Thoreau said that “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. I have to believe that if he is right it is because the mass of men, and women, are plodding through life without a sense of why they are here and what they are doing. Inside we want to be significant. We want our lives to matter. We want to count for something. I think that yearning lingers within us because God made us for a wonderfully significant purpose. Tragically we abandoned that purpose when we rejected Him in the Garden of Eden. That purpose, or mission if you like, was and continues to be, to glorify God in all we do. In the garden we were given charge over all creation, to care for it and tend it for the Creator. We were given the privilege of tending the garden as a gift to God.

When we rejected that purpose we lost the one thing that would make us feel like we mattered, like we had a reason to be that was significant. But we did not loose the need to matter or be significant. So now people trudge through life wanting desperately for their life to matter but know knowing how to make it so. The Apostle Paul points us in the right direction in Colossians 3:17 when he says, “In whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ”. We were designed by the Father to live for His glory. Paul tells us that we can live for God’s glory by doing everything in the name of Jesus. We find our greatest sense of purpose when we live completely for Jesus. In all we do, thought, word, and deed, let it be done in such a way that it points people to our wonderful savior.

That is our ultimate mission, to live each moment for Jesus glory. It is only by living for Jesus in every moment that we can even come close to fulfilling the reason we have been created. We are here for God’s glory. The irony is that we seek meaning and purpose in our lives by having people look to us and think that we are the important and matter. Yet when we try to live for our own glory we sense that something is still missing. No matter how much acclaim we receive most people have a nagging feeling that it is not enough. Some try for even more personal glory and never figure out that it is a chasing after our own tail. Others eventually figure out the upside down nature of God’s economy that we get filled up only when we empty ourselves for His glory. It is the same thing that we read in Philippians 2 that after Jesus emptied Himself and became a servant, even to death, the Father highly exalted Him and raised Him up so that eventually every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

If you want to be significant. If you want to have your life matter. Then make it your mission in life to do all you do as a servant for Jesus. Empty yourself so that God can fill you up.