A common question being asked these days is: “What’s your why?” In other words: ‘Know your purpose; figure out why you’re pursuing the things you’re pursuing…’ It’s a good question, but I think Jesus would phrase it this way: “Who’s your why?”
“When I asked the apostles if they were going to walk away from Me like most listeners did, do you remember My friend Peter’s response? ‘Where shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ Though not perfect, Peter was beginning to realize something: ‘I am Truth.’ Do you remember Martha asking Me to tell her sister Mary to leave My presence to help in the kitchen? I replied: ‘Mary has chosen the better place to be… at My feet. Martha, Martha, you are worried about many things, but only One is needed.’ I wanted my friends to know: ‘I am Life.’ Do you remember Thomas asking: ‘Lord, we don’t know where You are going, so how can we know the way?’ I answered: ‘I am the Way.’ Why don’t you let Me be your Why?”
Jesus became the all-consuming quest of Paul, who had been a merciless persecutor of God’s children. From a prison cell, he confessed that he had not fully attained his goal, but there is no doubt about his ‘Why.’ Try to read his words to the Philippians below as if you are seeing them for the first time… and notice his challenge to us.
If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ — yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection of the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6