference was made and I believe, to this
day, with all my heart that if I wasn't involved in this church, I would not have the
wife that I have today, I wouldn't have the life that I have today or the faith that I have today. - That's great.
- And for that, I'm very grateful. - [Rick] That is beautiful. (audience claps) - I'll do this fast
because I can talk fast. - You're fine, great man. - Okay, okay, all right. As I was listening to
Rick and just thinking over the last couple of
days of all the beginnings of Saddleback, I thought about heaven and what it's gonna be like
'cause we're getting older and we'll probably get there
sooner then some of you (rick laughs)
I thought about, I thought about Paul and
how Paul is smiling on you and Saddleback Church and I thought, Saddleback Church under the
leadership of Pastor Rick and Kay is an answer to Paul's prayer, when he said in Ephesians,
"I pray that you be rooted "and established in love,
may have power together, "better together, with
all the Lords people "to grasp how hide,
wide, long, high and deep "is the love of Christ "and to know that this
love surpasses knowledge, "that you may be filled to the
measure of fullness in God. "Now to Him, "who is able to do immeasurably
more than we can ask "or imagine.". Obviously, Saddleback is that, "but to Him be glory in
the Church", which He is, "and in Christ Jesus,
through out all generations." and the next generation is coming up and gonna carry the baton
(Rick cheers) and we're gonna cheer them on. - (cheers) We're gonna cheer them on. (cheers) Thank you guys!
(audience claps)
