What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose (11 page)

I often hear ministers say that they are “burned out” or “disillusioned.” They seem weary, empty, and sad, as though they are not spiritually alive. I am familiar with this feeling. I remember the first time I led worship in a large arena. It was a ten-thousand-member young adult conference. After I led the arena in worship, I walked off the stage and thought, “Really? This is it? This is the pinnacle of my life of ministry? This is what it feels like to do the will of God and to be used by Him?”

My ministry was at a peak. I was serving the Lord and people, but I felt depressed—not because I do not value impacting people, but I thought it would be more exhilarating and more satisfying than it was. The truth is, it is servanthood. No matter the size of the congregation or area of life you serve, there will be no satisfaction in that alone. The satisfaction comes by knowing Jesus’s eyes are on you and connecting with His Spirit who is in you. This is the power of life, not the impact. Impact is good, but it is not good enough. Intimacy with Jesus, through the Holy Spirit on a regular basis and through the bread of the Scripture, is the sustaining power of our lives, not impacting people.

We will impact people, we will serve and labor in Jesus’s vineyard, and we will work together with others to see the great harvest of souls brought to Jesus. These things are very good and essential. However, when we think that the sphere of our influence and the measure of our impact are where we are satisfied, we quickly learn how empty they are. This is by design, because He never wanted us to just use us as a workforce. He wants us. He wants to be with us, to be in fellowship with us, to talk with us, to tell us His heart, and to share His thoughts and the deep things (1 Cor. 2:10–12). He is a bridegroom at the core of His personality, and He wants our hearts in the midst of our service.

M
ATTHEW
25

In Matthew 25:1–13 Jesus tells a parable about the Bridegroom God and the ten virgins.

The kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry was heard: “Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!” . . . And the foolish said to the wise, “Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.” But the wise answered, saying, “No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” . . . .Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.

All ten of them had lamps. They were preparing for the upcoming wedding. We know all ten of them represent the redeemed because they are all called “virgins.” We know they specifically represent people who have ministries because they all have lamps. They represent people who love the Bridegroom, have reordered their lives in order to find Him, and have been used to bring others to Him. They represent ministers who at one time had a vibrant connection with the Bridegroom. The challenge is keeping the oil in the lamp in the midst of the busyness of shining. Some get preoccupied with running around and gathering a crowd, and they forget that the only thing that is keeping them shining is the internal reality of the oil within, the oil of the Holy Spirit. It is the secret life in God.

Everyone sleeps (Matt. 25:5)

These ten ministers had a connection with the Bridegroom. They had a genuine desire to bring people to Jesus, but over time something happens. The hour gets late and everyone sleeps. Notice, everyone sleeps, not just the foolish. These ministers were preaching on the Bridegroom and telling about His coming. But there is a delay, and in the delay they all slept.

Sleep, in this passage, is not negative, but it speaks of the routine of life. We all have mundane routineness in our lives, even while we are waiting for the breaking in of the Bridegroom. What we do with our hearts in this delay defines wisdom and folly (vv. 2–4). All ten of them slept. This is a reality that came at me hard when I was young. I quickly found that even life in God has an element of routine. Sometimes it is boring and mundane. This is all part of His design for humans living in a fallen world. At first it really threw me off, but over time I have learned to go with the ebb and flow of life with Him.

They all slept, but there was a divide happening in the camp. Here, in this one passage, Jesus Himself defines wisdom and folly. We know, if Jesus is telling us how He defines wisdom and foolishness, we better pay close attention. This is the same Man who is going to evaluate our lives in the end, so what He is saying here in this passage is not just a helpful hint; it is also a crucial defining statement about what He is looking for and therefore what we are looking for. Again, we will only be satisfied in satisfying Him, and here He is telling us what that is.

Midnight cry (Matt. 25:6)

At the midnight hour a cry is heard, “Behold the Bridegroom! Go out to meet Him!” I believe this ultimately speaks of the second coming of Jesus, but it also speaks of the waves of revival that will happen between now and then. When this shout is heard, the entire camp scurries around, discombobulated by being awakened from their deep sleep. They are in the darkest part of the night. This is the defining moment. The problem wasn’t that they slept; the problem was five of them had no oil, and they didn’t realize it until it was too late.

These five had been so preoccupied with their lamps and running around networking, building, and being busy that they neglected their relationship with God Himself. They had become like the church of Ephesus who left their first love (Rev. 2:4). They became preoccupied with their impact instead of being preoccupied with Jesus Himself, and they did not have oil. The oil speaks of the heart connection with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Some assume that once they have it, they always have it, and they take for granted their lives of prayer and their ability to connect with Jesus.

Little by little, if you lose hold of this, before you know it, you rarely talk to Him, though you talk about Him, and you rarely are with Him, though you are working hard for Him. Jesus calls this foolishness (Matt. 25:3). It is foolish because we were designed by Him to be with Him. How foolish it is to only talk about Him but to neglect taking the time to be close to Him? What are we persuading men into if we ourselves are not in vibrant relationship with Jesus? Christianity isn’t a “do-good club.” It is a relationship with a real person, and when we are beckoning people to come to Him, we are not asking them to join a club and do good deeds; we are asking them to come to a person because of His great love for them. We cannot bring others where we do not go.

When the midnight cry went out, these foolish ones had the shock of their lives. They had a name that they were alive, but they were dead on the inside (Rev. 3:1). They had a reputation of knowing God, but they did not have a current, living relationship with Him. I believe they were saved but had no oil in their lamps. Lamps represent ministries.

In the generation that the Lord returns, I believe we will see many who once had ministries that will then be burned out and no longer effective. They will have gotten so caught up in the busyness of ministry that they forgot to stay connected to the vine; therefore they will no longer have oil. This is a frightening reality to me, and one that I take very personally. Not only is it about public ministry, but it is also about life purpose. Many lose sight of their life purpose in connecting with God and get busy with whatever is in front of them.

Maybe your ministry assignment is in the marketplace, with your family, or your neighborhood. Whatever the sphere, once you become more preoccupied with doing the work of Jesus than connecting with Jesus, you become foolish. Yes, we must do the work, but it must be because of an overflow of encountering Jesus at the heart level. He will often shake our lives in order to get our attention and draw us back to Himself. He wants our hearts, and He wants relationship with us.

Dream about getting oil (Matt. 25:4)

The five who were wise had oil. They had stayed connected to the vine in an authentic way. They had a current life in God, not just the memory of it. Oh, how this pains me at times! I remember a few years into my time at the International House of Prayer, I had been leading worship, building the house of prayer, and serving in the ministry here. I had started off with the intention of going deep in God and had consecrated myself to live in undistracted devotion, but my heart was growing dull and distracted. I remember it so vividly. It was late at night, and I was on my knees asking the Lord what was wrong and why I could not sense His presence. My ministry was growing, IHOP-KC was growing, but I felt farther away from Jesus than I had in years.

It was alerting to me. I didn’t feel His presence when I read the Bible. When I sang, I often felt empty. I didn’t wake up thinking about Him or go to bed talking to Him. I was living in a frenzy of activity, becoming a slave of the urgent and doing it all in the name of service. I thought I was doing what was right, but my heart was getting more and more dull and distant.

This is a frightening place to be in because when my heart is dull, I am much more prone to temptation and sin. With a dull heart I am not safe. When my heart is not alive, I am prone to depression and frustration that lead to more disillusionment and burnout.

When you do the work of the kingdom without being connected to the King, you will burn out. It is inevitable. It is Jesus’s jealousy that is like a flashing neon sign saying, “Come to Me! Come to Me!” He draws us with dullness in the same way that physical pain alerts us to the fact that something is wrong in our bodies. When we are spiritually dull, it is supposed to alert us that something is wrong.

I believe the Lord can occasionally give us dreams that give us a picture or an impression that will give insight into our own hearts, so I asked the Lord to give me a dream and tell me where I was and how I got there. I must add, I have often asked this and didn’t get a dream at all, but this night the Holy Spirit answered me in this way. That night I dreamt I was in my car, in the middle of a very, very dark night. It was pitch black, and I was on an elevated highway that was more like a roller coaster than a real highway. It had many sharp turns and quick drops. I was going so fast that I felt out of control. I could see only the road directly in front of me, and I felt panicky as I was speeding down this elevated highway.

Suddenly my car starts to shake and rumble. I think to myself, “Oh no, I cannot wreck this car. I haven’t even paid for it yet.” I look at my dash and there is a huge, flashing oil lamp. It is flashing over and over, “Get oil! Get oil!”

I immediately woke up and knew exactly what God was saying to me. He was answering my question of why I could not feel His presence. He was telling me I needed to slow down and get oil, even if it looked like my ministry was not moving as fast. It was more important for me to connect with Him than to have a fast-paced ministry.

We must never disconnect from the body of Christ or stop serving, but we must readjust our hearts and take more time to connect with Jesus in the midst of our service.

In my busyness I had forgotten my heart connection with the Lord, and even in leading the house of prayer, I prayed too little. This dream was like an arrow in my heart, because I had hoped I was one of the “wise.” Jesus was warning me, telling me that I too had lost my way, like the foolish virgins, and that it was urgent for me to reconnect with Him. I had lost my heart connection with Jesus and was on my way to a collision.

I believe we have these defining moments several times in our lives and that staying connected to God is a lifelong vision that must be renewed time and time again.

Buy oil (Matt. 25:9)

In the parable Jesus goes on to tell us that in the midnight hour when the cry goes out, “Behold the Bridegroom is coming. Go out to meet Him!”, the foolish look at the wise and say, “Give us some of your oil,” but the answer is, “No . . . go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.” They cannot transfer their oil. We must go and buy oil for ourselves. It is what Jesus said when counseling the Laodicean church to buy gold refined by fire (Rev. 3:18).

We “buy” oil or gold by investing our time and energy. Time is life. I cannot stand in a prayer line and receive a deep life in God by someone laying hands on me. I cannot get it once and then never lose it. To have a deep life in God is like any other relationship; it must be cultivated and sustained. You are always either moving forward or going backward in your relationship with God. It is never static. We are fools to think it is. When the wise say to the foolish, “Go and buy oil,” and Jesus says, “Go and buy gold refined,”
buy
means “cultivate and take time.” We do not earn gold or oil, but we must put ourselves in the position to receive it. If we do not do our part, He cannot do His.

Again, it takes God to love God. We must give Him space and time in order to get our hearts alive so we can fulfill our primary life calling, which is to love Him and be loved by Him. We have to take our cold hearts and put them before the flame of God, and little by little we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2). This transformation changes everything about us. We will work with a very different spirit—“a lover will always outwork a worker.” If we love first and cultivate a vibrant relationship with Jesus today, we do not have to worry about becoming lazy and neglecting the work. The closer we get to Him, the more zealous we become for His purposes. We cannot maintain this vibrancy without the help of the Holy Spirit

D
ESIGNED FOR
G
OD

How do we take our cold hearts and put them in front of the fire? How do we connect with the only person who can reach the void inside and bring us forth in love? Sometimes we assume God is only in the sky, far away, but He is living within. Jesus said we have to come “to Him” when we search His Word. It is not enough to be a student of the Bible or a person of action, doing many good deeds. If we are not deeply connected to Him, we are still not fulfilling our primary life purpose. We were created by God for God. Our very being was designed as a resting place for Him. This is the Creator’s original design for us to be with Him.