Most people long for significance. We
wonder, “What is the purpose in my life? Why am I here?” These are the
ponderings that can nag for a lifetime. No one wants to live with regrets about
a life given to the wrong cause. No one desires to journey through this world
with a sense of purposelessness. In his Confessions,
St. Augustine wrote, “for you made us for yourself, and our hearts are
restless until they rest in you.”1
Rick Warren’s best-selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, opens with the
sentence, “It’s not about you.”2 Warren reminds us that the ultimate
purpose in life is to discover that there is something bigger than ourselves
that is worth living for. The Gospel begins with this encounter. Encountering
God is the only way to fill the void that we all have and about which Augustine
penned his memorable words.
But we would be mistaken if we
reduced the Gospel to only an individual encounter. The legendary Methodist
missionary E. Stanley Jones wrote, “Christianity that does not begin with the
individual does not begin, but Christianity that ends with the individual ends.”
Church-planting consultant Alex McManus often says, “The Gospel comes to us on
its way to someone else.” This is the bedrock principle of following Jesus. God
calls us as a means to impact others with his love. An encounter with the
living God serves as a commission to introduce others to God’s love and
kindness.
In our lesson today from John’s gospel,
Jesus engages Philip and Nathanael. In the process, both of these men become
Jesus’ disciples and experience true life. This is ultimately the goal of the
Gospel. Later in his book, John words it this way, “Now Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But
these are written so
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