God has put eternity in the heart of man, so no matter where you're born in the world, no matter what culture,or education you've received, something in the heart and spirit of a man knows that we have come from somewhere, we're going to somewhere, there is a purpose for our life. There's a desire to make our life significant, or to count, and a desire that somehow we wouldn't end in the grave,
In Ecclesiastes 3, Verse 11, it says He has made everything beautiful in it's time - and here it is - He has put eternity in their hearts. So God has put eternity in the heart of man, so no matter where you're born in the world, no matter what culture, what country, whatever and no matter what education you've received, something in the heart and spirit of a man knows that we have come from somewhere, we're going to somewhere, there is a purpose for our life. There is somehow an invisible God that one day we will meet, and in the heart of every person there's a desire to make our life significant, or to count. No one wants to get to the end of their life and die full of regrets about what they could have done, or should have done, but there's a huge journey in getting from that place to to fulfilling the destiny that God has for us.
I want to talk a bit about that today, so this desire that your life would count, this desire that somehow we wouldn't end in the grave is written into you by God. It's a God-written thing. It's written into your whole DNA, that life does not end at the grave, that somehow there is an eternity, and within every one of us there is a longing that somehow my life would count, that I wouldn't just accomplish nothing with my life. So you have a destiny and people have - when I use the word destiny there's all kinds of concepts people have, so I want to look at concepts that people think. When you think the word destiny you think destination, some place I'm going, so I looked it up and essentially the majority of people have an idea of destiny's something like this, that destiny - they look at it in two ways. They look at it, destiny is a future that was predetermined for you. In other words someone, somewhere, had this plan, they called it destiny, and it's sort of a plan for your life. It's all worked out, and you don't have much to sort of - it's just going to happen, no matter what.
Sometimes people use the word destiny, they think it's some kind of force, an impersonal force, and it's controlling your life, and somehow this is your destiny. You know in the movie Star Wars, Darth Vader talks to the guy Luke, and he says this is your destiny, you know, as though somehow he's got no choice about it. So in the presentations, often you hear from the world perspective, destiny has something to do with an impersonal force that runs your life, so they use words like fate, or they use words like karma. There's all kinds of words to describe it, but the thinking behind it is that somehow, something, somewhere, has got something worked out for you, and basically you'll be kind of, almost like a puppet walking your way down, and no matter what you do, it's going to happen out anyway. The consequence of that thinking, first of all it's completely wrong. There is a personal God, but the second consequence of it is of course, is that people tend to become a bit passive, and they get oh well, que sera sera, whatever will be will be, you just kind of journey and do your best, and then it's all over.
Now that kind of passivity, that kind of thinking, is totally ungodly. It's without God in it anywhere. It comes very much out of a Greek thinking. Now the problem is when people become a Christian, they bring into their Christian walk a mixture of belief systems from the world, and then bring it in upon their Christian walk, without really understanding what God says. When we do that, we have something like this, and unfortunately many of the thinking that Christians hold is rooted in Greek thinking. The Greek thinking was that there is this impersonal force called destiny, and no matter what you do, you're going to end up working this thing out, or walking this out. There was a movie that came around a little while ago, in fact I think there were two or three of them, about these guys and somehow they cheated an accident, but destiny eventually caught up with them all. It's a way of thinking that there's this impersonal force runs your life, and makes decisions, and you can't do much about it.