TonyScott.org

The Fulfilled Life

There is a truth I live with each day of my life –

When I stand in the presence of Jesus, He will not ask – Why were you not Paul?  He will ask, why were you not Tony?

A story is told of a man who died and was able to speak with Peter in Heaven.  He asked Peter – Who were the greatest men and women who lived on earth?

Peter took him into a huge room filled with drawers containing cards with people’s names and their assigned purpose.

As he pulled out card after card he realized none of the names were familiar to him.  Peter replied, they never accomplished their purpose.  God intended greatness for each of them.

Each individual’s original purpose is to make a difference. You alone can do best what you were created by God to do.

Purpose is the intent or reason for existence.  You may live a “Filled Life” but never be “Fulfilled.”

To engage in your purpose is the highest activity of your being.

Purpose is often hindered, interrupted by circumstance.  God always intended for us to be “defined” by our purpose – not by our circumstance.

Whoever you are at the core of your being will determine the substance of your life.

God is always going to do something good with any and every situation. God always gives us something better than we expect and deserve.  He provides some better thing.

God always gives something better than He permitted to be taken away.

Your purest purpose is something you love.  Do it with all the passion of your heart and significance will follow.

Perfectly Designed For Your Purpose

You are perfectly designed for your purpose.

The word “purpose” as used in the Bible refers to counsel, wisdom, plans, passion, focus, intent.

There is no life without purpose.  Every created thing must have a purpose to fulfill.

Life is designed for and functions by purpose.

Without purpose, life is nothing more than the existence we have between birth and death.  It is the boring monotony of the routine.

Forrest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates – you never know what you are going to get.”

Author F. Scott Peck said, “Life is difficult.”

The truth is life is not found in pleasure, performance, possessions, position, power, or pursuits.  It is only found in an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.

The whole purpose of His mission in the world was to deposit within each of us “life more abundant.”  (John 10:10)

When you discover “who” (identity) you are and you experience “why” (purpose) you are, you become invincible.

Purpose is individual.  Our purpose determines how we function, which establishes how we were designed, which is related to our potential, which is connected to our natural abilities.

The journey toward discovering your purpose begins with this question –

What does God want and how does God want to use me to make a difference in the world?

It is only as we merge our lives into His life that we can find the purpose for life that we seek and a rhythm of life that is renewing instead of exhausting.

God is always allowing into your life that which makes a demand on your purpose.  Only when you live His purpose for you will you prevail.

Empowered By Your Calling

All of us are born with a calling on our lives that is meant to be carried out through the expressions of our gifts, talents, and abilities.

Our spirit is duty bound to be loyal to its own desires.  Life can only be lived to the fullest measure when we abandon ourselves to the master passion God has put within us.

Within each of us there is a God Positioning System designed to bring us into our calling.

Once you identify and discover your calling, you can then organize all of your activities around it.  Everything you do should be an expression of your calling.

Without a calling to guide you, your goals and action plans may not ultimately fulfill you.

You don’t want to get to the top of the ladder only to find out you were leaning up against the wrong wall.

Identifying, acknowledging, and living your calling is the most important action you can take.

Your calling must be discovered, embraced, and, lived with passion and enthusiasm.

Those who fail to do this get sidetracked on life’s journey.  It’s easy to wander and drift, accomplishing little.

When you are truly serving your calling, the people, resources, and opportunities you need will supernaturally gravitate toward you.

The world benefits too, because when you are in alignment with your calling, all of your actions automatically serve others.

That was God’s specific purpose in calling the Jewish people to serve and honor Him.

Through them, the actions of the world would be saved, and they would be the envy of the world as God would shower His spiritual and material blessings upon them.

God is the originator of all things – all things come from Him.

He, God, originated your calling and gifting.  He chose them for you.

God is the sustainer of all things – they all depend on Him.

He, God, sustains your calling and gifting.  No one can change your calling or gifting or stop them.

God is my Cup of Tea!

Life is often made more interesting by the questions it prompts.

Questions like –           

• What is my purpose?
  
• Why am I here?
  
• What is my place?
  
• Where do I belong?
  
• What should I be doing?

Then there is the ultimate question of – Is there a God?  And if there is, what does He expect of me?

Since we are created for a specific purpose, we cannot adopt an attitude of neutrality toward the God who made us without being morally irresponsible.

God is not optional – He is an imperative.  Only by the Spirit of God acting on our human spirit can we ever be enabled to behave as God intended us to behave. Our behavior is intended by God to be a pure expression of His divine nature.

The moment you come to realize that only God can make a man whole, you are left with no option but to find God, to know God, and to let God be God in you and through you.

It takes God to be a man, and wholeness is the consequence of God’s capacity to reproduce Himself in you.

When you act in strict obedience to the “truth” of God’s Word, the “truth” behaves, and the end effect is wholeness.

The Christian life is not so much what we do to please God but the yielding of our lives to Him so that He can, through the indwelling Christ, do through us His will.

All of Him is in me – all of Him in me is available to me and through me to the world around me.

Think about this through the analogy of a cup of hot water and a tea bag. The water is not the tea and the tea is not the water.  They are two separate items.

When the tea bag is placed in the water, a remarkable thing takes place – the water changes color and nature.  It becomes indwelt by a new and dominant nature.

The nature of the tea saturates the water until it becomes tea – not water.  For the water to exist now is for tea to exist.

The water could say – it is no longer I that exist, but tea that lives in me.

As a Christian, I am just a cup of water, which, when heated by the Holy Spirit and mixed with faith and indwelt by the Savior, becomes a new creation.

The Adventure of Becoming Who I Am!

You are never more a man (or woman) than when you embrace an adventure beyond your control, or when you walk into a battle you aren’t sure of winning.

We should see every adventure of our life as an opportunity for initiation.  What are You teaching me, God?  What are You asking me to do or to let go of?  What in my heart are You speaking to?

Oswald Chambers said, “Never make a principle out of your experience; let God be as original with other people as He is with you.”

Originality and creativity are essential to identity and calling. 

The adventure begins and our real strength is released when we no longer rely on formulas.  God is an immensely creative person and He wants His children to live that way to.

God wants us to know that our battles are personal to Him and He will design personal and unique strategies for each battle.

The theme of our story is how we become human.  What does it mean to become human, be a real man, a real woman?  What must we deal with in order to become ourselves, to grow up?

We can’t be human without God.  Human life is a great gift; every part of it is designed by God and therefore means something.  Every part of it is blessed by God and therefore is to be enjoyed.

We can refuse to participate in God, act as if He isn’t our designer, provider and covenant presence.  But when we refuse, we’re less; our essential humanity is less, our lives are diminished and impoverished.

God-thirst is the most powerful drive in us, stronger than all the drives of sex, power, security and fame put together. 

To be God-chosen is to be God-anointed, God-assigned and God-defined. Once you know who you are, you acquire a God-dominated imagination.  You practice the presence of God and His presence captivates your thinking about your responses to life.

The most personal, most significant, most human thing we ever do is to believe in and trust in God.

And I’ll leave you with this…your thumbprint is God’s way of reminding you of how unique and special you truly are!

Relying on God

One of the greatest life principles I have ever learned is:

            Nothing can enter my life without first coming through His hands.

God’s hand is always on the control center of our lives provided we are fully surrendered to Him.

No individual in the Bible who ever fully followed Jesus was ever decreased, but was enlarged.

For each of us it important to understand God’s enlargement process in order to live the enlarged life.  We should always remember that God has an “exact moment” for our season of enlargement.

• Where is your lack today, your area of barrenness?
• As you sing forth God’s praises and worship Him, increase and enlargement will come to you.
• Get ready for God to enlarge our spheres of influence and usefulness.

As we move into the enlarged life, God strips off the chains, bondage and restraints; He equips us, arms us, makes us ready and strengthens our hand.  He makes us loose, pliable, maneuverable and ready.

Psalm 18:20-24

²⁰GOD made my life complete
when I placed all the pieces before him.
When I got my act together,
he gave me a fresh start.
²¹Now I’m alert to GOD’s ways;
I don’t take God for granted.
²²Every day I review the ways he works;
I try not to miss a trick.
²³I feel put back together,
and I’m watching my step.
²⁴GOD rewrote the text of my life
when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

I’m ready for another weekend, as we learn more about His Kingdom and how to live it!

Are you ready?

The ME God Created!

One day a man found an eagle’s egg and put it in a nest of a barnyard hen.  The eaglet hatched with the brood of chicks and grew up with them.

All his life the eaglet did as the barnyard chicks did, thinking he was a barnyard chicken.  He scratched the ground for worms and insects.  He clucked and cackled.  And he would thrash his wings and fly a few feet into the air.

Years passed and the eagle grew old.  One day he saw a magnificent bird above him in the cloudless sky.  It glided in graceful majesty among the powerful wind currents, with scarcely a beat of its strong golden wings.

The old eagle looked up in awe.  “Who’s that?” he asked.

“That’s the eagle, the king of birds,” said his neighbor.  “He belongs to the sky – we belong to the earth.  We’re chickens.” 

So the eagle lived and died a chicken for that’s what he thought he was.

Perhaps the greatest most unanswered question of the universe is – who am I?

Who lives inside of you?  Who is the person you have become?  Are you the “who” God made you to be?

The problem for most of us is that we personalize what happens to us, what is said to us and how we are influenced by others.

There probably isn’t a thought, a question, an emotion, an attitude or a belief in us that didn’t originate with someone else.

We must never allow what happens to us to become our identity.

What you identify with can easily become a part of you.

God’s desire is that we first and foremost believe what He has said about who we are.

I am truly what I came from and I truly came from God – His likeness and His image.

LOVING THE LORD

We are never totally right with God until our heart, soul, mind, and strength manifest our love for God.

Love for God must be more than a confession.  Our entire being must manifest that love.

Love like this is manifested through obedience to His commands.

John 14:15
If you love Me keep My commandments.

Love is always the first step. God keeps covenant with those who love Him and keep His commandments.

When we are troubled, when we don’t have an answer, when we don’t know what to do, when our resources are not sufficient to meet our need, when we are frustrated, confused – just start with God and love Him with your entire being.

When we start with our circumstances, our challenges, our lack, and our doubt we are so limited.

Our problems are solved by responding to His love. Start with God and then go to your need, your lack, your challenge, and your circumstance.

The whole purpose of life is to lead us to the final and ultimate truth that God is the one who loves us and can fully satisfy us.

When we start with God and loving Him with our entire being – presenting our bodies (all of us) as a living sacrifice – then we love our families, we love our neighbors, we even love our enemies, and we lead them to Christ.

“Focus, Focus, Focus” - No Limits RECAP

It has been said that broken focus is one of mankind’s greatest curses.

The obvious solution to that is proper application of the Law of Focus.

Focus creates and intensifies desire.  Intensified desire produces energy and creativity.

Focus determines direction. The mind leads and the body follows.  Focus creates reality.

Focus is always a choice of the will.  A positive focus pushes your mind into a positive direction and turns on a positive operating system.

When your mind is focused on positive things, thoughts and activities, there is no limit to how good your life can become.

God gave us a mind and He expects us to fill it with good things.

Proverbs 4:25-26 (MSG)

Keep your eyes straight ahead; ignore all sideshow distractions.  Watch your step, and the road will stretch out smooth before you.

When under stress, fatigued, and struggling with life’s challenges, don’t resort to speaking negative things and complaining.

Don’t turn loose of your faith commitment, your focus on living “No Limits” just because a negative circumstance comes your way.

Through everything He permits into your life, He is trying to unveil and reveal the treasure deposited within you.

“No Limits” living demands extreme focus so that we can endure, persevere, and finish in this race of life.  Never change your mind about God’s plans for your life.

                 Tell us what this series of messages have done in your life!