Touré Roberts - The Costs and Rewards of Purpose

I want to talk tonight about relentlessly pursuing purpose, and I want to draw your attention to three sources of information. One will be the Bible—Genesis, chapter 12, verses 1 through 3—and I don’t even know the order, but we’ll just see. Another will be a CNN article about a runner from Kenya who recently ran a marathon in Texas. Does anybody hear about that? She ran a marathon in Texas. So we’ll look at that. Uh, and then there’s an Instagram post I posted today about the cost of actualizing greatness.

Let me just tell you right now; let me just put it out there: purpose is hard, and destiny is hard. We want purpose, we want destiny, but they are hard, and they are not for the faint of heart. Purpose and destiny will push you. If they don’t push you to the point of wanting to quit, then you’re not in your purpose or your destiny. If it doesn’t drive you to the point of questioning everything and wanting to just throw it all away, you haven’t even begun to step into your road of destiny. It requires passion. If it’s purpose, even when you get to that point, there will be something in you that won’t let you quit.

So the Kenyan runner who was in the marathon in Austin, Texas recently—it’s amazing. She’s running this race, and she is two-tenths of a mile away from finishing. I believe she was in first place; she may have been in second place, but I believe she was in first place. As she runs this race, all of a sudden, she collapses two-tenths of a mile away from the finish line. She collapses, right? Then she tries to get back up and run, but she can’t; she falls again. You’ve got to Google this article; it’s amazing. I may tweet it out later.

So she tries to get up and falls down again. Now, just imagine: you’re in first place, anyone ever been winning, and then all of a sudden you fall down? She continues to fall. She tries to get up, but she can no longer run in this race. But guess what? She isn’t finished. She’s like, «I may not be able to run, but I can crawl.» She gets on her hands and knees and crawls over 400 meters to the finish line. She reaches the finish line, her knees and elbows are grossly bloodied, but she finishes! That’s what you have to have. In other words, she wouldn’t quit. She found something within her to keep going, and for her, it was her knees and elbows.

Sometimes you may have to slow down. You may have to reduce your expectations. This is for somebody: you may have to reduce your expectations of how victory or completion is supposed to look. But you can’t quit! If you can’t run, you’ve got to walk. If you can’t walk, you’ve got to crawl. And if you can’t crawl, you have to drag yourself on your elbows and knees until you reach the finish line that God set you on. He didn’t tell you how you were going to get there; He just said that you have to get there. This means that if your legs give out, there is something else in you. I’m speaking in parables, but I want you to get it: if your legs give out, that does not mean you’re out of the game. If the plan you had fails, it just means that the plan you had needs to move you to asking the question, «God, maybe there is a different plan that you have to fulfill what you called me to.»

Oh, it was amazing! I read this story and was blown away. She fought so hard toward the end that they gave her a Champions Award. I’m here to tell you that destiny is going to cost you. If you think it is going to be easy, you’re grossly mistaken. Let’s look at the cost of destiny. Let’s look at Abraham real quick—Genesis 12, verses 1-3. This is Abraham’s destiny. Are we together? I say this so you can understand that I believe God is going to impart something tonight. He’s going to activate—wow, I feel heaven! I’m happy for somebody. He’s going to activate a dynamic of His Spirit that you are going to need in order to finish. I’m not going to say finish; rather, to go on to the next leg of your race because it’s going to be hard. If you aren’t challenged by the thought of quitting, you’re not in destiny, I promise you. If it’s easy, it’s not destiny.

The Lord said to Abram— I love this— «Go from your country.» That’s the NIV. Can we do that in the New King James, please? If it’s possible? With God, all things are possible. There it is: «Now the Lord said to Abram: Get out of your country, from your family, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.» Now here we get really spiritual. Amen. If I were Abraham and God told me that, I would have just started walking right there. I would have just left.