Jim Cymbala - You Were Made for More: The Life You Have, the Life God Wants You to Have

Other Books by Jim Cymbala

Storm

(book and audio)

Spirit Rising

(book and audio)

Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire

(book and audio)

Fresh Faith

(book and audio)

Fresh Power

(book and audio)

The Life God Blesses

(book and audio)

The Church God Blesses

(book and audio)

Breakthrough Prayer

(book and audio)

When Gods People Pray

(curriculum)

ZONDERVAN

You Were Made for More

Copyright 2008 Jim Cymbala

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

ePub Edition December 2014: ISBN 978-0-310-34104-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cymbala, Jim, 1943

You were made for more : the life you have, the life God wants you to have / Jim Cymbala, Dean Merrill.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-310-24127-0 (hardcover, jacketed)

1. Spirituality Biblical teaching. 2. Christian life. I. Merrill, Dean. II. Title.

BS680.S7C96 2008

248.4 dc22

2008016706

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible,Todays New International Version . TNIV. Copyright 2002, 2004 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. Some quotations include italics for emphasis that does not appear in the original text.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are from The New King James Bible Version. Copyright 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.

Scriptures quotations marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published in association with the literary agency of Ann Spangler and Company, 1420 Pontiac Road S.E., Grand Rapids, MI 49506.

Interior design: Beth Shagene

First printing November 2014

CONTENTS

I f you come to visit us here in New York City, you will have a wonderful time as long as you avoid one thing. You can go shopping along Fifth Avenue, take in a Broadway play, climb the Statue of Liberty, see a Mets or Yankees baseball game, do the tour at the New York Stock Exchange, go up to the top of the Empire State Building, take a carriage ride through Central Park and of course be sure to come see us at the Brooklyn Tabernacle for one of our three Sunday services or the Tuesday night prayer meeting. Just dont look at our housing costs.

Two-bedroom condos and co-ops in nice areas of Manhattan usually start around $2,000,000. Then, of course, you will pay an extra $700 a month or more for common charges in the building: trash removal, the doorman at the front, maintenance of the entryway, the elevator, etc. If you would rather just rent, a normal one-bedroom apartment goes for $3,000 a month; a small studio apartment (where your bed is part of your living area) rents in the $2,000 range.

One young woman in our church told me she was living in two tiny rooms in a building that was falling apart, where she had a bathtub in the kitchen, but the toilet was down the hall and she was paying $800 a month in rent. That was a bargain, thanks to what New Yorkers know as rent stabilization. This is a complicated city regulation that tries to hold the lid on costs. But as soon as I move out, she added, theyre going to do a bit of remodeling replace the tub with a small shower, do some plastering. Then for a new lease they can jack it up to $1,800 a month!

Here at the other end of the Brooklyn Bridge where our church is, a new condominium building is going up around the corner. The smallest studio unit will sell for $1,500,000. And you probably wouldnt call this a good neighborhood. Your sleep would be punctuated by sirens in the night. There is no place to park your car for less than $250 a month. As many as 5,000 people will reside in the confines of one city block.

So what are the alternatives? Every week in our church I meet people who are wishing and yearning for something more spacious thats still affordable. A newly married couple wants to start a family but where would they even put a crib? Should they pull up stakes and move to the Long Island suburbs? At least theyd have some breathing room, maybe even a little grass out front. But things arent cheap there, either.

Take Levittown as one example which is remembered as the first mass-produced suburb in America. Right after World War II, developer Abraham Levitt and his two sons created something called the ranch design for just $7,990. (But you did get a General Electric stove and refrigerator for that price, plus the latest Bendix washing machine!) Block upon block of these modest houses went up, drawing national attention. Critics scorned them as ticky-tacky and cookie cutter. Sales to returning GIs and their growing families, nevertheless, were brisk.

Well... today a two- or three-bedroom single-family home in Levittown starts at $350,000 and goes up past half a million. And youre not even next to the water. If you work in Manhattan, your commute on the Long Island Rail Road will chew up forty-five minutes each way, plus whatever time you will then spend getting from Penn Station to your workplace. (Assuming the trains are running on time, that is.) If you would rather drive your car to the city, dont even think about it; the Long Island Expressway is known as the worlds largest parking lot.

The desire for a place to breathe, to grow, to be safe runs deep within us all. We want to spread our wings.

The desire for a place to breathe, to grow, to be safe runs deep within us all, of whatever century. And not just in the physical realm. Emotionally and spiritually as well, we hate being cramped. We want to spread our wings. We want to stretch out. Didnt Jesus say, I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full (John 10:10)? That is what we crave. We sense somehow that we were made for more more than the constricted, self-limiting lives we currently endure.

Wouldnt it be wonderful, for example, if we could have victory over some of the negative habits and sins that tie us down?

Wouldnt it be great if we were emotionally and spiritually free to find a place to serve God, a ministry of some kind that would let us make a difference in other peoples lives?

What if our relationships with our family members and others, too were healthy and loving instead of caustic and full of conflict?

What if we learned to pray more often and actually saw answers to our prayers?