The Pursuit of Purpose

Author: Zach Mast

This past Saturday, I spent the day about an hour and a half south of Taipei City in Yilan County in a city called Toucheng. It’s decently small as cities go. A pretty, quiet place with wonderfully fresh air, sandwiched between the ocean on its East and the steep island mountains on its west. There’s very little English there and very many temples. This place is a lot more special to me now than when I visited it a few months ago because, come next summer, it’s going to be my home for five years, along with the other six people I strolled the streets with.

Yilan is one of three locations around the Island that is part of the Surge strategy.  The Surge is a mission partnership between YWAM Taipei and YWAM Montana to surround the Island of Taiwan with the gospel. The goal is to pioneer a new base in this unreached area, reach the community with the gospel, run DTS and eventually send the Taiwanese to the nations proclaiming the name of Jesus Christ.

I’d like to tell you I jumped at this opportunity right off the bat and said, “Of course I want to go pioneer and share the gospel with the unreached for five years!” But I didn’t. I’d like to tell you that as I got very close to making the decision to go that it wasn’t all about me and what was best for my future. But I can’t.

A Sign From God

I have never been one who was very good at commitment. Since senior year of high school, I’ve done DTS, a year in university, a year at home working, a little travel here a little there. But I was never able to find that thing. That one thing I felt good about. A place I felt like I belonged. A place where I felt like I had a long term purpose. Even when I decided to come to SBS to study the Bible for nine months, it was a decision that came down to the wire because I just couldn’t pull the trigger on committing to something for nine whole months. I just wanted that “written in the sky” sign from God that would point me directly at a thing or a place. I was tired of the guessing.

It turns out that SBS was the best choice I’ve ever made. God has used studying His Word to majorly transform my views and mindsets, which has in turn freed me to make very peaceful and confident decisions about an unknown future. Let me just interject here to proclaim: the word of God is a living word! It has so much power today to change your life in incredible ways, if you give it a chance.

The first major transformation that took place came from the biggest question I had as I set out on the mission of figuring out what’s next.

How do I hear God’s direction? How do I find the big obvious sign? What I wanted was a crystal clear voice from God about what I was supposed to do next. I just wanted to be absolutely positive and confident it was the right path for me, because that means it would be the best possible future for me, right? I didn’t want to make the mistake of going down a path that wouldn’t lead to the absolute best God had for me. It turns out I was distancing my relationship with God from my quest of seeking his will for my life.

Through pursuing this question with wise and godly people in my community and observing God’s interactions with people and what he desires from them in the Bible, I’ve learned that my relationship with God and my calling are one and the same. I don’t need to seek out God for a big arrow in the sky. He’s told me exactly what he wants from my life in his Word.

He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8)

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deut 6:5)

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teachings them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matt 28:19-20)

I could list verses like these for days. All of them point to a simple message: God wants a relationship with me, he wants me to pursue relationship with him, he wants me to pursue holiness, and he wants me to spread the good news of the gospel wherever I go. This is his will for my life. I could walk out this will on many different paths and in many different places. This being said, I do believe that God can and does speak to people with specific direction. You don’t have to go far in the Bible to find the guys that God has directed and used to do incredible things. But even so, most of these guys weren’t sitting around on a rock waiting for a sign from God before they moved. They were already moving and God steered them somewhere specifically. Maybe someday God will use me like that, but until then, I don’t want to sit still anymore waiting for him to do so.

Why Yilan?

So now here I was, knowing that I had the freedom to choose many different paths under the umbrella of God’s will for my life, even if I wasn’t receiving any clear word from Him. God simply wanted me to go. Go do something and do it for him. The chance to join the Yilan pioneering team sat before me like a wide open door. There was no reason not to go. I began to come to the conclusion that had the freedom to either choose Yilan or choose to keep my options open for whatever opportunity might come along next. But here I stayed for several weeks, unable to make that final jump of commitment.

The next big step happened as we began to study the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. Through the book of Proverbs I learned the importance of being intentional to seek godly wisdom in my life, both from the Word and from godly men around me. Through the book of Ecclesiastes and Job I began to ask the questions, Do I truly fear God? Do I really understand who he is? These questions led to the ultimate question in my quest for direction, Why do I want to go to Yilan for five years to share the gospel with unreached people? I realized that sadly, I really wasn’t sure. I knew it was a good thing to do as a Christian, obviously, but I knew I was missing the heart of it. I was still focused on the question of whether or not it was going to be fun, or if it was leading me to my best future.

It was then that God met me in the biggest way yet and everything changed again. It was Thursday morning, October 6, and the base was having a three hour worship and prayer meeting for the Surge. Like any other day in the life of an SBS student, I was busy. And I was not super happy about losing three precious hours of my day. As things got underway, I knew my heart wasn’t right, that my priorities were way out of order. In prayer I apologized and asked God for a mind of thankfulness for the day and the opportunity to worship him. I asked Him to turn a bolt (on my attitude or perspective), but he broke out the hammer drill. In that moment, I felt the presence and the glory of God like I had never felt in my entire life. It was so heavy, so beautiful, yet so powerful and scary. It was like realizing for the very first time what holiness was and realizing how far away I was from it and how impossible it was for me to ever attain it. It was God saying, “This is who I am and this is who you are. You are nothing.” But then he pointed me back over my life saying, “But look at all I have done for you, how much I’ve blessed you and where I am taking you. I love you!”

You might be thinking, “Yeah, Zach, that is the message of God’s love, that IS the gospel.” And I know that. It’s the story I’ve heard since I was 5 years old in Sunday school. Yet this time there was this understanding, something I couldn’t grasp before, that only God could reveal to me about who he was in my life.

God’s Perfect Timing

Have you heard the phrase, “God’s timing is perfect?” Well it is. Two days later we began studying the book of Isaiah. If you’re anything like me before studying this book in-depth, the only thought that came to mind when I heard Isaiah was, “Oh that guy that said, ‘Here I am, send me!’” The “go-to” caption for Instagram-promoted mission trips. Isaiah was an incredible guy, sent by God as a light to the nation of Judah, a nation that was supposed to be God’s light to the world, yet was failing miserably. They were far from God, caught up in sin and idolatry and the game of alliances with other nations, rather than seeking God for protection. Isaiah came with a simple message: “Trust God, He is your only Savior.”

But it is Isaiah’s experience with God before he was willing to take on this life mission that really impacted me.

“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!

And the foundations of the threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said; ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (Isaiah 6:1-8)

This passage for me was one of the most revolutionary pieces of scripture that I had come across over the past seven months because it spoke into my life so powerfully exactly when I needed it. There are three huge revelations that Isaiah has in this passage that lead him to gladly and willingly be sent by the Lord. They were the same three things I had just experienced. First, Isaiah sees God in his incredible splendor, majesty and holiness. Second, in the midst of that, Isaiah can have only one response, which is to realize in comparison how sinful and dirty he was. And then, just like that, God forgives him and purifies him of all the dirt. This leads to the third, Isaiah seeing clearly what God has done for him. With this powerful view of God and what God had done, Isaiah is all in on God’s purpose.

No Longer About Me

I want more than anything to walk this purpose out in my life as Isaiah did in his life with this perspective of God.  Finding that purpose and calling in my life was no longer about me, what I could get out of it and if it was the best thing for me. Now I could see it was all about him and what I could do to bring him glory and to proclaim His name to the world, because of who He is and what He did for me.

I could keep going forever. Like how through the rest of Isaiah the message of trusting God above all else and no matter the circumstances was hammered home in my life. Or how through Jeremiah the truth that “obedience to God is true success” has allowed me to begin to rid myself of worldly standards that I held up for myself for my future.  But those are stories for another day.

Bringing it back to Yilan, I now have my “Why.” I have my purpose. And I realize no matter where in the world I am, no matter what I am doing, I have a place I belong in God’s love. I have a purpose to fulfill in giving God glory with my life and sharing His good news. And I have someone to put my undivided trust in, even though I have no idea what the long-term future holds. I do know now that in the short-term it holds five years of life on the coast of this beautiful Island, learning Chinese, and bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to a community that has never heard. And I am super pumped for it!

To restate the most important point in all of this, the Word of God is living, guys. It can change lives. It certainly has changed mine over the past seven months and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of it. I have so much to learn, so many more transformations to happen. This is my encouragement and my challenge. If you’re looking for purpose, if you’re looking for God’s will, get into the Word and get after God. He will meet you and He’ll take you a lot further than you were ever planning on going.