We’ve heard about what our purpose is: to glorify God with our whole lives. But devoid of a grander story arc for history, the way in which we do this will be limited to the likes of not cheating on tests, not embezzling money from other businesses, and volunteering at the local homeless shelter once a month. All wonderful things, mind you, but a life lacking a plot tends to lack urgency and passion. So we settle. We may glorify God in the ways we think and act and live, but we miss the larger narrative within which we were meant to glorify Him.
Thankfully, history does have such a plot, and in it we find the scope of our ultimate purpose. The plot is God’s grand plan to redeem people of every tribe, tongue, language, and nation to Himself – to be glorified in all the earth by all its people. To bring humanity back to its purpose of glorifying Him and enjoying Him forever. It’s a story with everything at stake – the eternal destinies of the nations, the redemption of the world’s people to their Creator. And it’s a story in which we know the end. Revelation chapters 5 and 7 make clear that people of every nation will be before the throne of God at the end of time. Astoundingly, God’s design includes us, His people. We get to participate and affect the outcome of this global story. God’s rescued become His rescuers.
At this point in this story that stretches back millennia, we’re governed by a simple command: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” (Matthew 28:19) It’s the Great Commission, given by Jesus, the heroic centerpiece of God’s redemptive work, just before He left Earth. Like a relay race with thousands of legs, this baton of world evangelism and discipleship has been passed from generation to generation, each taking it closer to its inexorable finish. Yet one generation will serve as the anchor leg, the one carrying the baton across the finishing tape. If this generation embraces both the purpose of glorifying God and the plot of God seeking to redeem the nations through Christ, it could be the anchor leg, the Finishers of this great race.
The Finishers seeks to help this generation embrace God’s global purposes and live as actors in His story, and perhaps be part of the most privileged generation since Jesus walked the Earth. To purchase copies, go to the CruPress store .
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