Vaccinated Against A Midlife Crisis
I am 40 years old and I don’t really like my job. I have practiced real estate law full time for around 11 years, and while I love my clients, I don’t really like arguing with lenders and lawyers all day to close deals. Despite a successful career, and being my own boss, I find myself asking what I should do with my life, or if I am meant to do something else. In a way it’s kind of pathetic when I consider how blessed I am, and I admit that.
Many of my acquaintances are in the same boat. We are entering middle age and while we make a good living, we don’t feel that we are doing all we can with our lives. I know this is a very common feeling and that’s why we all know the term midlife crisis. I would like to analyze this concept briefly before presenting some points from God’s Word that I know will help anyone going through these issues. Furthermore, we could also call this message vaccinated against discontent, vaccinated against a life without purpose, vaccinated against unfulfillment, and other such titles would be appropriate.
While I know many people that don’t love their jobs, I don’t think I know anyone that has truly suffered a midlife crisis or catastrophic meltdown from their unhappiness with their current situation. For most of us, while we may not love our work in the world, we do love our families and we acknowledge our responsibilities to our spouses and our children. Most of the people I know, myself included, also acknowledge how fortunate we really are compared to most of the world, and we want to remain thankful and positive even when we don’t feel completely fulfilled. Just for example, I have been in the huts made from mud and cow dung in Africa, and I’ve been in some metal shacks in Haiti, and I’m never going to get too worried about my housing situation again.
So while many of us love our families and acknowledge that we have things pretty good, we live with the nagging feeling that we haven’t accomplished all that we should, or that we need to make changes to maximize our lives. We can and should do more. Again, talking about myself, I find it very difficult to wake up with the carpe diem mindset knowing that I need to be pretty close to my computer all day. It’s also difficult to get excited when my primary interaction with the Holy Spirit will be relying on His help so I don’t cuss someone out. Because pretty much the thought crosses my mind every day.
That nagging feeling that we should do more, or at least something else, is a major problem. Remember in the Matrix movie when Morpheus said something to Neo about a splinter in his mind. You have this feeling that something isn’t right. It doesn’t get better and it doesn’t go away. Even after a major victory or wonderful experience it remains. It will cause the occasional outburst or bad mood, when a bad day brings your unfulfillment to the forefront of your thinking. In some, those who truly experience a midlife crisis, it causes a complete breakdown. People start thinking that with a new job, or a new house or a new spouse the feeling will go away, but it doesn’t.
Now let me further disillusion you with reality as we know it, at least as most humans know it. There is nothing in the world that can remove that splinter. There is no career, no love interest, no physical pleasure, no material thing, no vacation, no beach house, no mountain chalet, no amount of free time, no amount of money, no there is absolutely nothing out there that will free your mind from the voice that constantly whispers “what am I doing with my life.”
And, my Christian brothers and sisters, I’m sorry to say that your salvation in Jesus Christ will not remove the splinter either. In fact, it can make it worse. I could go on and on about this but to keep it simple when you become a Christian the Holy Spirit bonds with your reborn human spirit and you instantly receive a direct link to the consciousness of God that you didn’t have before.
It’s true that link must be nurtured and appreciated to develop into the flow of life and revelation that God intends, but even at its creation God’s thoughts begin flowing from God’s Spirit to your spirit to your mind. The question changes from “what am I doing with my life” to “what does God want me to do with my life.” “Why am I here” becomes “why did God put me here.” And I think it’s easier in some ways when we don’t know God because if everything comes from nothing and it’s all just pointless and random maybe nothing really matters. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. But now we know that isn’t true. Now we know that everything matters. There is an infinite reality of what matters out there and it’s passing me by, or I’m not taking my place. I feel this all the time, and I know I’m not alone.
But I know the cure. I know how to remove the splinter. I know the vaccination against a midlife crisis, the prescription against this sickness. It’s not easy. It won’t be easy, at least not at first. But it’s available and it’s free and it’s yours for the taking. Even as I set myself to write the cure I know that some of you will reject it. That makes me sad. I know it’s too far out there for many of you. Some of you have great lives and you don’t feel the splinter’s pain very often. But some of you will receive this. Some of you will take this jab, and all of eternity will echo with your decision.
The vaccine against a midlife crisis, the tweezers for that splinter in your mind, is a complete commitment of your existence to the Kingdom of God. And there is no other cure.
I could now teach you how a complete commitment to the Kingdom of God is actually the best possible decision for your life, and will lead you into the best possible life, but you would need to listen to my other teachings about that. Suffice it to say that, despite what lies you’ve heard, God only has good for you. The devil does all the stealing, killing and destroying. Jesus does all the blessing and life giving. God does only good and the devil does only bad. They never switch jobs and the devil is self-employed. There is a lot of blasphemy, especially in the Christian world, about God bringing hardships into people’s lives, but it’s just not true. Yes, you will encounter persecutions and afflictions from this fallen world which is under the devil’s influence, but God will deliver you out of them all. In this life, and in eternity, you will experience God’s love and blessings. I know that I’m skipping all the Bible verse citations here, but this is the Biblical truth.
So what does it mean to wholly commit your life to the Kingdom of God and how will this steel your mind again unfulfillment and fill your life with purpose? Of course it starts with receiving Jesus as your Lord and Savior, which results in you being born again. Jesus said that unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). When you are born again you are literally created anew in your spirit, and your spirit is born again directly by God. Being born again is how you come into God’s family and God’s Kingdom.
We have previously defined the Kingdom of God as the realm of God’s rule. To put that another way, the Kingdom of God is everywhere God’s will is in effect, it is everywhere God is ruling. God is ruling in our spirits when we get born again, and so we come into His Kingdom. God is not ruling all of existence. As we have previously explained, the devil is the god of this period of time (2 Corinthians 4:4). God is not controlling everything, as much as people want to believe that. God only rules certain parts of reality, including those of us who are born again.
Furthermore, God only rules the parts of us that we have submitted to Him. When we received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we submitted our spirits to Him. But the rest of our lives aren’t submitted to God’s rule and Kingdom until we voluntarily offer them to Him. Your entertainment life is probably not subjected completely to God’s will. I know mine still needs some work as I do watch some television and movies. Your relationships may need some adjustments for God’s will. Other aspects of your life may also not reflect God’s will for your lives. We have to bring all of ourselves into alignment with God’s will. Does your life reflect an existence defined by the Kingdom of God? If someone looked at your life, would they see a citizen and soldier for God’s Kingdom?
I’m not saying that God is angry with you if you still have some shortcomings or areas that need clean up. We all do. God wants the best for you and He will continue encouraging all of us to more closely align our existence with His perfect will until the end of our current physical lives. My point today isn’t even to focus on your specific behaviors. I’m only making the point that God’s will is not in effect in every area of our lives automatically, and all of existence is not under His control. We can look the world over and see many terrible things that are not God’s will. I never want to vomit more than when I hear Christians blaming God’s mysterious will for the evils around us. Those are from the devil!
Your personal commitment to the Kingdom of God is a personal and voluntary decision. After you receive Jesus Christ, how much of yourself and your life you give to God’s Kingdom is up to you. Understanding this helps us understand how a complete dedication to God’s Kingdom, and all there is therein, is the vaccination against the midlife crisis, the tweezers for that splinter of discontent.
(Matthew 6:31-33 NIV, Jesus Speaking) “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Of all we could take from this passage, let’s first take one simple truth that whether you seek God’s Kingdom is up to you. We could also acknowledge that seeking God’s Kingdom first is the answer to having all of your basic physical needs met. Having your physical needs met is great, but that’s not going to create the fulfillment and peace for your existence that I’m discussing today. So we need to keep going. Remember, seeking God’s Kingdom is up to you.
(Ephesians 2:10 NLT) “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”
When we receive Christ Jesus we are born again. As I have discussed elsewhere, in that moment many amazing things happen to you. You become a child of God. You are perfectly righteous and like God in your spirit. You are bonded to the Holy Spirit. You have access to all of God’s wisdom. On and on we could go. You are truly a new creation (Galatians 6:15). One amazing reality of your status as a new creation is that now you are equipped to do the good things (or “good works” as the King James translation has it) that God has planned for you long ago.
God planned many good works for you to do. God knew you before you were born and planned a wonderful life for you. Your life is not just about one singular moment or action, and your life sure isn’t just about getting saved and then doing your best. Rather your life should be a divinely designed lifetime of good works, love, relationships and experiences. Regarding your works, God will guide you along His plan of these fulfilling and exciting good works for your entire life.
Unfortunately, those who are not born again can’t see the Kingdom of God, and they can’t do God’s good works for their lives either. The good works are not designed for those who aren’t Christians. You don’t even receive access to your good works until you become a Christian. There are lots of reasons for that. To keep it simple, you need your new creation realities to do your good works which God has planned for you, especially your union with God. You also need the Holy Spirit’s direction to find them.
None of God’s good works were planned for you apart from your salvation, apart from your realities in Christ, and apart from the gifts God has put in you which are awakened and quickened at your new birth. God has called the new creation you, with all of the righteousness, wisdom, love and power placed within you, to these good works.
These good works are everything. In fact, living in the path of good works that God has set before us is the only source of true fulfillment in life. You were born with a purpose. You first become a Christian, it’s the buy-in to the rest of your purpose. Now, as Christians, as the sons and daughters of God, our purpose is to do the good works He planned for us. Yes, these good works include marriage, parenting, neighboring, and many aspects of a traditional life. But now those works, which seem ordinary, have eternal significance. On top of those good works which we all have, there are specific good works unique to our individual designs, gifts and abilities.
You and the good works God planned for your life are literally a match made in Heaven. Here is some mind-blowing but very simple revelation – your purpose in life is to do the good works that God created you to do. In fact, I believe one of the greatest moments in a person’s life, certainly on the level with salvation, marriage, child-birth, and the other most-wonderful moments of our existence, is when you know that you are living as the person God created you to be and doing something God created you to do. Those times, those amazing moments, can be experienced again, and again and again. In fact, such a joy can be part of your constant experience of life, a constant part of your existence.
A life where your created reality exists in harmony with both your Creator and what He created you to do is where you will find the highest expressions of joy, purpose, fulfillment, and excitement. That is the highest height of the human existence. That is the life you are meant to live. You will not find it without God. Only your Creator knows what He created and why. You can only discover your reality and your purpose with God. My friends, like it or not, that’s just the way it is.
I may have told this story before but I first experienced this joy and sense of purpose in Haiti. It was very hot one day as we were setting up for a revival meeting where I would preach later that night. The execution on the set up hadn’t gone well. All the others on the trip were back at the hotel during the heat of the day. But me and my friends Matt and Gil, who run Schools for Haiti, were there at the meeting site setting up. I was working on the lights and power chord set up. These were crucial for the whole meeting. The chords were tangled. I was soaked in sweat. It would qualify as a very difficult moment. But all I felt was joy.
I don’t know exactly how to describe it. There were so many things I could be annoyed about. I was going to be preaching, I wasn’t supposed to be untangling the power chords. But I knew in that moment I was exactly where God wanted me to be. I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. God had orchestrated all of that moment before I was even born, and somehow, despite my innumerable failures in life, God had brought me to that good work.
The greatest moments of your life, aside from the big ones I listed above, can happen all the time. You can experience this union of creation and purpose and work every day. I know that part of God’s plan for my life is to study His Word and receive revelation from His Spirit. It’s why I was a reader as a kid, it’s why I was drawn to become an English major and a lawyer. Reading comprehension has always been one of my gifts. And now I use it for His Kingdom.
So I have described for you this amazing life of purpose and fulfillment that is available to us all. Let me do my best to tell you how to get there. I have already told you that it all begins with salvation. Your life begins with salvation. We all start there. From there, we do what Jesus said and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness is a complex idea that could easily be a book by itself. But really you can still keep these ideas pretty simple. Do you want to seek God’s righteousness, then study God and His directions to Christians. There are numerous directions to Christians throughout the New Testament. I wouldn’t worry about studying the Old Testament for such directions, not at first if you are beginning this endeavor. Of course we can learn a great deal from the Old Testament, but for your life’s general directions focus on the New Testament, with loving God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength being the first direction (Matthew 22:37). Loving others as Christ loves us is the second direction (John 13:34).
Studying God’s directions for His people, and studying God Himself as He is revealed in Christ in the New Testament, are the best ways that we learn about God’s righteousness. As we commit to living according to God’s directions, the Holy Spirit helps us. Now we are truly seeking His righteousness. We learn, we submit, and we follow.
But what about seeking God’s Kingdom. Remember I said that God’s Kingdom is the realm of God’s rule or God’s dominion. First, we submit all of our lives to God’s directions. That is simultaneously seeking God’s righteousness and His Kingdom in our personal lives. We seek and submit to the Kingdom in our personal lives, in our hearts and minds. Then we look for how we are supposed to work for the Kingdom.
Doing your specific good works is synonymous with doing your appropriate work for the Kingdom. I suppose we could split hairs and really go crazy about the differences in those definitions, but I’m more than confident they are very close, if not perfectly synonymous. God wants you to seek the Kingdom, God wants you to do your good works, and doing your good works is the best way to seek the Kingdom in the world around you. This is actually a great blessing. We don’t need to analyze every possible ministry or Kingdom endeavor to see where we should work. We just need to let God lead us into our personal good works.
If you focus on becoming like Christ and following God’s directions in your life, you are seeking God’s Kingdom and righteousness on the inside. If you focus on doing your good works in the world around you, you are seeking God’s Kingdom and righteousness on the outside. This is the vaccination against the midlife crisis. This is the secret to peace and fulfillment in your life.
(Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
(Psalms 139:13-16 NIV) “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
I love that verse in Psalms 139 because it reinforces the relationship between who God created you to be and what God created you to do. Again, you and your good works are a match made in Heaven. God created you. God knows every aspect of you. You are God’s work, and you are wonderful. In addition to creating you, God planned out all your days.
God’s plan for your life is not automatic. I’ve lived many moments that were not God’s plan for my life. But God’s plan is always waiting for you, always available to you. Yes, I do believe God is constantly modifying His perfect plan for our lives based on our choices, but His plan is always available to you. You just need to begin seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness in your life. If you saw the truth about God’s plan for your life then you would see how your peace, joy and fulfillment are all contained therein.
Every day millions of people wake up and have a similar experience. We see our spouses that we love, we see our children that we love, we see material possessions that are nice enough, and we move forward in our existence. We have hobbies and we go to church, and we experience joy in different things. We may even volunteer for causes we care about. But there is no burning passion for our lives. There is no excitement for our jobs. There is no internal drive to jump out of bed and maximize every moment. Despite the good things in our lives, we still end up going through the motions.
Unfortunately, many times the things that bring us joy only act like a Tylenol against the splinter in our minds. We think the new car or the new vacation will help. New toys and vacations are fun, but they only temporarily move our minds away from the nagging unfulfillment that is constantly present, just underneath the surface, for so many of us. As symptoms sometimes get worse when the medicine wears off, the return to work we don’t love is harder after an awesome vacation.
This union between who God created us to be and what God created us to do is the answer. It’s these moments of unison that bring the purest and most complete fulfillment to our lives. It’s seeking the Kingdom within and without that brings us to these moments.
Here is one of the beautiful realities of God’s plan for our lives, it’s perfectly tailored to where we are, to our level of maturity. God knows it takes time for us to grow and mature as His children. There are good works for you to do when you first become a Christian, works that don’t take much maturity at all. Start going to church. Start reading your Bible. Start praying. These works don’t really involve others. These good works are designed to further His work inside you. You are seeking God’s Kingdome and righteousness within.
Then the works grow as you grow. Start volunteering. Start listening when God prompts you to invite someone to church. Join a small group. Again, these don’t take much maturity either, but they are a step of growth. Soon enough, you will want to know that others in your life are Christians, that they are going to Heaven. You’ll want to lead others to Christ. You’ll want to help more and more people. You’ll learn about new works for God and want to get involved in some of them. Some of them won’t appeal to you, that’s fine. God wants some of His ministries to set your heart on fire and some of them to do nothing for you. Those works are for other people. We all have jobs to do in the Kingdom.
Many Christians reach this level, and it is a wonderful level to reach. We study, we pray, we go to church, and we serve. We can generally feel when God is leading us to do something, and we go after it. Maybe our job isn’t amazing, but overall life is good and satisfying. We know that we are making an eternal impact and that we are doing some of our good works.
But God, I’m not exactly sure of how to put this, doesn’t stop pushing us. He doesn’t stop growing us. He doesn’t stop maturing us. He brings us into bigger works and assignments of responsibility. It may sound a bit bureaucratic, but it is how the Kingdom works. We mature, we grow, we are promoted, we are faithful in what is little, and we are given much (Luke 19:12-26). This is also a blessing, it keeps things exciting, it keeps us wanting more, it maintains our passion and fulfillment in the Kingdom.
Many of my ministry opportunities over the past few years came because God once told me, in 2014, to rent a room and put on a class about finding God’s plan for your life. I rented the room, a few people came, and someone that came then invited me to teach the men’s foundations class at my church. I had wanted to do it before that, but the door wasn’t open yet. So I started teaching that class and then I was invited to teach Wednesday Night Bible Study two times in the Fall and two times in the Spring. Out of all the amazing people at my church they chose me. I wasn’t a minister then, I’ve never been to seminary, and my church is filled with awesome pastors. But it was divine promotion, it was a good work God had planned for me. Then when one of the primary teachers left I was promoted again, just me and Tony Dungy teaching the Wednesday Night Bible Study for two years.
Then God told me to retire from that. It was time to step back for a season. My wife and I needed to learn from Andrew Wommack. We needed to learn the secrets of Divine Healing. We’ve got them now. So what happened next? Pastor Doug and Pastor Dale start prayer and healing meetings at our church, and they invite me to teach twice. It’s an opportunity to take what God had us learn to others. It’s another good work for the Kingdom. And when I hear my own voice, when I hear God speaking through me into the microphone things that I’ve never even thought before, revelation based on my studies that the Holy Spirit is revealing right in that moment. When I hear that and feel Him, I have one of those moments. I am living as God created me to live and in that moment I am doing something God created me to do. His creation doing what He created it to do, and in me that simultaneously creates both a perfect satisfaction and an insatiable appetite for more.
Seeking the Kingdom will start in you as a decision, but it will become an addiction. When you experience this feeling a few times, you’ll want it more and more. Nothing else can satisfy. And then, more and more, you’ll stop caring about the things of the world. You’ll care about your family and your relationships and what God wants you to do for the Kingdom. There really isn’t much else that matters. You’ll come to agree. And let me just say, that doesn’t mean you will hate your job or want to join a monastery or something like that. Rather, you’ll have a passion from God to do the job He wants you to do. You might need to change jobs, and personally I am seeking God’s direction about that now, but that will be a blessing as well.
As you seek the Kingdom, new thoughts become ingrained into your mind. The splinter of discontent is replaced with a constant desire to do your works for God. Yes, I am seeking the Kingdom by decision every day of my life, but it is also now part of my DNA. It is part of my mental framework. I am, in my own unique ways, an ambassador for Christ, a soldier for God’s Kingdom. We are all called to this. God calls Himself the Fountain of Living Waters (Jeremiah 2:13), and He is also the Fountain of perfect fulfillment and unity between who I am and what I should do.
This union looks different for each of us. You may be totally different from me. You may have totally different assignments from me. That’s awesome. Glory to God. Sometimes people look at pastors and teachers and think that ministry doesn’t interest them at all. There is nothing wrong with that? God created you down to your very DNA sequencing and has good works perfectly tailored to you and your attributes. You can find them and experience them, and you can know this perfect unity as well, in it’s perfect expression designed by God just for you.
Imagine a life where you know who you are and what you should do. Imagine a life with a perfect unity between who you are and what you do. God has this for all of us. This doesn’t just vaccinate you against a midlife crisis. This doesn’t just cure the discontent and unfulfillment. This empowers you to change this world for God. This ensures that when you reach Heaven, you hear “well done good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23)
As you seek the Kingdom, inside yourself and in the world around you, God’s Holy Spirit will help you grow and reveal your good works to you. It does take time to begin hearing from God. I encourage you to listen to my teachings on God’s frequency and hearing from God. But don’t even worry about that right now. Just start with the decision to seek God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. Make the decision to find and do God’s good works for you. This is how you will live a fulfilling and wonderful life.
Many of my acquaintances are in the same boat. We are entering middle age and while we make a good living, we don’t feel that we are doing all we can with our lives. I know this is a very common feeling and that’s why we all know the term midlife crisis. I would like to analyze this concept briefly before presenting some points from God’s Word that I know will help anyone going through these issues. Furthermore, we could also call this message vaccinated against discontent, vaccinated against a life without purpose, vaccinated against unfulfillment, and other such titles would be appropriate.
While I know many people that don’t love their jobs, I don’t think I know anyone that has truly suffered a midlife crisis or catastrophic meltdown from their unhappiness with their current situation. For most of us, while we may not love our work in the world, we do love our families and we acknowledge our responsibilities to our spouses and our children. Most of the people I know, myself included, also acknowledge how fortunate we really are compared to most of the world, and we want to remain thankful and positive even when we don’t feel completely fulfilled. Just for example, I have been in the huts made from mud and cow dung in Africa, and I’ve been in some metal shacks in Haiti, and I’m never going to get too worried about my housing situation again.
So while many of us love our families and acknowledge that we have things pretty good, we live with the nagging feeling that we haven’t accomplished all that we should, or that we need to make changes to maximize our lives. We can and should do more. Again, talking about myself, I find it very difficult to wake up with the carpe diem mindset knowing that I need to be pretty close to my computer all day. It’s also difficult to get excited when my primary interaction with the Holy Spirit will be relying on His help so I don’t cuss someone out. Because pretty much the thought crosses my mind every day.
That nagging feeling that we should do more, or at least something else, is a major problem. Remember in the Matrix movie when Morpheus said something to Neo about a splinter in his mind. You have this feeling that something isn’t right. It doesn’t get better and it doesn’t go away. Even after a major victory or wonderful experience it remains. It will cause the occasional outburst or bad mood, when a bad day brings your unfulfillment to the forefront of your thinking. In some, those who truly experience a midlife crisis, it causes a complete breakdown. People start thinking that with a new job, or a new house or a new spouse the feeling will go away, but it doesn’t.
Now let me further disillusion you with reality as we know it, at least as most humans know it. There is nothing in the world that can remove that splinter. There is no career, no love interest, no physical pleasure, no material thing, no vacation, no beach house, no mountain chalet, no amount of free time, no amount of money, no there is absolutely nothing out there that will free your mind from the voice that constantly whispers “what am I doing with my life.”
And, my Christian brothers and sisters, I’m sorry to say that your salvation in Jesus Christ will not remove the splinter either. In fact, it can make it worse. I could go on and on about this but to keep it simple when you become a Christian the Holy Spirit bonds with your reborn human spirit and you instantly receive a direct link to the consciousness of God that you didn’t have before.
It’s true that link must be nurtured and appreciated to develop into the flow of life and revelation that God intends, but even at its creation God’s thoughts begin flowing from God’s Spirit to your spirit to your mind. The question changes from “what am I doing with my life” to “what does God want me to do with my life.” “Why am I here” becomes “why did God put me here.” And I think it’s easier in some ways when we don’t know God because if everything comes from nothing and it’s all just pointless and random maybe nothing really matters. Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. But now we know that isn’t true. Now we know that everything matters. There is an infinite reality of what matters out there and it’s passing me by, or I’m not taking my place. I feel this all the time, and I know I’m not alone.
But I know the cure. I know how to remove the splinter. I know the vaccination against a midlife crisis, the prescription against this sickness. It’s not easy. It won’t be easy, at least not at first. But it’s available and it’s free and it’s yours for the taking. Even as I set myself to write the cure I know that some of you will reject it. That makes me sad. I know it’s too far out there for many of you. Some of you have great lives and you don’t feel the splinter’s pain very often. But some of you will receive this. Some of you will take this jab, and all of eternity will echo with your decision.
The vaccine against a midlife crisis, the tweezers for that splinter in your mind, is a complete commitment of your existence to the Kingdom of God. And there is no other cure.
I could now teach you how a complete commitment to the Kingdom of God is actually the best possible decision for your life, and will lead you into the best possible life, but you would need to listen to my other teachings about that. Suffice it to say that, despite what lies you’ve heard, God only has good for you. The devil does all the stealing, killing and destroying. Jesus does all the blessing and life giving. God does only good and the devil does only bad. They never switch jobs and the devil is self-employed. There is a lot of blasphemy, especially in the Christian world, about God bringing hardships into people’s lives, but it’s just not true. Yes, you will encounter persecutions and afflictions from this fallen world which is under the devil’s influence, but God will deliver you out of them all. In this life, and in eternity, you will experience God’s love and blessings. I know that I’m skipping all the Bible verse citations here, but this is the Biblical truth.
So what does it mean to wholly commit your life to the Kingdom of God and how will this steel your mind again unfulfillment and fill your life with purpose? Of course it starts with receiving Jesus as your Lord and Savior, which results in you being born again. Jesus said that unless you are born again you cannot see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3). When you are born again you are literally created anew in your spirit, and your spirit is born again directly by God. Being born again is how you come into God’s family and God’s Kingdom.
We have previously defined the Kingdom of God as the realm of God’s rule. To put that another way, the Kingdom of God is everywhere God’s will is in effect, it is everywhere God is ruling. God is ruling in our spirits when we get born again, and so we come into His Kingdom. God is not ruling all of existence. As we have previously explained, the devil is the god of this period of time (2 Corinthians 4:4). God is not controlling everything, as much as people want to believe that. God only rules certain parts of reality, including those of us who are born again.
Furthermore, God only rules the parts of us that we have submitted to Him. When we received Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we submitted our spirits to Him. But the rest of our lives aren’t submitted to God’s rule and Kingdom until we voluntarily offer them to Him. Your entertainment life is probably not subjected completely to God’s will. I know mine still needs some work as I do watch some television and movies. Your relationships may need some adjustments for God’s will. Other aspects of your life may also not reflect God’s will for your lives. We have to bring all of ourselves into alignment with God’s will. Does your life reflect an existence defined by the Kingdom of God? If someone looked at your life, would they see a citizen and soldier for God’s Kingdom?
I’m not saying that God is angry with you if you still have some shortcomings or areas that need clean up. We all do. God wants the best for you and He will continue encouraging all of us to more closely align our existence with His perfect will until the end of our current physical lives. My point today isn’t even to focus on your specific behaviors. I’m only making the point that God’s will is not in effect in every area of our lives automatically, and all of existence is not under His control. We can look the world over and see many terrible things that are not God’s will. I never want to vomit more than when I hear Christians blaming God’s mysterious will for the evils around us. Those are from the devil!
Your personal commitment to the Kingdom of God is a personal and voluntary decision. After you receive Jesus Christ, how much of yourself and your life you give to God’s Kingdom is up to you. Understanding this helps us understand how a complete dedication to God’s Kingdom, and all there is therein, is the vaccination against the midlife crisis, the tweezers for that splinter of discontent.
(Matthew 6:31-33 NIV, Jesus Speaking) “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Of all we could take from this passage, let’s first take one simple truth that whether you seek God’s Kingdom is up to you. We could also acknowledge that seeking God’s Kingdom first is the answer to having all of your basic physical needs met. Having your physical needs met is great, but that’s not going to create the fulfillment and peace for your existence that I’m discussing today. So we need to keep going. Remember, seeking God’s Kingdom is up to you.
(Ephesians 2:10 NLT) “For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.”
When we receive Christ Jesus we are born again. As I have discussed elsewhere, in that moment many amazing things happen to you. You become a child of God. You are perfectly righteous and like God in your spirit. You are bonded to the Holy Spirit. You have access to all of God’s wisdom. On and on we could go. You are truly a new creation (Galatians 6:15). One amazing reality of your status as a new creation is that now you are equipped to do the good things (or “good works” as the King James translation has it) that God has planned for you long ago.
God planned many good works for you to do. God knew you before you were born and planned a wonderful life for you. Your life is not just about one singular moment or action, and your life sure isn’t just about getting saved and then doing your best. Rather your life should be a divinely designed lifetime of good works, love, relationships and experiences. Regarding your works, God will guide you along His plan of these fulfilling and exciting good works for your entire life.
Unfortunately, those who are not born again can’t see the Kingdom of God, and they can’t do God’s good works for their lives either. The good works are not designed for those who aren’t Christians. You don’t even receive access to your good works until you become a Christian. There are lots of reasons for that. To keep it simple, you need your new creation realities to do your good works which God has planned for you, especially your union with God. You also need the Holy Spirit’s direction to find them.
None of God’s good works were planned for you apart from your salvation, apart from your realities in Christ, and apart from the gifts God has put in you which are awakened and quickened at your new birth. God has called the new creation you, with all of the righteousness, wisdom, love and power placed within you, to these good works.
These good works are everything. In fact, living in the path of good works that God has set before us is the only source of true fulfillment in life. You were born with a purpose. You first become a Christian, it’s the buy-in to the rest of your purpose. Now, as Christians, as the sons and daughters of God, our purpose is to do the good works He planned for us. Yes, these good works include marriage, parenting, neighboring, and many aspects of a traditional life. But now those works, which seem ordinary, have eternal significance. On top of those good works which we all have, there are specific good works unique to our individual designs, gifts and abilities.
You and the good works God planned for your life are literally a match made in Heaven. Here is some mind-blowing but very simple revelation – your purpose in life is to do the good works that God created you to do. In fact, I believe one of the greatest moments in a person’s life, certainly on the level with salvation, marriage, child-birth, and the other most-wonderful moments of our existence, is when you know that you are living as the person God created you to be and doing something God created you to do. Those times, those amazing moments, can be experienced again, and again and again. In fact, such a joy can be part of your constant experience of life, a constant part of your existence.
A life where your created reality exists in harmony with both your Creator and what He created you to do is where you will find the highest expressions of joy, purpose, fulfillment, and excitement. That is the highest height of the human existence. That is the life you are meant to live. You will not find it without God. Only your Creator knows what He created and why. You can only discover your reality and your purpose with God. My friends, like it or not, that’s just the way it is.
I may have told this story before but I first experienced this joy and sense of purpose in Haiti. It was very hot one day as we were setting up for a revival meeting where I would preach later that night. The execution on the set up hadn’t gone well. All the others on the trip were back at the hotel during the heat of the day. But me and my friends Matt and Gil, who run Schools for Haiti, were there at the meeting site setting up. I was working on the lights and power chord set up. These were crucial for the whole meeting. The chords were tangled. I was soaked in sweat. It would qualify as a very difficult moment. But all I felt was joy.
I don’t know exactly how to describe it. There were so many things I could be annoyed about. I was going to be preaching, I wasn’t supposed to be untangling the power chords. But I knew in that moment I was exactly where God wanted me to be. I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. God had orchestrated all of that moment before I was even born, and somehow, despite my innumerable failures in life, God had brought me to that good work.
The greatest moments of your life, aside from the big ones I listed above, can happen all the time. You can experience this union of creation and purpose and work every day. I know that part of God’s plan for my life is to study His Word and receive revelation from His Spirit. It’s why I was a reader as a kid, it’s why I was drawn to become an English major and a lawyer. Reading comprehension has always been one of my gifts. And now I use it for His Kingdom.
So I have described for you this amazing life of purpose and fulfillment that is available to us all. Let me do my best to tell you how to get there. I have already told you that it all begins with salvation. Your life begins with salvation. We all start there. From there, we do what Jesus said and seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.
Seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness is a complex idea that could easily be a book by itself. But really you can still keep these ideas pretty simple. Do you want to seek God’s righteousness, then study God and His directions to Christians. There are numerous directions to Christians throughout the New Testament. I wouldn’t worry about studying the Old Testament for such directions, not at first if you are beginning this endeavor. Of course we can learn a great deal from the Old Testament, but for your life’s general directions focus on the New Testament, with loving God with all of our hearts, souls, minds and strength being the first direction (Matthew 22:37). Loving others as Christ loves us is the second direction (John 13:34).
Studying God’s directions for His people, and studying God Himself as He is revealed in Christ in the New Testament, are the best ways that we learn about God’s righteousness. As we commit to living according to God’s directions, the Holy Spirit helps us. Now we are truly seeking His righteousness. We learn, we submit, and we follow.
But what about seeking God’s Kingdom. Remember I said that God’s Kingdom is the realm of God’s rule or God’s dominion. First, we submit all of our lives to God’s directions. That is simultaneously seeking God’s righteousness and His Kingdom in our personal lives. We seek and submit to the Kingdom in our personal lives, in our hearts and minds. Then we look for how we are supposed to work for the Kingdom.
Doing your specific good works is synonymous with doing your appropriate work for the Kingdom. I suppose we could split hairs and really go crazy about the differences in those definitions, but I’m more than confident they are very close, if not perfectly synonymous. God wants you to seek the Kingdom, God wants you to do your good works, and doing your good works is the best way to seek the Kingdom in the world around you. This is actually a great blessing. We don’t need to analyze every possible ministry or Kingdom endeavor to see where we should work. We just need to let God lead us into our personal good works.
If you focus on becoming like Christ and following God’s directions in your life, you are seeking God’s Kingdom and righteousness on the inside. If you focus on doing your good works in the world around you, you are seeking God’s Kingdom and righteousness on the outside. This is the vaccination against the midlife crisis. This is the secret to peace and fulfillment in your life.
(Jeremiah 29:11 NIV) “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
(Psalms 139:13-16 NIV) “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
I love that verse in Psalms 139 because it reinforces the relationship between who God created you to be and what God created you to do. Again, you and your good works are a match made in Heaven. God created you. God knows every aspect of you. You are God’s work, and you are wonderful. In addition to creating you, God planned out all your days.
God’s plan for your life is not automatic. I’ve lived many moments that were not God’s plan for my life. But God’s plan is always waiting for you, always available to you. Yes, I do believe God is constantly modifying His perfect plan for our lives based on our choices, but His plan is always available to you. You just need to begin seeking God’s Kingdom and His righteousness in your life. If you saw the truth about God’s plan for your life then you would see how your peace, joy and fulfillment are all contained therein.
Every day millions of people wake up and have a similar experience. We see our spouses that we love, we see our children that we love, we see material possessions that are nice enough, and we move forward in our existence. We have hobbies and we go to church, and we experience joy in different things. We may even volunteer for causes we care about. But there is no burning passion for our lives. There is no excitement for our jobs. There is no internal drive to jump out of bed and maximize every moment. Despite the good things in our lives, we still end up going through the motions.
Unfortunately, many times the things that bring us joy only act like a Tylenol against the splinter in our minds. We think the new car or the new vacation will help. New toys and vacations are fun, but they only temporarily move our minds away from the nagging unfulfillment that is constantly present, just underneath the surface, for so many of us. As symptoms sometimes get worse when the medicine wears off, the return to work we don’t love is harder after an awesome vacation.
This union between who God created us to be and what God created us to do is the answer. It’s these moments of unison that bring the purest and most complete fulfillment to our lives. It’s seeking the Kingdom within and without that brings us to these moments.
Here is one of the beautiful realities of God’s plan for our lives, it’s perfectly tailored to where we are, to our level of maturity. God knows it takes time for us to grow and mature as His children. There are good works for you to do when you first become a Christian, works that don’t take much maturity at all. Start going to church. Start reading your Bible. Start praying. These works don’t really involve others. These good works are designed to further His work inside you. You are seeking God’s Kingdome and righteousness within.
Then the works grow as you grow. Start volunteering. Start listening when God prompts you to invite someone to church. Join a small group. Again, these don’t take much maturity either, but they are a step of growth. Soon enough, you will want to know that others in your life are Christians, that they are going to Heaven. You’ll want to lead others to Christ. You’ll want to help more and more people. You’ll learn about new works for God and want to get involved in some of them. Some of them won’t appeal to you, that’s fine. God wants some of His ministries to set your heart on fire and some of them to do nothing for you. Those works are for other people. We all have jobs to do in the Kingdom.
Many Christians reach this level, and it is a wonderful level to reach. We study, we pray, we go to church, and we serve. We can generally feel when God is leading us to do something, and we go after it. Maybe our job isn’t amazing, but overall life is good and satisfying. We know that we are making an eternal impact and that we are doing some of our good works.
But God, I’m not exactly sure of how to put this, doesn’t stop pushing us. He doesn’t stop growing us. He doesn’t stop maturing us. He brings us into bigger works and assignments of responsibility. It may sound a bit bureaucratic, but it is how the Kingdom works. We mature, we grow, we are promoted, we are faithful in what is little, and we are given much (Luke 19:12-26). This is also a blessing, it keeps things exciting, it keeps us wanting more, it maintains our passion and fulfillment in the Kingdom.
Many of my ministry opportunities over the past few years came because God once told me, in 2014, to rent a room and put on a class about finding God’s plan for your life. I rented the room, a few people came, and someone that came then invited me to teach the men’s foundations class at my church. I had wanted to do it before that, but the door wasn’t open yet. So I started teaching that class and then I was invited to teach Wednesday Night Bible Study two times in the Fall and two times in the Spring. Out of all the amazing people at my church they chose me. I wasn’t a minister then, I’ve never been to seminary, and my church is filled with awesome pastors. But it was divine promotion, it was a good work God had planned for me. Then when one of the primary teachers left I was promoted again, just me and Tony Dungy teaching the Wednesday Night Bible Study for two years.
Then God told me to retire from that. It was time to step back for a season. My wife and I needed to learn from Andrew Wommack. We needed to learn the secrets of Divine Healing. We’ve got them now. So what happened next? Pastor Doug and Pastor Dale start prayer and healing meetings at our church, and they invite me to teach twice. It’s an opportunity to take what God had us learn to others. It’s another good work for the Kingdom. And when I hear my own voice, when I hear God speaking through me into the microphone things that I’ve never even thought before, revelation based on my studies that the Holy Spirit is revealing right in that moment. When I hear that and feel Him, I have one of those moments. I am living as God created me to live and in that moment I am doing something God created me to do. His creation doing what He created it to do, and in me that simultaneously creates both a perfect satisfaction and an insatiable appetite for more.
Seeking the Kingdom will start in you as a decision, but it will become an addiction. When you experience this feeling a few times, you’ll want it more and more. Nothing else can satisfy. And then, more and more, you’ll stop caring about the things of the world. You’ll care about your family and your relationships and what God wants you to do for the Kingdom. There really isn’t much else that matters. You’ll come to agree. And let me just say, that doesn’t mean you will hate your job or want to join a monastery or something like that. Rather, you’ll have a passion from God to do the job He wants you to do. You might need to change jobs, and personally I am seeking God’s direction about that now, but that will be a blessing as well.
As you seek the Kingdom, new thoughts become ingrained into your mind. The splinter of discontent is replaced with a constant desire to do your works for God. Yes, I am seeking the Kingdom by decision every day of my life, but it is also now part of my DNA. It is part of my mental framework. I am, in my own unique ways, an ambassador for Christ, a soldier for God’s Kingdom. We are all called to this. God calls Himself the Fountain of Living Waters (Jeremiah 2:13), and He is also the Fountain of perfect fulfillment and unity between who I am and what I should do.
This union looks different for each of us. You may be totally different from me. You may have totally different assignments from me. That’s awesome. Glory to God. Sometimes people look at pastors and teachers and think that ministry doesn’t interest them at all. There is nothing wrong with that? God created you down to your very DNA sequencing and has good works perfectly tailored to you and your attributes. You can find them and experience them, and you can know this perfect unity as well, in it’s perfect expression designed by God just for you.
Imagine a life where you know who you are and what you should do. Imagine a life with a perfect unity between who you are and what you do. God has this for all of us. This doesn’t just vaccinate you against a midlife crisis. This doesn’t just cure the discontent and unfulfillment. This empowers you to change this world for God. This ensures that when you reach Heaven, you hear “well done good and faithful servant.” (Matthew 25:23)
As you seek the Kingdom, inside yourself and in the world around you, God’s Holy Spirit will help you grow and reveal your good works to you. It does take time to begin hearing from God. I encourage you to listen to my teachings on God’s frequency and hearing from God. But don’t even worry about that right now. Just start with the decision to seek God’s Kingdom and His righteousness. Make the decision to find and do God’s good works for you. This is how you will live a fulfilling and wonderful life.
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