Rev. Dr. Chuck Davis - Jonah and Me

JONAH & ME

Copyright 2017 by Chuck Davis

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the ESV: The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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I AM GRATEFUL FOR MY GODLY HER ITAGE. When you write a book with the idea that God is telling a story much larger than your life, you realize that your chapter is not the first.

John and Philena Stebbins and Charles and Beulah Davis, my grandparents, set a clear direction toward Jesus. Both sets of grandparents followed a calling to the vocation of pastor and wife. They gave me a sanctified vision that God might use my life in a calling to the ministry of the Word. These two family lines joined and gave me the spiritual DNA as a preacher and teacher.

And for my parents, Charles and Louise, who gave me a foundation of security that allowed me to chase a life of faith and risk on mission with God. I would not be who and where I am at today without the solid foundation they established.

I also have the privilege of being on mission with a wife who is fully given to Gods calling in her own and our collective life together. On our wedding day, Ingrid Ellen Johannessen declared the following vows before God and the witnesses gathered, I will go where you go. She has not shrunk back one bit from that promise. In fact, she has gone beyond where I have gone, in the mission that God has shaped for her. She is a servant leader to the global church and mission of God. We are doing this together.

And for my three adult children, Christian, Linnea, and Jordan, who were initially dragged without choice on this family calling to the nations. When I see you live out your calling to be on mission with God, it makes me soar in gratefulness for how you opted in on your own accord. As I look to the future, I pray for my legacy, the generations to come from you who will also choose to partner with God on mission.

I am a blessed man.

MARCH 6, 2017

I HAVE LIVED THE MOST AMAZING LIFE. I underline the word LIVED! I have not just existed. I have not just gotten by. Life has not just happened to me. I have LIVED!

Now as I say that, I need to be transparent. There have been moments where I succumbed to merely existing. There have been seasons and moments that challenged my sense of purposefulness. But I have always been rescued and restored to my LIVING by my undergirding philosophy that there is a purpose for my life. As a result, I would return to living on purpose.

My life has been given to encourage, train, equip, and exhort people to live on purpose.

I would call this my lifes purpose. I heard the question once, if you had to describe yourself in one word, what would it be? That is a hard question, as I would like a few more words or the ability to use another language that packs more descriptors into one word than normal English verbs.

But if I were to choose one word I think it would be SENT.

There are a number of questions that immediately come to mind. Sent by whom? Sent where? Sent to do what? Sent how, and with whom? When will I arrive? How will I know?

Sent by whom? God. My purpose is not self-determined or self-created. It is also not narcissistic in a modern sense of self-realization.

Sent where? Before the sending was a calling. God called me back into relationship with himself even when I was bent on running from him. That relationship became the basis of my well founded identity and subsequent sense of the purposefulness for life.

With that foundation of relationship in place, God then sent me out to use my life in fulfilling his primary purpose for me. And I believe that we all have the same underlying primary purpose. He wants us to use our lives to help fellow humans be reconnected to their Creator and to Live on Purpose by joining him in his purpose.

Now for me this has meant following a vocational track that I would define as the ministry of the Word. In application this has meant that I have been a pastor, missionary, and professor. But Living on Purpose is not only for those who are called to vocational ministry. I learned about Living on Purpose from my father, who was an executive with Bethlehem Steel Corporation. As a result, I have an underlying desire to call all people, especially those in vocations that are often labeled secular, to Live on Purpose.

This book will continue to answer the follow-up questions surrounding being SENT, toward the goal of calling you to Live on Purpose. If you are Living on Purpose already, my desire is that you would be sharpened in your application of that purpose or simply inspired to keep on.

As I wrestled with my one word answer to the question, how would you describe yourself?, another word popped into my mind. STEWARDED. Now that one is obviously going to take some explanation.

Lynn A. Miller is quoted as saying, Stewardship is all about organizing my life so God can spend me. The very core thought to this statement is that my life is not my ownit is all gift from God. My physical body. My essence, what might be called my inner person. My time. The opportunities afforded me. Right now. I bring all of these resources to God for so that he can spend me in the accomplishment of his purposes.

And since my LIFE is a gift, I own none of it. I am to steward it. Since I am mere manager, God gets first order in determining how my life is to be spent. Thus Living on Purpose must begin with the exercise of figuring out Gods larger purpose for my life. As I have already stated it is the same purpose for all of us. It merely has different places and means for application.