So last Thursday night I went to Milligan College in Carter County TN for the evening worship service for a conference called Youth In Ministry. I went because a band was playing worship there that I absolutely love and I haven’t seen them in about two years. The band is Marc Imboden and Year’s Wages (at least the last time I heard the name, that’s what they were calling themselves). The worship was amazing, but to be honest, it wasn’t even close to being the best part of the night.

I didn’t know it when I decided to attend the night of worship, but Tommy Oaks was preaching that night. In fact, he had been the preacher for every night of the conference. I had only seen Tommy in person one other time in my life. He was at Cincinnati Christian University for a three day event about three years back while I was a student there. The really weird/cool thing is that my parents, way before I was born, used to be youth sponsors. They would work weeks of church camp during the summer and on more than one occasion had worked weeks with Tommy.

The whole concept of this conference is helping prepare teens to possibly go into full-time vocational ministry. The night that I just happened to be at seemed to be the climax of the week. Tommy’s message was simple, to the point, very clear and yet is was one of the most powerful messages I’ve heard delivered in a very long time. In fact, Tommy himself was almost in tears on many different occasions throughout the night because of how passionate he was about the message he was delivering from God. It was simply something I could only describe as a God moment. God was fully in that place and using Tommy to deliver His message with passion.

That message came from two separate passage, one from the New Testament and one from the Old Testament. Looking back at it now, I don’t think I would have ever put these passages together, yet it makes perfect and complete sense to do so now. The New Testament passage came from Matthew 9:37-38 which states, “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field’”. The Old Testament passage is actually one of my favorites from the Old Testament. It was the calling and commissioning of Isaiah found in Isaiah 6. Isaiah found himself in the presence of the Almighty God and the presence of God made him feel so unworthy and scared. This, however, is not the part that Tommy chose to focus on. His focus was on what happened after Isaiah was cleansed by one of the angels. The focus was actually just one simple verse. Many of you have probably already figured out what it is. Isaiah 6:8 states, “Then i heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’”.

While these two passages have a lot to say separately, they say volumes more when used together. Tommy ended his message by giving the teens a little quiz, although he gave them the answers. The answers came straight from the verses. He asked, “What is plentiful?” and they were to answer “The harvest!”. “What are there few of?” and the answer was “Workers!”. “So what are we to do about it?” and the answer was “Pray for workers!” After asking this a few times, Tommy moved on to Isaiah 6:8 and did the same thing with that verse. “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” and the answer was “Here am I. Send me!”

After asking these questions a few times he went on to say that he was going to have two invitations that night. The first one was he believed was something that every single person in the room that night could accept and commit to. That invitation or commitment is what is driving me to write this at almost 2 AM. He asked us all to commit to make this part of our daily personal prayer life. In fact, he asked that we pray for this in every prayer that we pray. That prayer is simple, but is very very important and I believe can have a great impact on this world. The commitment is to pray “Lord, please send workers into the harvest” every time we pray. Now I will admit that I have already failed at keeping that in every prayer or even praying that every day, but I am committed to making that a daily part of my prayer life because this world needs more people doing God’s work full time.

The next invitation he had was something that not everyone was going to be able to accept, and that was completely natural and fine. It was for anyone who felt God’s call in their life to enter full-time vocational ministry to stand and from the depth of their hearts answer God with, “Here am I. Send me!”. Now there were about 100 teenagers there that night and from what I could tell, half or maybe a little more than half of those teenagers answered God’s call in their life to enter full-time vocational ministry. You talking about an emotional scene, it was so uplifting to see teens making the same decision/commitment that I had made 7 years before them.

After Tommy closed out his message, Curtis Booher (my youth minister from back in my youth group days) got up to close the night out. He started to give the same quiz that Tommy gave earlier that night. He asked, “What is there a lot of?” and the teens answered “Harvest!”. He then asked, “What is there not a lot of?” and they answered “Workers!”. Then Curtis said something that was the perfect end to what had just happened. He stated, “But not as few as we had before tonight”.

Now I write all of this to get two points across. Matthew 9:37-38 still means the same today as it did the day that Christ first said it. What I mean is that there is a plentiful harvest out there just waiting but we don’t have enough workers. We need to prayerfully ask God to send workers into that harvest. So my first point is to ask that anyone that reads this blog and considers themselves a Christian to make the commitment with me and many others to pray on a daily basis for God to raise up workers for this harvest.

My second point goes along with Isaiah 6:8. If we commit to praying daily for workers to be raised up, some of us might start hearing God asking “But whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”. Not everyone will hear this call, but I truly believe that if we pray for God to raise up workers, He will. If you start feeling like He is asking you “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” be prepared to answer “Here am I. Send me!” Take it from someone who has personally experienced this. I tried to not answer for a long time, yet it never went away. Don’t waste your life.
Please pray with me for workers to be sent into this harvest. Be prepared, however, to answer that call if God starts leading you down that path. I feel like something big is getting ready to happen in this world. It seems to be close to catching on fire for God, but we need workers. “God, please, I beg of you from the depth of my heart and soul to send workers into this harvest. I am answering you again, and will answer you this way for the rest of my life, ‘Here am I. Send me!’. I know You have great plans in store for this world. Let us passionately serve You with everything that we have and use us, O God, to help bring in Your harvest! I love you with all of my heart God. Hear this heartfelt prayer. In Your Son’s precious name, Amen”

You hear about it all the time. It is a very hot topic almost anywhere you turn. This is especially true on college campuses across the United States and I would guess around the world. It echoes throughout history and great minds of every generation have spent a great amount of time contemplating its meaning. On a more personal level, my fiance has been trying to figure it out for her life recently and that is what has got me formulating my opinion on it. What is it you ask? It is a question that doesn’t have a universal answer. The question is “what is the purpose of life?”.

There are many opinions on the answer to this question. The reason behind this is simple yet complicated at the same time. There are many opinions because each is formulated based on one’s world view. World views are something that most people don’t think much about, however, they play a vital role in what we believe about any and all things that we come into contact with. Each person’s world view boils down to core beliefs. These core beliefs are what answers the question of “what is the purpose of life?”. As a Christian, I have made a point of becoming very aware of my own personal world view. This world view helps me to answer that question.

I do not claim to be answering this question for everyone. I know many readers on here are not Christian. Obviously we have completely different belief systems. I am not writing this for you, however, I would love your feedback. I am writing this trying to answer this question for the people that have the same world view. My overall view of the purpose of my life is going to be different than those that do not claim to be a Christian. I am also not writing this to shove my opinion down anyone’s throat. If what I type makes sense to you great, but I am writing this for myself and for others like me.

With that being said, here is my humble opinion for what the purpose of life is. First of all I feel the need to explain one more thing. Even within the same world view, I feel that people still have differences in their purpose for life. They do have, however, the same major purpose of life. That major, common purpose of life for Christians is to live your life in such a way to try and lift God up with everything that we do. In other words “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. This is found in Matthew 22:37-39, Mark 12:30-31 and Luke 10:27. This is what I believe we are created for. If this is what we were created for, then it makes complete sense to me that this would be what the purpose of our lives would be.

After this, I think the purpose of life is different for each of us. It comes down to what our priorities in life are. Priorities are what we consider important in our life and if that is the case then the important things in our lives are going to turn into our purpose. I do not even want to begin trying to guess what everyone else’s priorities or purpose for life is. What I will tell you, however, is what my priorities and my purpose for life is. I consider my priorities/purpose as follows:

1.God/Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”.
2.My family: this includes my future wife and children as well as my parents and their families/to love my wife and be the head of a Godly family in which our children are raised with the knowledge that God is the most important thing in life.
3.My ministry (I’m a youth minister but looking for a ministry)/This is tied in with my #1 but I have vowed to not allow my job to be more important than my wife and family.
4.My friends/I have many close friends that give my life purpose as I love to hang out and laugh and just be friends.

Again, this is just my personal opinion added to the many that are out there. Also, I do believe that #1 is the purpose for life of anyone that claims to be a Christian. For those of you that are reading this that aren’t Christians I know you won’t agree with this. I respect your right to believe what you want to believe, please respect mine. I look forward to your comments.

I was just on another website looking at a group that I belong to about waiting until you are married to have sex. This is a very deep conviction of mine and is something that I have been very blessed to keep that promise so far. I'm getting married in just a little over 8 months now so that promise to God and myself is coming near completion. While I was looking around on the group page, however, I found a very interesting conversation that seemed really off topic. This person had started a discussion stating that she didn't believe that God had made much of a sacrifice if any by Jesus dying on the cross.

This got my attention because I wanted to see where she was going to go with this. I started reading the responses to her statements and where she in turn took the conversation. By the end of the post, which was pretty current by the way, it was very apparent that this person did not believe in Christianity or the Omnipotent, Omnibeneveleant God that I believe in and try to serve every day. The group page that this was taking place on was a mostly Christian group. This whole thing really got me thinking about why people would join a group like that in which they don't believe what the group stands for just so they can start an argument.

Do people really join groups like this just to bash someone's belief system. I mean, I have no problem with someone trying to get there opinion across, but this just seemed like a direct attack. She was arguing against every reply that she got. It just seemed like she was doing this just to try and argue with people that she didn't agree with whatsoever. Don't get me wrong, I love a good debate and any Christian should be able to defend their faith against any and all attacks. What was very apparent about this discussion, however, is that she was asking for proof of statements even though she was just saying anything that she wanted to without proof. She was claiming that the Bible wasn't a reliable source and that anyone that used it to back up their claims were almost ignorant.

I realize that people that don't believe in God wouldn't really see the need in believing the Bible, but it is the inspired word of God. I have a deep passion for what the Bible has to tell us and how it can give a deepening relationship with God. I guess I'm writing this because this woman really got me thinking about a couple of questions that seem to pop up all too often anymore; 1: Why do people feel that it is necessary to challenge Christians in any way that they can (although I don't think challenges to our faith are a bad thing because we need to be prepared to give a response just like II Timothy 4:1-5 states), 2: Why do other people expect Christians to be tolerant of every other belief in this world, yet most people that aren't Christian seem to not be tolerant of our beliefs, 3:Last but not least, why is it so hard for Christians to stand up and give the same answers to a direct attack like what I saw today (there were plenty of responses but unfortunately it seemed as if some were arguing with what other Christians were saying instead of standing united against those attacks).

Thanks for listening and feel free to let me know what you think.