Life As We Know It

"Everything was created through Him and for Him." Colossians 1:16b (NIV)

        

       Thomas Carlyle says "The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder--- a waif, a nothing, a no man." This sentence is true for everyone. Everyone has a reason for living. Everyone's life is driven by something. Most dictionaries define the verb "drive" as "to guide, to control, or to direct." Whether you are driving a car, a nail, or a golf ball, you are guiding, controlling, and directing it at the moment. What is the driving force of your life? There are hundreds of circumstances, values, and emotions that can drive your life. Here are five of the most common ones:

- Guilt.

- Resentment and anger.

- Fear.

- Materialism.

- The need for approval.*

   

      Think about it. Wouldn’t your life be easier, and make more sense, if you knew why you were here? If life had no purpose, you could do whatever you wanted. If life had no purpose, then everything else in life has no purpose, as well. There would be no need for laws, education, advances in industry, government, technology, etc. If there was no purpose for us to even be living, then why are there needs for the human body such as water, food, air, etc. to even keep us alive? But there is a purpose for us; otherwise, we wouldn't need anything, including life itself. So if they have a purpose, don't we have a purpose as well? If there's no purpose for our lives, then there's no point of living. If there's no point of living, then why are humans living on a planet that has everything necessary for everyone now, and before us, to even exist here?

In The Purpose Driven Life, it says you have five purposes that should be easy to comprehend. Those five are:

- You were planned for God's pleasure

- You were formed for God's family

- You were created to become like Christ

- You were shaped for serving God

- You were made for a mission*

 

As stated above, we were planned for God's pleasure. We should please God with everything we do and how we do them. By doing the things we should do even when we don't want to. Mainly, our lives were made to please God. We were made for God's family; a family of Christians who, like us, should want to please God themselves. Becoming like Christ is one of the most important roles as a Christian. It's because Christ was the only perfect human being that we should follow his example. One must think to their self "What would Jesus do?" It may be a silly cliché, but, really, what would Jesus do? Serving God is important because it tests our loyalty as well as our trust in Him. Plus, serving God and others will give one a sense of fulfillment; therefore making them proud of being a trustworthy servant. And finally, we were made for a mission. Each of us, individually, has mission from God. That mission must be completed. But a person must know what their mission is in order to do so. Take some time to think about it; pray about it. What is that God wants you to do?          

 

Andrea Bitov, a Russian novelist, grew up under an atheistic Communist regime. But God got his attention one dreary day. He recalls, "In my twenty-seventh year, while riding the metro in Leningrad (now St.Petersburg) I was overcome with a despair so great that life seemed to stop at once, preemtping the future entirely, let alone any meaning. Suddenly, all by itself, a phrase appeared: Without God life makes no sense. Repeating it in astonishment, I rode the phrase up like a moving staircase, got out of the metro and walked into God's light."

One more thought to ponder: If life had no meaning, and if there was no reason for people to live, then why is there gravity holding us down?  If there's no purpose for people, there's no point of gravity.  And why won't the earth start floating towards the sun? If there was no meaning in life, we might as well not live. But there is. “God is not haphazard; He planned it all with great precision. The more physicists, biologists, and other scientists learn about the universe, the better we understand how it is uniquely suited for our existence, custom-made with the exact specifications that make human life possible.”*

     Haiku

Source: *The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Image by Leaping Lizard