Actress Whoopi Goldberg co-hosts a comedy show every year called Comic Relief. Her purpose is to help the nation's homeless. According to a recent Readers' Digest column, it is only one of the many charitable projects in which Whoopi Goldberg is involved. When asked why she donates her talent for such causes, she said, "I fear waking up in the morning and finding out my life was all for nothing. We are here for a reason. I believe a bit of the reason is to throw little torches out to lead people through the dark."

Whoopi Goldberg is far from being a theologian, but her comment illustrates that every human being is driven by this search for significance. We all want our lives to count for something. She has discovered all the attention, all the wealth, all the notoriety the world has to offer really don't satisfy that need. Solomon said, "God has set eternity in the heart." So ultimate significance is found only in giving one's self to Jesus Christ because only Jesus Christ can grant eternal life.

Only Jesus Christ can satisfy that spiritual hunger of the soul and only Jesus Christ is really the torch to lead people out of darkness into the light. He said, "Whoever will seek to save his life will lose it but whoever will lose his life for my sake and the gospel's will find it."

With that in mind, let's look at Romans 12:1-8. This passage talks about a proper evaluation of our strengths, our talents, which are to be used for God's glory. If we understand and apply four principles from this section, it will really help us to find eternal significance.

The first principle is: remember your priorities.

Verse 1: "Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship."

In view of God's mercy. God could have disowned us but instead He chose us, He adopted us, He redeemed us, He sealed us as His very own. Since God has been so merciful to us, our priority ought to be to please Him, not to impress people. He says, "Don't conform any longer to the pattern of this world." Paraphrase that: "don't let the world around you squeeze you into its mold but be transformed by the renewing of your mind and then you will prove what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will."

You see, the world around us is obsessed with image. What will people say? What will people think? But the Christian renews the mind. We change our thinking. What becomes important is what God thinks. Is this activity on my calendar pleasing to Him? Is this check I am writing good stewardship of his money? Is this conversation accomplishing His will? Is this thought pattern honoring Him? When we seek the praise of God more than the praise of man, some people in the world will not understand and they will try to squeeze us back into their mold.

Jerome Hines was an extremely gifted singer and as a young man his goal was to sing in the opera. He made all the necessary sacrifices. He took lessons. He learned several different languages until he realized his boyhood dream and sang with the Metropolitan Opera. But one day, Jerome Hines heard George Beverly Shea sing in that mellow voice, "I'd rather have Jesus than anything the world affords today." That song really got to Hines and led him to give his life to Jesus Christ. From that time on, he continued to sing in the opera but he no longer sang for the advancement of Jerome Hines or to please people. He looked for an opportunity to give glory to God.