We’re starting a new series in a new year in a new building.

This series is called Living With Purpose.

I know we talk a lot about purpose in the church, but how many of you are living with purpose?
Let me say it like this:
How many are living with intention?

We know there’s a difference between surviving and succeeding.
There’s a difference between succeeding and significance.

There’s also a drastic difference between living and living with purpose.

I want you to live your life intentionally, filled with hope and faith, reaching potential and ultimately living out your purpose.
But to do that, it will take deliberate actions on your part.
We want God to move, but he wants us in action too!

Matthew 13:3-8
3 And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. 4 And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. 5 Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, 6 but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. 7 Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. 8 Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

1 Whether you know it or not, you are planting something.

Every single day we plant seeds.
Some of those seeds are good, beneficial, but some of the seeds are bad, detrimental.

Some of those seats are loaded with positive potential.
Some of them are idle and were never designed to benefit anyone.

Matthew 12:36
You must give an account for every idle word you speak
That is kind of scary for people like me who like to choke around a lot, but if you consider this idea of living with purpose, it does make you stop and wonder about what you say and what you do:

Are you living your life intentionally?

Now, every single person in this room has done something that had zero intention behind it, so let’s not spend a lot of time talking about these things.

But what are you doing right now to live with purpose? To live intentionally?

Because remember, Whether you know it or not, you are planting something.

The farmer goes out and scatter some seed.
We could spend the rest of our lives debating the theology of the four different grounds the seed was falling on, but one thing is certain: the farmer was scattering seed with purpose, for a purpose.

He was clearly not scattering seed because he had nothing else to do.

He expected a crop to grow as a result of the work of scattering the seed.

When you do what you do, when you say what you say, are you just walking across the field throwing seed back-and-forth with no intention, or are you saying and doing what you say and do with purpose behind it?

When your kids do something dumb, do you tear them down or train them?

When you’re spouse frustrates you, do you lash out or do you show Grace?

When that coworker offends you, do you wig out, or do you seek peace?

And everyone to be scenarios, you get a choice between living with purpose and living without it.

When you live with purpose, the words and actions you are sowing are done so intentionally because you are hoping for a specific outcome.

When you live with purpose, you live with the height and awareness of exactly what you’re planting.
And the reason you do this is because you are fully aware, not only of what you are sewing, but of what you are hoping for.

If you are not seeing in your life what you want to see, take a moment and check to evaluate what you’re sowing and whether or not you were sowing it with intention.

2 Whether you like it or not, what you plant will grow.

Matthew 25:19-30
Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”

Now, the last thing anybody should ever do when they read this first is get hung up on the fact that one was given five, one was given two, and the last one was given one.

Never get caught in a trap of comparing what you have to what other people have.
You be faithful with what you’ve been given and let God handle the rest.

You can rest assured that God is never going to ask you how well you did based on how good or bad somebody else did.

Every person will have to give an account.

God gives every person what he wants him to have, and it begs a very serious question:

What are you doing with what God gave you?

What are you doing with that next breath? What are you doing with that next word? What are you doing with that next thought?

In the church, we put so much emphasis on “kingdom impact,“ “fulfilling your purpose,“ and please don’t misunderstand me, these are very important things, but before we get to Kingdom impacts and living out your purpose, are you living the life God gave you intentionally, with purpose?

Are you throwing all of your energy into his plan for your life?

You can read this parable and think, “man, that last guy had it pretty rough.“
It’s easy to look at that story and think, “what’s the big deal? He just didn’t want to lose the money.“

But if this is what you think, you missed the point.

What are you doing With what God gave you?

I am concerned that too many people are living vastly below their potential.
No one is saying that you have to be the CEO of a fortune 500 company, or have these perfect fairytale kids, or have some perfect life.

But I guarantee you, in this moment right now where you’re sitting, I’m willing to bet that you are not living at your potential.

Imagine how your life would be different if you were living with purpose, if you were living intentionally to reach your potential.

What would be growing in your life right now if you were?

This point number two says whether you like it or not, what you plant will grow.

It’s the truth!
You plant kindness, you’ll get it.
You so financial seeds, God will bless you.
You seek first his kingdom, then everything you need will be added to you.

This is a law of nature.

But it also works with negative things.
If you so Anger, that’s what you’ll get.
If you so doubt, that’s what you’ll get.
If you so unforgiveness, you will spend the rest of your life eating the fruits of unforgiven.

And if you so complacency, you’ll reap it.

I wasn’t angry at the one with five talents.
He wasn’t upset with the one with only two.
He knew their potential and gave to them accordingly.

But he was angry with the complacent one.

Be careful your seeds of complacency don’t reap you a harvest of wickedness and broken relationship.

What you plant will grow.
Are you planting with purpose, intentionally living to reach your potential?

3 Whether you believe it or not, you can live with purpose.

When you live with purpose, fisherman become church leaders, hated tax collectors become apostles.
When you live with purpose, every intentional step you take is one step closer to you at full potential.

So many people are striving to discover their purpose while refusing to live at their potential.

Remember I just read from Matthew 25 that if you were faithful and a little you will be given much.

If you were waiting on a word from the Lord right now, if you’re desperate to discover your purpose, if you’re desperate to live the life God called you to live, let me just ask one little simple question:

Are you being faithful with what you already have?

When you sow faithfulness, guess what you get as a harvest?

You can live with purpose.

I don’t mean that you’re capable of it.
I don’t mean that you have the ability.

I mean when you live with purpose, you are alive.

Now that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. Far from it.
But you right now are sitting in the result of some people here being willing to live with purpose.

It’s the result of several families in our church giving tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this become a reality.

It’s the result of people in our church who gave their free time, their vacation, their days off every single week, to come here and work.

It’s the result of people and companies and organizations giving tens of thousands of dollars of resources, doing for us what they would never do for anybody else.

It’s the result of people being willing to get to the building at 6 o’clock in the morning and leave at 10 o’clock that night.

It’s the result of me and Tony working our bodies to the point of exhaustion, keeping our foot on the gas, keeping the project moving.

It’s the result of people like me who felt so much Pressure for lack of a better word to make sure you guys have a place to grow and develop and be who God made you to be.

You’re sitting in a miracle.
And that miracle didn’t just happen by chance.

God moved on people‘s hearts, and the results of their efforts came together, mixed with the miraculous power of God who constantly came to our rescue.

Now, why?
Why do all of this?

Why give so much money, give vacation time and time away from family, spent hours upon hours here working

Why would I wake up at 5:30 in the morning, be at the building at 6, literally work all day long to 7, 8, 9 o’clock?

Why would I hurt my fingers to the bone, my body to the point where every morning when I wake up I hurt, and during the stress of managing all of this, doing the work, raising and overseeing the finances, interacting with the city and inspectors and contractors, trying to figure out everything that needs to be done?

Why?

There are two reasons:

First, Colossians 3:23-24
Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

I’m obeying the Lord as best I can.

We believe this was the place God wanted for us before, but we felt like we couldn’t afford it. But God made a way.
I met with the owner and he gave a number and it was a number that was not doable for us.
So we thought, “maybe the Lord is closing the door.“
So we went under contract on a piece of property on the bypass.
That piece of property had a million issues we would have to mitigate first and I just didn’t work out.
So we got out of that contract.
When I went back to talk to the owner of this property, he told me “God told me in a dream that I’m supposed to do anything I can to help you get this property.”

But then we had to get financing.
We went to one place and after almost 2 months of back-and-forth, the door closed.
But then we reached out to Wesleyan Investment Foundation, who have treated us like family from day one, who was willing to do for us, according to them, what they would never do for anyone else.
They said, “Jason, we can’t explain it, but there is something about you and your team. God wants us to be partnered with you guys.”

And then there’s building this building.
We didn’t have the money, but God moved on hearts, and people were obedient.

Two things we discovered early on:
Every time we needed a certain amount of money, it usually showed up within the same week we had to pay.
And second, every time we chose to be generous even if finances were low, God always rewarded our generosity with his abundance.

God sent us people and businesses who bent over backwards to help us, work with us, even bless us with stuff.
Brooks Concrete did all of our concrete work and when I went to pay for the last extra section of concrete at the front of the building, he said, “My blessing to you brother. Y’all have been a blessing and I’m proud of what y’all are doing.”

God sent us an inspector who genuinely cared about us, about what we were doing, who been over backwards to help us reach the finish line.
We literally passed our inspection and the certificate of occupancy on the same day.
That was Friday around 3 PM.

And by the way, other than about $12,000 on our church card, this building is 100% paid for.

Why am I telling you all of this?
It is definitely not to boast.
Our boast is in the Lord!

But I want you to see that as best as we could, every step we took was a step taken because we were trying to live with purpose to honor God with what we were doing.

Trust me, we were not perfect at it, but we’ve tried our best to honor God with our work and sacrifice.
He grew our faith, he grew our trust in him, and yes, there were plenty of times I stepped out back behind the building and just looked up at heaven and said God please help me please please please help me.

I may or may not have had a few breakdowns in this process.

I may have even thrown a tool once or twice.

But we’ve tried so hard to honor God, to serve him, to be good stewards of the miracle he trusted to us.

So the first thing is I wanted to honor God.

But here’s the second reason we’ve worked so hard, nearly killing ourselves in the process.

You.

Some of you are gonna take your first steps with Jesus in this room.

Some of you are going to bury your old nature in a horse trough we call our baptistery at the corner of this platform.

Some of you are going to find forgiveness from your past at this altar.

Some of you are going to give him your addiction that you’ve struggled with your whole life in these four walls.

Some of you are gonna develop friendships that you never even knew were possible, that you can’t imagine living without.

Some of you are gonna take steps of development in your relationship with God that will gonna cause you to go to levels you never even dreamed of with him.

Some of you are gonna finally hear his voice for the first time.

Some of you might get married in here.
And there may even be someone we’ll remember, celebrating their life as they go from life here on earth to eternity in heaven.

This buildout has been hard.
It has challenged me in ways that I never even knew were possible.
It has pushed me and our team to the absolute limit.

I don’t know how many times I’ve said it, but the guys hear this question from me a lot: are we dead yet? lol

This whole time we’ve been living with purpose.
We’ve been intentional with what we’ve been doing.

If you were going to do something great, great for God, great for your family, great for your own life, it’s going to take you being intentional with your steps, living with purpose.

If you hear this today and you feel like you’re having a hard time living with purpose, intentionally doing and saying what needs to be said and done so that you can live to the potential God put inside of you, then I want to give you the secret.

Find your why and life with purpose will follow.

Peter would’ve just been a forgotten fisherman had he not met Jesus.
Esther would’ve never risen to queen had she not considered the plight of her people.
We would’ve never had books like Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians, had Paul not given his life for the kingdom.

I’m asking you to make a decision today.

Live with purpose.
Be intentional and what you do and what you say.

This building is a result of God speaking, people listening, and people being willing to be intentional with their actions and live with purpose.

What is God trying to build in you that will start with you choosing to live life with purpose?

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?