Hi, my name is Ray. I am a husband, father, and an animator at a video game studio, living just outside Raleigh, North Carolina. I've been a Desiring God ministry partner for five years. You're listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with John Piper. That was Ray, a friend of ours who animates video games.

He has an interesting story to share as you can imagine, and that's going to be up here in a moment. But first, Pastor John, we have talked a lot on this podcast about personal productivity, and that leads us to today's question from a listener named Paul, who lives in Suria, Spain.

Paul writes this, "Hello, Pastor John. Thank you for this podcast. Way back in episode 839, you mentioned the importance of writing out a personal mission statement for our lives with the aim of enhancing personal productivity. I agree completely, and I find this task entirely daunting. So how do I, as an average Christian layperson, go about coming up with a personal mission statement?

Should we be strengths and talents oriented about it? Should we focus on roles? Should we mostly focus on spiritual needs in the church, both locally and globally? And how do we avoid letting this statement grow so broad that we get overwhelmed to the point that such a statement does nothing actually to help us focus our energies?

Any help would be appreciated." When I read the Bible, I cannot escape the relentless teaching that God has purposes. He has goals in everything he does. He's not a God who is coasting aimlessly. He's not going in circles. The God of the Bible is pervasively pursuing accomplishments of his own counsel.

So Isaiah 46, "I am God. There is no one like me, declaring, 'My counsel shall stand. I will accomplish all my purpose.'" So there it is. "I will accomplish all my purpose." God has purposes. He has plans. Isaiah 14, 24, "As I have planned, so shall it be. As I have purposed, so shall it stand." Plans, purposes.

"I determined it long ago." Isaiah 37, 6, "I planned it from days of old, and I now bring it to pass." I don't think there would be any gospel, any salvation, any eternal joy if God were not a planner, one who lived with purposes and goals, because Acts 4.27 says that all the enemies of God were gathered together in Jerusalem at the crucifixion of Jesus to do whatever your hand, O God, your plan had predestined to take place.

Now, when I step back from all of that vision of the planning, purposing God, the effect it has on me is to stir me up to really serious questions, like, "Well, what is God's ultimate goal then?" I'm sure he has millions of sub-goals and sub-purposes in everything he does.

I like to say, "God's doing 10,000 things we don't know anything about." Most of those goals and purposes are hidden from us, but what has he revealed as his main or his ultimate purpose? Where's everything going? That's the question that has burned in me ever since I was 22 years old and became a lover of the all-ordaining, all-planning God.

And then the next question becomes, "Well, if I could discern what his ultimate goal was, how can I join him in it? I want to fit in to his ultimate purpose. I don't want to strive against it. I want to be right in sync with what God is pursuing in the world.

Nothing seems more obviously reasonable to me or hopeful to me than that God's creatures should gladly fit into his purposes." So surely that's his call on us. That's what he's beckoning us to do. "Find my purpose. Join me in it." So that's my second question then. Is there a way I can join the purpose of God once I have found out what his ultimate purpose is?

And then the question becomes, how do I do everything I am doing so that I help that ultimate goal come about or so that I can be used by God to make it come about? I want everything, not just a few things, but everything I do to somehow contribute to that purpose.

So that's why mission statements seem helpful to me. They keep me focused on the great things of life. But let me caution us here. I think the particularities of life are too variable for our mission statement to be very detailed. I know our friend asked that it not be too general, and yet I might disappoint him because I find big, big general purposes really helpful if they're the right kind.

So the more particularities about yourself and about your circumstances that you include, the more short-term your statement's going to be because so much changes, right? You change, your job changes, you have kids, you get sick, you move. Oh my goodness, life is just so variable that if you make your mission statement to include things about yourself, things about your circumstances that are going to change relatively quickly, then you're going to have to be changing your mission statement all the time, and that's probably not very helpful.

So if you want your mission statement to last more than a few years, it will need to be high-level and general, and that's mainly what I have in mind when I think of my own statements that guide my life. I need to be reminded regularly about the big picture of life.

What's everything about? What goals can I have that are in sync with God's goals and are so clearly biblical that they don't change? So let me give you a whirlwind process of arriving at such a statement, and then you can adapt it to your situation. In those crucial years of discovery for me, life-changing years, 22 to 25, what I saw and could not deny and have never changed my mind on since was that God was infinitely full of every perfection and could not be improved and was the sum of all excellence, all beauty, all worth, all greatness, so that his purpose never included people counseling him or adding to him or improving him or providing for his needs since he doesn't have any.

Rather, what I saw was that God was the kind of God whose ultimate aim was that his fullness, his completeness, his perfection would overflow with the communication of all his satisfying greatness and beauty and worth and excellence to me. In other words, God's ultimate purpose is to be seen and savored and shown.

Those are my three favorite words for describing it. God's ultimate purpose is to be seen and savored and shown as infinitely glorious. That's his ultimate purpose. This is not megalomania, by the way, because the communication of himself in all his glory is what the human soul was made to be satisfied by.

So God is the one being in all the universe, and he's the only one for whom self-communication and self-exaltation is the highest virtue and the most loving act. So Isaiah 43, 6, "Bring my sons from afar, my daughters from the ends of the earth, everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory." And so the very first thing that he teaches us to pray over and over is, "Hallowed be your name," that is, glorified, treasured, loved, honored, praised, admired, enjoyed, hallowed be your name.

That's the first and foremost cry of every saint every day. "Make me a means, God, please make me a means of the communication and the display of your beauty and your worth and your greatness." That is, "May others hallow your name because I exist." That's why we come into being.

That's the essence of every biblical personal mission statement, I think, if it ties into God's ultimate purpose. So that's where I start. And then the question becomes, "How?" And the Bible seems—that is, "How can I live that way? How can I join in to that accomplishment of that purpose?" And the Bible just seems to offer countless answers, like, "Whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.

Give thanks to the glory of God. Confess Jesus to the glory of God. Do good deeds that God may be glorified. Welcome one another to the glory of God. Be generous to the poor for the glory of God," and on and on. I have other texts listed here, but they're all over the place.

Everything we should be doing with our bodies and our minds and our hearts should be something that makes God look glorious, because he really is. We're helping people see him, savor him, show him for what he's really like. So finally, the question becomes, "Is there a common denominator that runs through all of those deeds, all those attitudes, all those words, that turn them into God-glorifying acts?

How does everything I do become worship? How does everything I do become a display of God's greatness and beauty and worth?" And the answer is given, for example, there are other places, 1 Peter 4.11, "Let the one who serves serve in the strength that God supplies so that in everything God may be glorified." So if everything you do is a service, then he says, "Let the service be by relying on the all-sufficiency of God's grace in your life so that when you accomplish what you just attempted to do, it's done in his strength so that he gets the glory." You get the enablement and the power and the guidance and the strength, and he gets the glory.

So when we joyfully rely on God in all that we do in the service of others, God looks glorious in our lives. Same thing in 2 Thessalonians 1.11, "Let every work be a 'work of faith by God's power so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you.'" That's 2 Thessalonians 1.11 and 12.

Same point as 1 Peter 4. We do what we do in glad reliance upon God for everything we need in order to love people. In other words, we live by faith in the promises of God in the service of love. So I would say, build your life mission statement by thinking through this much before you get to the details of your own gifting and your own calling.

God is infinitely glorious. God means to communicate that glory to his people, to see it, savor it, show it. He means for us to join him in that purpose. That applies to absolutely everything we do, and we do it in humble reliance upon his grace and power, which come through Jesus Christ in the service of others.

That will make him look great. Then, when you have crafted an overarching mission statement built on those purposes of God, then you can make some short-term mission statements. Say for a year, you're going to write a book, or you're going to change jobs, or you're going to pursue marriage, or whatever.

Some short-term that then draws particularities up into that mission statement according to the season of your life. Thank you, Pastor John. That's helpful at the macro level and in the fine details of life as well. That's a great question, Paul. Thank you. Speaking of personal productivity, before we go, right now on the phone is Ray, a productive video game animator who lives in North Carolina.

You heard his voice at the top of this episode because Ray is a friend of ours and a ministry partner, someone who makes this podcast possible. Ray, I'm thankful for you and for your time. Can you tell us a little about yourself? You got to tell us the story of how you found your way into the gaming industry.

Sure. My wife and I grew up in a small town in East Tennessee. We met in high school and dated and been together since. I always had an interest in art and technology as a kid. I originally wanted to be a comic book artist, but then really got into computer-aided drafting in high school.

Eventually, I became a computer animator. I've worked in visual effects for film for several years and have been working in the gaming industry for the past, I guess, dozen or so years. We live in North Carolina and have two wonderful children, an eight-year-old daughter and a two-year-old son. Yeah.

Years ago, you met John Piper, so to speak, while working on movies in Hollywood. What was your introduction to John Piper content? My first animation job was with a visual effects company in Los Angeles. I was living and working a nine-to-five job in Tennessee and then got a call out of the blue that my work had been seen online and I was offered a contract.

Just picked up everything, drove across the country, moved to Los Angeles and found myself a very long way from home, not just geographically, but culturally and relationally. I had a friend of a friend who lived about an hour away from LA and that was the only person I knew in California.

Wow. I found myself in this strange situation and I'm in front of a computer with headphones on for like 12, 14 hours a day. The hours were just grueling at first. It dawned on me that I'm sitting here listening to music at a time it was Pandora. I don't even know if that's still around.

I'd listen to Pandora for like 12 hours a day. It's like I could be filling my ears and mind with something much better than this. That started this process where I eventually stumbled across some of John Piper's sermons online. And then ever since I've just been a voracious consumer of Desiring God's content from the podcast, the articles, the YouTube videos, all have just been such a blessing to me and my family.

So encouraging. Looking back over the years, how would you summarize the effects of Desiring God resources on your life? Yeah, looking back, I think there's been like two kind of main impacts that Desiring God has had and continues to have really. The first one, I've been shown again and again that my view of God is too small, that my outlook into the world is so self-centered and my appreciation for His sovereignty and His gifts is so superficial and based on my circumstances so often, so short-sighted.

And the second major impact is that God's Word is deeper and richer and more beautiful and deserves so much more of my focus and time and attention than I've given it. And those two things have impacted pretty much every part of my life and the life of our family.

Powerful, powerful. Thank you very—so you're talking to a bunch of listeners to the podcast right now, many who have never given in the past. What would you say to them in this opportunity for them to join you as a ministry partner with us at Desiring God? So in my personal devotion yesterday, I was in Psalm 102 and came across this and it just stood out to me so much.

So I'll share that. And it's verse 18, I think. "Let this be recorded for a generation to come, so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord." And it goes on to talk about how God looks down, heard the groans of the prisoners, He freed them.

But to me, that sums up why we support Desiring God. We want to contribute in any small way that we can so that the God-glorifying message that Desiring God consistently puts out can be recorded for a generation to come so that people yet to be created may praise the Lord.

Our prayer is that people all over the world now and in the future will hear the message and be as blessed and uplifted and as drawn to their Bibles and to their needs as we have been by it. And I just feel like how could we not try to support that in any way that we possibly can?

And if anyone needs proof that that is happening, you can just glance at the YouTube comments on pretty much anything on Desiring God's channel and you see messages from people saying, "I desperately needed this. I've been in a dark place." It's like, how can we read those things from our brothers and sisters and not feel like this is absolutely worthy of any support that we can give it?

Amazing. Yeah. And YouTube is our fastest growing channel for this podcast. A shout out to those of you who are listening right now to APJ on YouTube. Five years of partnering with us, Ray. Thank you so much for your role in supporting everything that we do at Desiring God, this podcast, the website, and of course, our YouTube channel.

We appreciate it. Thank you all. It's been an honor. And we just thank you so much for the message that you put out, the charity and winsomeness and spirit that it always carries. It's been such a blessing to me and my family. Sobering and encouraging. Near the end of the year, it's a great reminder that we have generous friends all over the U.S.

and all over the world who support this ministry, friends who have profited from Desiring God personally over the years, and then who eventually became partners with us to get behind a ministry well-positioned to serve a generation to come so that a people yet to be created may praise the Lord.

That is an awesome perspective. And if you have found this ministry helpful, our articles, books, sermons, videos, podcasts, and if you want to help make all of those resources available for the world now and into the future, all free of charge, consider becoming a monthly ministry partner. Much of our financial support comes from folks who give on average $30 a month.

To set up monthly giving, go to give.desiringgod.org. That's give.desiringgod.org. Much appreciated. I'm your host, Tony Ranke, and Pastor John and I return on Monday. We'll see you then.