What has God called you to do? What should be the aim of your life?

• Not to have an easy life: As Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it (Luke 9:23-24).
• Not to amass earthly wealth: As Paul says, “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction” (1 Tim 6:9).

Surely one aim of your life should be to become holy, to be sanctified, to become like Christ: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3).

But while our sanctification, our becoming like Christ, begins with change inside us by the power of the Spirit, it does not end there. For as Paul says, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).

What are these good works? Some are clear, given the roles and relationships in our lives:

• Husbands are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and to give themselves to that end (Eph 5:25).
• Wives are to submit to their husbands and to respect them (Eph 5:24, 33).
• Children are to obey their parents (Eph 6:1).
• Fathers are to bring up their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Eph 6:4).
• Employees are to work honestly and hard, whether they are under observation or not, laboring “with a good will as to the Lord” (Eph 6:6,7).

Thus, our roles and relationships define many of the good works God prepares beforehand for us.

But not all. Jesus Himself was called to a task; Paul was called to a task; each of us, also, is called to a task or tasks.

So what is your task? What has God called you to do? What is your “holy ambition”? (See this sermon by John Piper with that title.)

Ask God that question. Search the Scriptures and allow your heart to be stirred. Imagine what God might choose to do through your life. Then get up and go after it – for His glory, not yours.

At the Desiring God Pastors Conference early this month, in discussing how God used him to begin a missions agency, Greg Livingstone exhorted us to step out, not fearing failure. Indeed, he told us to aim high, endeavoring to do something worth failing at. For, as Crawford Loritts reminded the conference, when we follow God’s assignment, God promises His presence (Joshua 1:5-6). As the 19^th century pastor Phillips Brooks put it,

Do not pray for easy lives. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks. I bid you clearly know that if the life which you have chosen to be your life is really worthy of you, it involves self-sacrifice and pain. If your Jerusalem really is your sacred city there is certainly a cross in it. What then? Shall you flinch and draw back? Shall you ask for yourself another life? Oh, no – not another life, but another self. Ask to be born again. Ask God to fill you with Himself and then calmly look up and go on. Go up to Jerusalem expecting all things that are written concerning you to be fulfilled. Disappointment, mortification, misconception, enmity, pain, death – these may come to you but if they come to you in doing your [task] it is all right.

Have your prayers basically been requests for an easy life? Have you assessed your abilities and skills and asked God to do something consistent with those? Are you afraid of failure? Are you afraid of pain?

Look higher! See the God who is filling the earth with the knowledge of His glory as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14)! See the One who has all authority in heaven and on earth! Ask Him: “What is my task? Oh, give me a holy ambition!”

Do that. And let’s dream together about how God will use us individually and corporately to fulfill His purposes in this world.

Praying that we would spur one another on to love and good works to the glory of our Lord and Savior,

Coty