What is my purpose?

Introduction

'For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose' Philippians 2:12.

The purpose of our lives is far greater than our own personal fulfilment, our own peace of mind, or even our own happiness. It's far greater than our family, our career, or even our wildest dreams and ambitions. If we want to know why we were placed on this planet, we must begin with God. That is our starting point.

Do It Yourself

Possibly more so now than ever before we are living in a self-centred culture; and that is going to rub off on our Christian culture and values. Self is our new god, self-interest, self-fulfilment and this is why in our search for the purpose of life we typically begin at the wrong starting point - we begin with ourselves. We ask self-centred questions like 'What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future?' But focusing on ourselves will never ever reveal our life's purpose. Probably we have asked these questions already and for a while they seemed to give answers but we still feel there is something missing.

We did not create ourselves, so there is no way we can tell ourselves what we are here for!

The Creator

Just like a washing machine cannot tell itself what it was created for, we too cannot tell ourselves why we are here. Yes there have been many breakthroughs in discovering who we are, scientists can tell you how we are built up physically, they have broken down our DNA and can tell you how it all fits together. There are many books out there that will tell how we work emotionally, how we process information, how we learn and interact with others. But we are far move that just physical beings, emotional and social beings. We are also spiritual beings.

If I handed you an invention you have never seen before, you wouldn't know its purpose, and the invention itself wouldn't be able to tell you. Only the creator or the owner's manual could reveal its full purpose.

Ever been lost when out walking, choosing who you ask for directions is important. Rick Warren in his book says he got lost in the mountains. When he stopped to ask for directions to the campsite, he was told "You can't get there from here." Very helpful 'You must start from the other side of the mountain!" In the same way, we cannot arrive at our life's purpose by starting with a focus on our self. We must begin with God, our Creator. We exist only because God wills that we exist. We are made by God and for God - and until we understand that, life will never make sense and we will never be satisfied with life, because there will always be something missing.

It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance and our destiny... Every other path will lead us up a dead end.

Major influence

I said early that our Christian culture and values can be and are being influenced by worldly culture. How many times have we used God for our own self-satisfaction? But that is a reversal of nature and is doomed to failure. We were made for God not vice versa, and life is about letting God use us for his purposes, not us using him for our purposes.

In Romans 8 starting at verse 5 it says this 'Those who live according to the sinful nature' (if we translate sinful nature, every time with the word selfish, we get something like this) Those who live according to their selfish nature have their minds set on what that nature desires, but those who live in accordance with the Sprit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of a selfish-centred man leads to death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the selfish mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's ways, nor can it do so. Those controlled by their selfish nature cannot please God.

Back in the 17th century scientists thought that the sun and the planets rotated around the earth, they came to that conclusion not because of any astrological breakthrough but because of their understanding of self importance of man, their view of their universe was influenced by their own self importance, that everything revolved around them. We know that we are not the centre of the universe. If anything we as a planet are pretty insignificant compared with the vastness of the universe. We have learnt that a body like a star or planet that has the greatest mass will always be the one that brings influence upon all other objects around it. This is why the moon rotates around the earth and the earth and the rest of the planets rotate around the sun.

Enough 101 astrology. What about us, what has the biggest influence upon our lives that we gravitate to and rotate round? Don't say God, for very rarely does God get the first and last word in our lives. Very few decisions I have made in my life have solely gravitated around God's influence, without me thinking what am I am going to get out of this, am I going to enjoy it. From our reading in Romans it says 'Those controlled by their selfish nature cannot please God.' Being a Christian is not about as some believe stopping doing all those things we once enjoyed. It is about pleasing God.

The Challenge

Do we want to please God? Then we need to let go of our selfish nature and our lives gravitating around our own self interest and self direction. This is going to be hard because it goes contrary to everything we have been taught and know around us. In Matthew 16:25 Jesus says; 'For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it'. The message Bible puts it this way 'Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, Jesus says, to finding yourself, your true self.' What this verse is says is, if we want to live our lives being influenced by self interest then we will lose it, and I am not only talking about eternal life, but we will miss out on all the good things God wants to give us here and now.

On the other hand, this verse says if we give up our self interest and allow Jesus to be the biggest influence in our lives that our lives gravitate around him, he says 'we will find life'; our true lives'. Jesus said I have come so that you may have life and life in all its abundance (John 10:10). But we have to let go of self and allow God to become the centre of our lives.

Let's go back to our touchstone 'for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose' Philippians 2:12. There are many books on the market both Christian and secular that will suggest ways to discover the purpose of life. All these books can be classified under one section, what I would call 'self-help' books because they approach the subject from a self-centred viewpoint. Self-help books, usually offer the same predictable steps to find your life's purpose: Consider your dreams. Clarify your values. Set some goals. Figure out what you are good at. Aim high. Go for it! Be disciplined. Believe you can achieve your goals. Never give up. Of course, these recommendations often will lead to great success. Normally we can succeed in reaching a goal if we put our minds to it. But being successful; and fulfilling our life's purposes are not the same! We could reach all our personal goals, becoming a raving success by the world's standard, and still miss the purpose for which God created us for.

In Summary

Purpose Driven Life is not a self-help book. It is not about finding the right career, how to achieve our dreams; it will not tell us how to plan our life. It is not even about how to cram one more thing into an already busy schedule. Actually, it will teach us how to do less in lives - by focusing on what matters the most. It is about becoming what God created us to be.

How, then, do we discover the purpose we were created for? Well we can guess or we can ask the creator, read his manual - the Bible.

Psalm 1. 'It is out of our relationship with God that everything else flows'. Ask yourself what has the biggest influence upon your life, for that will be where you are drawing your nourishment from.

Point to Ponder: It's not about me.

Question to consider: In spite of all the advertising around me, how can I remind myself that life is really about living for God, not myself?