A Different Perspective Official Podcast

I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking all those years ago.  And in the same way, giving up other bad things in our lives can be hard.  Do I or don't I? And if I do – how do I give them up?
I remember how hard it was for me to give up smoking. I was sharing with a couple of builders who were smoking outside my house the other day. I used to smoke three packets a day, that's seventy five cigarettes every day, I mean I was so super addicted I'd be sitting at my desk and light up one cigarette before I'd finished the last one.
What did it for me was when I was with someone when they died of lung cancer. I watched them breathe their last breath and when I walked out of that hospital room, just over thirty years ago now, I threw my packet of cigarettes in the bin and I haven't smoked one cigarette since that time.
But it wasn't easy. It was a day by day proposition, a craving by craving proposition. Letting go of that habit actually took years and can I tell you there are still some days today when I feel I could smoke a cigarette but I figure I can go just one more day. Giving up bad things can be really, really hard.
This week and in fact over the next few weeks we're going through a little series that I've called Discover Your Destiny. And over the week I guess we've looked at the fact that if indeed we're made in God's image and if He actually does have the most amazing plan for our lives and yet when we follow our plans instead of His plans somehow it ends up being hollow and empty.
Now I've heard people protest and say that's not the case, "I'm a happy atheist" for instance. But one by one we all eventually come to that conclusion that there's got to be something more. Am I really being the "me" I was meant to be? You know you have this sense of a destiny and somehow you're not quite living that destiny out yet.
Yesterday we chatted about how when we go our own way, when we leave the me, me, me, anything goes philosophy we end up facing a dilemma. On the one hand we generally come to the conclusion that it's not working, I did it in my life, I'm a pretty smart guy, I'm also short so there's no pride in that. I just happen to be a very intelligent person and I had everything going for me but it wasn't working on the inside and we know when it's not working.
So on the one side we want to go our own way and it's not working and on the other sometimes we believe in God, we want to have a relationship with Him, a relationship that's awesome and amazing and fulfilling and exciting and tender and wonderful but we know there are some things in life that He's going to want us to give up.
With me it was my ego. It was huge. I'd speak at conferences all around the world in the IT industry and I was, frankly, full of myself and had an ego the size of a small planet. Then I read the bit in the Bible that says:
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.
Gulp, looks like He wants me to do something with my pride. So there was a crunch time for me there, there always is, there's always one or two things. Often that's all there is that we really need to give up and there are inevitably things that are so important to us that we want to hang on to them for dear life or for grim death because they're bad for us, they poison our lives.
When you have a strong pride addiction, a pride that dominates who you are, you can't have close relationships. Pride is always worrying about how other people see you and you never have any peace. Life's always a competition to be the best, it's one-upmanship, but I knew I had to give it up and it was just like giving up smoking. There were two parts.
The first part was that deep down decision, throwing the pack of cigarettes in the bin. You see you can't be double minded, you can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. And the second part was actually living that out day after day.
So what is it with you? What's the sin? I hope you don't mind me using that word but it will do, we all have a sense of what it means. What's the sin that's robbing you of your identity, the sin that's robbing you of your destiny and is it really worth it?
Maybe it's anger. That's a powerful one. Some people are always angry with the world. Or maybe you're cheating on your wife or your husband. Perhaps you're being dishonest at work. Maybe you're selfish, only interested in yourself and not anyone else. Perhaps you have someone poor or needy close to you and you don't reach out to help them. Maybe you're busy playing politics, undermining people behind their back. Playing the game just so you can win instead of for the good of others.
We don't have enough time in the day to go through them all but there's always something isn't there? And here's what I believe, in fact here's what I know, because I learned it the hard way: that something is going to rob you of your destiny, the amazing future God has planned for you. That's a tragedy.
Can I ask you to think right now, what's the one thing, the one sin that's robbing you of your destiny? Just think and know it in your mind and look at it and turn it over and over, that one thing, your something. Now let me ask you two questions about it.
Firstly are you proud of it or do you hide it? The chances are you hide it. That's what we inevitably do when we know what we're doing is wrong. And secondly what benefit is it to you? That very same question that the Apostle Paul asked in the New Testament, Romans chapter 6, verse 21:
So what advantage do you actually get then from those things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death.
The key to letting that one thing, your something, your sin, go is realising it's just not good for you, it's not good for those whom you love and it's robbing you of your destiny. Your destiny to be who you were always meant to be; your destiny to have a powerful positive impact in this world, to leave behind a living legacy – a legacy that outlives you by generations, a legacy of good.
Remember you can't be a smoker and a non-smoker at the same time. You can't have your cake and eat it as well. You can't hang on to sin and fulfil your destiny, you just can't.
Deciding to make the change, deciding to let go of your something – only you can decide that. I can encourage you but you have to decide. I can put things right before you but only you can decide to do something about it.
See some people want God on their own terms, well you know I'm living with my girlfriend or my boyfriend, that's the way things are and if God wants me He just has to accept that. Well you know, it doesn't work that way. We can't remake God in our image, it's exactly the opposite, God said:
Let us make man in our image, in our likeness and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and the livestock, over everything on the earth. So God created us in his image, in the image of God he created us, male and female he created us.
Letting go of sin is hard but when we live through that, every craving, every urge, every disappointment, just to try and honour God, just to be true to our identity, He blesses it because the sin thing robs us of life, life itself and when we finally put God at the top of the heap with all our hearts, with every fibre of our beings then doors open, our identity comes forward, our destiny is open to us.
When we put our trust in Jesus alone we're embarking on a journey, it's not going to be easy, a journey that's going to have trials and temptations and some days we're going to make mistakes and fail, we have to get up again and brush ourselves off and keep on going.
But you know something, when we commit to that journey with Jesus and when we understand that we have to work through the issues in our lives, failure by failure, craving by craving, temptation by temptation, day by day, week by week, month by month, all of a sudden what happens and this is what I experienced, this is what so many others have experienced.
When we go through that after months and years you look back and you think, "You know something I'm the person that God meant me to be, this is the direction I meant to be headed in, my life's going the right way, I'm doing things I'm meant to do, this is my destiny."
Are you being the person God meant you to be? Have you made Jesus Christ the Lord of your life?

Let's say that God has a plan for each one of us.  For our lives.  Now – is that a good thing or a bad thing?  Maybe He has a good plan.  But – what if we don't like that plan?  Does it become a straitjacket?
Over the years something I've thought a lot about is whether the idea of that this God I happen to believe in has a plan for my life is a good thing or a bad thing. I mean on the one hand the idea that a good God could have a good plan for my life, sounds pretty good. On the other, well what if I don't like the plan? I mean what if I want to make some changes or go my own way?
Is the whole idea of God having a plan for our lives an awesome thing or is it a crutch or worse still, is it a straight jacket? Well today on the program this is kind of what we're going to explore and take a look at it from a different perspective, maybe from God's perspective and then it's up to each one of us to make up our own mind.
Remember that old Frank Sinatra song "I Did It My Way"? There was a time in the 1970's I think that on every talent show on television some man and it was always a man would get up and sing it:
I Did It My Way
And now the end is near
and so I face the final curtain,
my friend I'll say it clear,
I'll state my case of which I'm certain.
I've lived a life that's full,
I've travelled each and every highway
and more, much more than this
I did it my way.
Ha, I don't know about your experiences in life but I've got to tell you I tried doing it my way and as we talked earlier this week on the program what I discovered was it didn't work so well. You know what; I suspect that God actually designed it to be that way.
The other day we took a look at Psalm 139 and we actually looked at the second half but I'd like to begin with the first half of that Psalm so have a listen. It says:
Lord you've searched me and you know me really well. You know when I sit down and when I stand up. You know what I'm thinking from a long way off. You see my going in and lying down, you're familiar with all my ways but even before a word is on my tongue you know it completely Lord."
You hem me in, behind me, before me. You've laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty to attain. Where can I go from your spirit, where can I flee from your presence? If I go to heaven you are there, if I make my bed in the depths you're there as well. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the farthest side of the sea even there your hand will guide me and your right hand will hold me fast."
If I say 'surely the darkness will hide me and the light with become night around me' even the darkness won't be dark to you. The night will shine like the day because darkness is as light to you.
That's profound. You know what David's saying here, (it's King David who wrote this Psalm) he's saying that God is on this journey with us. We can't flee, wrestle, fight and run, we can do what we like but He is on our journey with us.
One of the things I wrestled with in the early days was Christian jargon. "Sin" was one of them, "repent" was another. I must have seen an old western movie, black and white, when I was a kid – I remember some fire and brimstone preacher on one of those covered wagons standing up and yelling, "Repent!" and I thought "Oh yuck".
But as I come to grips with that concept this is what ended up meaning to me, admitting somehow that my way and my choices, as good as they seemed at the time, ended up being hollow. Admitting somehow that my way was empty.
I remember buying this really expensive, I mean really expensive huge car years ago. It had everything, it had this beautiful burgundy duco, this lustre, it had a lovely shape that used to turn heads. It had four wheel steering. You know at low speed the front and the back wheels were turning in the opposite direction and you could pivot this car like on a pinhead.
And the smell, ah the new car smell of leather, the look of the dashboard, it was awesome and you know I remember sitting inside this car which cost me a bomb and looking at it and smelling that new leather smell and somehow that thing that I wanted to be a real joy to me was empty and hollow and I had to come to grips that my way wasn't working for me.
Repenting meant admitting that. Turning and saying, "You know something God, I'm done trying my way. I want to get with your plan. I know that there are some things that I'll have to give up, I know that." But you know there are actually very few things and they're really the rubbish things, the pride, the selfishness, the back-stabbing, the greed.
It meant putting Him in the driver's seat and when I started doing that day after day you know what happened, I'll tell you just how it happened. I had this growing sense that I was becoming the me I was meant to be, that I was living the life I was made to live because my frame wasn't hidden from Him when I was made in secret, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
His eyes saw my unformed substance. All the days ordained for me were written in His book before even one of them came into being. And so now I can say, "how precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them."
That turning point, coming to that decision, coming to that conclusion in life no matter where we're at, no matter what we say we believe, can be a very hard thing because it's just not a single turning point, it's then living that new decision out in life, living out the decision to have God as our Lord, as our number one, that can be hard.
But if we're going to be the person God meant us to be that's where it's at and so tomorrow on the program we'll look at what it means actually to live that out.
Some people believe in this God, others don't, that's okay, that's the way things are but we know when we're headed down the wrong path, we know when our thoughts and our emotions and our behaviours are being destructive and robbing us of the destiny that lies ahead of each one of us.
At some point, come on, at some point we need to wake up and say, enough is enough; this is not working for me anymore. It doesn't matter how hard I try, how much money I spend, how much I try and fill myself, it is not working, I can't keep living this way because if I do one day it will all be over and I'll have missed out on my destiny. So let me ask you, are you at that point in your life?
Yesterday on the program we looked at the fact that we really are made in the image of God, we're made to have a relationship with Him. I think there's something inside each one of us that God would enliven to get us to reach out to Him. It's like a marriage in a sense, I mean I was made to have a wife; I'm just not one to be on my own. I enjoy my own space sure but I'm not one to be single.
Now I'm married to Jacqui, she's the most wonderful wife and I enjoy my marriage but there's a cost to marriage. You have to lay things down; you have to be prepared to sacrifice certain things in order to have a great relationship, husband and wife. The Bible talks about becoming one flesh, that's great but the becoming bit, coming to grips in being a team rather than just someone on your own is sacrificial.
Some days, you know, it hurts but somehow even though I'm an individual there's something that makes me complete in my soul through my marriage relationship with Jacqui my wife. It's how God made me and when it comes to God I don't think I can be the me that I was meant to be or live out the destiny for my life unless in the same way I have a close and dynamic relationship with Him.
Lord knows I spent thirty-six long years trying. Money and recognition and career, had it all and I did it my way but there came a time when I had to admit that my way was empty, that I needed more, I needed Him and you know something, He knows that because He knows us.
God is the only person or thing that I've ever discovered that makes me whole. Without Him there's a massive cavernous God sized hole inside me somewhere and without Him I can't be the 'me' I was meant to be. Because I'm made in His image, I can't live out the days He planned for me because I'm certain; absolutely certain that He planned me to spend those days with Him. How about you?

Have you noticed how just living life produces waste products.  We breathe out Carbon dioxide.  We perspire.  We create rubbish.  The same is true in life – and if we don't take out that rubbish, it can kill us.
I don't know if you've ever noticed but living an average normal everyday life creates dirt. I mean just eating and drinking and living, the most basic things, create waste products. Carbon dioxide that we breathe out with every breath, if we didn't get rid of that it would poison us. Perspiration of course and we excrete waste.
If we kept all of those things inside us you know they'd kill us in a pretty short time. And then there's our home. If you don't tidy up along the way it becomes a mess. If you don't clean it each week it gets dirty and for no other reason than we've been living life in it.
All good, all normal but life creates mess and dirt and waste products, it's inexorable. You have to wash out the shower or even the soap scum builds up so your shower becomes a mess. See on a global scale we call this pollution. It's a perennial problem; it's just the way it is.
For so many years I listened to these Christians talk about sin as though, "ah come on, get out of here, get a life, I don't need this guilt trip that you Christians put me on, I don't need to go to confession or to be absolved or any of that stuff, I'm basically okay. I haven't killed anyone; I haven't robbed a bank, so just leave me alone."
The notion of sin had no place in my reckoning. It was a dog eat dog world with plenty of dog to go around and I will tread on whomever I want to, to get where I'm going. That was kind of the attitude I had. I guess it's okay while life is going basically okay but you don't build many relationships and friendships that way and you know, as I was sharing on this program the other day I found out that there was no joy or satisfaction or contentment in living that sort of a life.
Now in today's world pretty much anything goes, if it feels good do it. There was an article in my local paper recently on pornography. The pornography industry was trying to make pornographic videos more widely available to reduce their level of restriction and classification.
See in this "anything goes" philosophy what people do in their own bedroom, well that's their problem but there are consequences, there are very clear consequences, that's what the research tells us when it comes to pornography and intimacy in marriages. And as a result many marriages are falling apart.
When I spend things on me, me, me, that's great but there's no real satisfaction and you don't get any satisfaction until you give of yourself, of who you are, what you have. It's not until we give sacrificially to someone who needs what we have that we really get satisfaction in life and that's where we discover who we are and what life is all about.
For many years I kidded myself. I kidded myself that I was okay but it didn't work. Just living my life created waste and mess and dirt and pollution and here's the rub, when we live the 'I am the centre of the universe' model we want everything to flow into us and that includes the waste and the mess and dirt, there's nothing there to clean us out. It stays inside and with everything flowing in it poisons our system and it ruins our lives. Do you get it?
Maybe you've heard me talk on the program before about sin and you've thought, 'Why does he keep labouring this point?' I'll tell you why, because sin poisons our lives, it robs us, it means that instead of being the me I was meant to be I let cancer creep into my soul and rob me of being the person and living the life that God planned for me and the same is true for you.
The word sin as it's used in the Bible literally means to miss the mark. A bit like an archer aiming at a target, his aim doesn't have to be off by much for him to miss the target all together. That's the idea of sin, it's missing the mark or as we might say these days, missing the point.
Can you imagine getting to the end of your life, on your death bed, looking back and thinking to yourself, 'You know the way I lived my life, I didn't love people the way I should have loved them, I didn't serve people, I didn't make a real difference, I haven't left behind a lasting legacy of good, I think I've missed the point of life.' Can you even begin to imagine what a tragedy that would be?
We're chatting this week about discovering who we were meant to be, our identity and laying hold of what our life was always meant to accomplish, our destiny. And we can't do those things if we miss the mark, if we miss the whole point of our lives, you just can't. You can't, I can't and if you were able to join me the other day you'll remember that we read something about what Gods plan for our lives is, our identity and our destiny
God you created my inner most being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being.
Seems to me that we can either co-operate with that plan or we can run hard against it. And whatever we may call it, whatever word we may use for doing wrong things, whether the word is sin or something else, you and I know when we're swimming against the tide, you and I know when we're into things that are selfish and angry and dishonest and just plain wrong.
Come on we do and if that's the way we want to live life then the last thing we're going to be doing is co operating with that plan. The last thing that we're going to be doing is discovering our destiny. The last thing we're going to be doing is being the person we were made to be and living the life we were meant to live.
Does that make sense to you? I mean does that seem like a particularly wise way of spending your life, this one precious life that you've been given to live?
The reason we're talking about this today is that the last thing I want for you and honestly the last thing God wants for any of us is to waste your life, to miss out on your destiny, to live as a square peg in a round hole because that's never particularly comfortable. And this thing sin, the wrong things in our life that's what robs us of our destiny, that's what robs us of our identity.
I can't say it any plainer than this, that's just about the dumbest thing that we could possibly do with our lives. Because the problem is that you and I are very good at rationalising our sin away, at justifying it, at defending the indefensible.
I was talking to a couple of smokers the other day, some builders out the front of my house. I used to smoke very heavily and as I talked to them about their smoking you know what their response was? "Oh yeah, we know it's wrong, we know it's stupid, we know it's going to make us sick but we just can't stop it."
See we get addicted to this poison, we get addicted to the poison of sin. We know it's wrong we just can't stop it so we rationalise it, we brush it off, we resign ourselves to it so it doesn't matter. And when others challenge us about it, when others confront us with the consequences of our sin we say, come on get off the grass, it's none of your business what I do with my life.
Well I guess it's not but if you and I want to live the life that God intended us to live, if you and I want to be the person that God made us to be you need to deal with this. Listen to me we need to deal with sin.
When we come face to face with Jesus Christ we know in our hearts the things that are wrong. There was that woman, you can read about in John's Gospel chapter 9 if you have a Bible, caught in adultery and they dragged her out to stone her in front of Jesus and they were going to do just that because they wanted to trap Jesus, there was a legal issue which we won't go into now.
But Jesus said, "Look if any of you is without sin let him be the first one to throw the stone." You know what happened? Those who heard began to go away. The old ones first until only Jesus was left with the woman. When we look at Jesus in the face we know the stuff that's wrong in our lives. Question is how do we fix it, how do we deal with that? That's what we're going to look at on the program tomorrow.

Most of us have a sense of destiny – something that we're supposed to fulfil in our lives.  But if I'm going to be the me I was meant to be, if you're going to be the you that you were meant to be, then we have to know who we were meant to be in the first place.
If you want to ask yourself the question, am I being the "me" I was meant to be, am I really fulfilling the destiny for my life, how would you answer? On a scale of one to ten how would you rate your life against that question? Well the problem is so many people can't answer it because they don't know who they were meant to be in the first place or where they're meant to be headed.
All they sometimes have is a nagging suspicion inside, a bit of an unsettling feeling that the answer is more a "no" than a "yes", more a one or two than an eight or nine out of ten. Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I really fulfilling the destiny of my life? See they're really good questions.
I don't know how to talk about this except at least in part from my own experience because discovering your destiny is a profound issue of life. I'd like to share with you today part of my journey and something that began to answer those questions for me.
By global standards I was blessed, I grew up in a wealthy household, we had plenty of food, a roof over our head, I had a good education and one of my physical attributes, as well as being short, as well as having some grey hair, as well as being short sighted in one eye and long sighted in the other eye, is that I have a high IQ. So I did really well at school and I had the choice of doing anything that I wanted to do, medicine or law.
Back then I was interested in these emerging things that they called computers. So I left high school and I went to the Royal Military college Duntroon, the officer-training academy for our army, a bit like England's Sandhurst or the USA's WestPoint.
Now I graduated with an IT degree and spent ten years in the military and after that had well paying jobs and I owned a consulting firm for seventeen years in the IT industry and I travelled around and spoke at international conferences and lived the high life.
I basically had it handed to me on a silver platter. Okay it had its ups and downs, I had to work hard, I had to strive for things but by any standard I had it pretty good and I kind of enjoyed that stuff but all along I found that nothing ever really satisfied me.
I was so concerned about being the best, I was so concerned about what other people thought of me that I couldn't enjoy my life, I couldn't relax. I was successful on the outside but inside I had a deep sense of inadequacy and failure and the feeling of being a fraud and that's how I lived my life, day by day for many years and believe you me it's not a lot of fun.
Why is that? What's going on? I had this emerging sense that I wasn't being the me I was meant to be and that there was some destiny for my life that I hadn't yet stumbled across. Despite all the good things that were happening in my life I had this sort of vague distant belief in God I guess but even in my late thirties when I gave my life over to Him, when I became a Christian, there was still something, well it wasn't quite right.
I look back on it now and I know there was something missing, things I didn't really understand. For me the starting point of being the 'me' I was meant to be was knowing where I'd come from and who I'm meant to be. So, so many people in the midst of their lives aren't really comfortable with who they are or where their life's going and so you don't have a real sense of security, you're more like a cork bobbing around in the stormy ocean.
We're going to explore that today through Psalm 139 from the Old Testament of the Bible. I come back to it again and again and again in my own life because it reminds me of exactly who I am. What I love about this Psalm is that the writer starts in the middle of the dilemmas of life and works his way back to God to discover who he is and ultimately he comes to this point. Have a listen:
God you created me in my inner most being. It was you that knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful; I know that full well because my frame wasn't hidden from you when I was being made in that secret place.
When I was being woven together in the depths of the earth your eyes saw my unformed substance and all the days ordained for me were written down in your book of life before even one of them came into being. How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them.
Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake I'm still with you.
There's something that really strikes me in there and this is one of those passages in the Bible that is beautiful and wondrous to me and as I said I keep coming back to it again and again. It's like my passport; it tells me who I am.
We all started life in our mother's womb. A dark hidden place in the depths of the earth as it were and God created our inner most being, He knits us together in our mothers womb and we can praise Him because we are fearfully and wonderfully made.
I'm not sure what you believe and I'm not here, please understand this, to force any of my beliefs onto you. I just want to share with you how it was for me. After reading that Psalm I had this sense of "WOW! If God really made me who I am then who I am, my personality, my strengths, my limitations and my hair colour and my blue eyes and the way I think and react, all of those things are His choice."
You know we have bits about ourselves in our lives that we like and we have other bits that we don't so much like. Some people say, "I wish I was smarter, I wish I was taller, I wish I was better looking." I wish I had blonde hair instead of that mousy brown colour mop on top of my head. You know what I mean.
But when I wrap my heart around this Psalm I thought, wow not only has God made me who I am, each strand of my DNA according to the blue print of His great and mighty heart, He also planned every day of my life, all the days ordained for me were written in your book before any of them came into being.
And see, that's my passport, that's my compass, that's given me my sense of identity and direction in life and hey, that's not such a bad thing. No wonder the psalmist goes on in wonder to say;
How precious to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them they would outnumber the grains of sand.
Our lives aren't about being some karma or some vague sense of chance or destiny, our lives have a plan and a purpose and a destiny and before any of our days ever existed every day ordained for you and me were written in God's book, God's blue print.
It was written in our DNA, who we are and what would happen, the number of hairs on our head, every thought, every desire, every dream, every hope, every hurt, every experience. He knit us together in our mother's womb and He set every day before us according to His plan.
You and I are who we are because that's how He made us. You and I are living the lives we have because that's what He ordained for us. That's the profound and wonderful beauty as so many people spend so much of their lives not liking themselves when all along we are who God made us to be.
In His infinite wisdom and mercy and creativity that's how He handcrafted us. He planned us, He knew us and He wrote down all the days of our lives before time began.
Let me challenge you today; let me get right in your face with this. Are you prepared to live every minute of every day in this wonderful knowledge, in this wonderful truth? Sure we've all made mistakes, there are consequences, there are scars, there are broken relationships but fundamentally who we are is no surprise to God.
What we're going through is no surprise to God and in the middle of that He wants to give us peace and rest and that's what we get when we accept who we are and where we are according to Gods plan. It's time to love who you are. That honours God, to thank Him and to praise Him:
I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful and that I know full well.

Have you ever sat down and wondered – who am I?  Where's my life headed? Am I being the me that I was meant to be?  Well, you're not alone.  We all ask those questions at some point.
I remember once a few years back being in the airport in Christchurch, New Zealand. My international flight from Australia was late in getting in and I had to race to make the last domestic connection that night to my final destination Wellington, New Zealand's capital.
And in the rush I left my passport lying in one of those luggage trolleys at the international terminal, something I didn't realise until I was checking in at the domestic terminal on my next flight. Panic attack, can you imagine losing your passport while you're overseas? No passport no identity, no identity now what?
How could I tell people I was me? I couldn't leave the country; I couldn't stay there. See it turns out that our identity is very important. Well I won't keep you in suspense the domestic and international terminal in Christchurch are about ten minutes walk apart so I raced down outside the domestic terminal but the taxi didn't want to take me because is was such a short fare. He said, "Catch the shuttle bus."
Of course I didn't have time to do that so I paid him thirty dollars and we raced back and I went into the police station off to one side of the international terminal in Christchurch. Now there was a young police woman on duty that night so I explained my problem to her and she said, "Well yes, an Australian passport has just been handed in." And then she asks me, just get this, "Do you have any ID?"
I couldn't believe it. I said "Yes", I was a bit stressed at this point, "it's my passport and there's a photo in the front." Oh yeah, it dawned on her. Anyway I received my passport and I just made my flight and all was well.
I've never forgotten that. You know, you can't travel without your passport, it's the clear and tangible evidence of your identity. And in a very real sense the same is true in life. We need to know the answer to that important question, who exactly am I and where's my life headed?
Other people need to know who we are; it's so basic, it's so fundamental. So many people though don't have a deep sense of who they are, it's a problem deep down somewhere and it's not something we talk about a lot but it's there. And as I talk to people I think it goes something like this.
Often we live our lives just day to day without thinking too much, just go along and do the things we do and go to work or to school or we look after the children, whatever it is that you do but bubbling away deep down somewhere is a sense of, what's this all about? Why am I doing this? What's the point?
The reality is we have just one life to live here on this earth. It's not a dress rehearsal, you can't hit the rewind button and play it again and change things, when today's gone it's gone and that's it. And every year, every week, every day, every moment that you and I have lived up to this point frankly is gone, we can never get them back.
The only thing left in our time here on this earth is the time between right now and when we breathe our last breath. Hey it's a sobering thought and at the same time most people have some sort of sense of a destiny, whether or not they believe in Jesus or some God even, they believe in things that are meant to be.
How often have you heard someone say, "Well that was just meant to be", or "If it's meant to be it will happen?" Whether it's karma or whether it's "que sera sera, whatever will be will be", we all have some sense of a future and a destiny to be fulfilled.
It's as though some intelligent destiny or design that we just can't quite put our finger on is out there for us. I believe that that's there because each one of us, you and I and everybody have been made in the image of God - each one of us. And when we look at the time that we have left here on this earth in the context of some sort of destiny, a profound question of life emerges.
Am I being the "me" I was meant to be? Am I living the life I was made to live? These are huge questions. It's not just about having things, it's about being.
The turning point of my life was when I was reading a book and the author asked this question. Do you want to be or do you want to have? And I realised very clearly that I was one of those people who wanted to have and having isn't being. Having is about, I don't know, the next car, the next sound system, the next pair of shoes.
But being is about a profound sense of joy and contentment, about being really happy with who we are and what we're doing and how we're living, the relationships that we're enjoying. When I realised that it was so incredibly unsettling for me because I tried to live it all my way, I tried to do that stuff my way but it turned out just empty.
Let me ask you something, as you contemplate the remaining time that you have left here on planet earth, when you ask yourself the question am I being the me that I was meant to be, what's the answer? Yes or no?
If your answers yes then you're talking about some profound sense of joy and peace and contentment, the sort of stuff I was talking about just before. But if the answer's no then probably there's this nagging sense that you're missing out on something, is this all there is? Surely there must be something more.
You know in my experience most people, by far the majority of people live in the no category, they have a sense that they should be, that there is some destiny out there for their lives but they also have that nagging suspicion that they're not really living it out to the full.
That's why we're kicking off a series of programs over the next few weeks that I've called Discover Your Destiny to, I don't know, to help us unscramble all of that and maybe get a solid foundation of life sorted out in our hearts, to get our lives on track, to live them out to the full, to realise our destiny.
So that when we're on deaths door we can look back on our lives with a deep sense of satisfaction and say to ourselves, "You know what, I've lived it to the full. I became the me I was meant to be and now I'm ready for my eternity with God."
The starting point of all that is an understanding of who we're meant to be. It's knowing where we've come from and who we are. And what a tragedy it is for so many people to live their lives without knowing those things about themselves, without having a sense of what their lives are all about. Without having, in effect, a really good handle on their identity and their destiny.
See we live in a world that wants to tell us who we are. We live in a world shaped by commerce and sales targets and advertising that tells us if you're this or if you're that, if you buy this or you buy that, hey then you're going to be happy, then you'll have a sense of who you are and where you're going. I lived out that life for a good many years, I mean I lived it out par excellence and so successful was that strategy that it drove me to the point of suicide.
God's take is completely different. God tells us that we are made in His image you and I. He tells us that not only did He make us who we are but He also made every day of our life to fit with who we are. More about that another day.
Today all we've really done is to try and put our finger on the problem, that nagging thing that just doesn't seem to want to go away. That sense that many people have, that they're missing out on something, something that they just can't quite explain.
Surely there must be more to life than this, this drudgery. Surely there has to be something that sets my heart on fire, that inspires me, that lets me be the me I was meant to be. Do you really know who you are? Who you were made to be? Who you were meant to be? Where your life is meant to be headed?
Or is your life like a bit of a cork bobbing around on the ocean completely at the mercy of the elements – sunny one day, stormy the next but just drifting, drifting? Well I'm hoping you can join me each day over these coming weeks as we go on this journey to discover the 'me' that you were meant to be.