Amenal is our final stop before Santiago! Over the flat 14 miles we walk with the Higgins family from Oregon. It’s here that I learn that Ron, the father and patriarch of the family, offers business consulting to entrepreneurs in Kenya as part of his ministry. There are so many interesting people who love Jesus and are discipling nations. I am inspired by Ron and think to myself, “What am I doing in Banking to disciple nations?” (Hint: Fast forward 8 years and I am no longer in Banking and providing financial capital and management support to entrepreneurs in Hawaii).
Today’s passage James 4: 13-17 is very clear on how to define a purpose-driven life:
“13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
Bottom line: To live a purpose-driven life means to live a life according to God.
What’s fascinating about this passage is that it’s saying that to not live a life that God wills is to commit a sin. A sin! How much easier it is for us to understand sins of “do not’s” – serve other gods, make idols, take the LORD’s name in vain, murder, adultery, steal, bear false witness, covet. But how about those sins of not following what we know to be right. We can be guilty of sin by simply not taking action!