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The church not only grounds meaning in the love of God but this meaning gives purpose. We were created to display his glory and God in Christ is remaking us to display his glory through amazing grace. Our lives proclaim the hope and good news of God’s salvation. He often uses ordinary for extraordinary. Ordinary for extraordinary is the story of you and me. We are just nobodies telling everybody about the somebody who can save anybody.[1] The gospel is both our reason for life and our reason to live. The gospel gives life and gives life purpose.
In Ephesians 3:1-13, we learn, Paul has a reason because he has a purpose. God has given him a reason to endure what he endures. His purpose, as the steward of God’s grace, is to make known what has been made known. In other words, because Paul has a word from God because Paul knows God loves him, the love of God grounds all meaning. The world needs to hear of the amazing love of God in Christ so they can understand the meaning of life. When someone understands that life has meaning they then have a purpose. God’s word comes to us and our responsibility is to take what has come to us to others.
Paul understands the significance of his life by realizing his insignificance. Paul’s ordinary has been lost in the extraordinary. The grand purpose of God of which his life serves, to which he now understands because Jesus has told him so through revelation, gives Paul reason to endure what he endures. God uses his enduring to proclaim with emboldened passion the message of meaning and purpose found in Jesus. Recall the words of Jesus. Jesus said those who lose their lives are those who find it.
[1] Though not original with Mark Hall, these words have been popularized by Casting Crowns, Nobody, 2018.