Purpose

Why does the earth spin? For Him. Why do you have talents and abilities? For Him. Whose Word matters? His. Whose will must be done? His, not ours. God’s to-do list for us consists of just one item: ‘Reveal My Glory.’ Heaven’s statement of purpose reads: “Declare God’s Glory.” Everything and everyone exists to reveal His glory; including you! We exist for His praise and glory.

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 22/5/2006

The great violinist, Nicolo Paganini, willed his exquisite violin to Genoa – the city of his birth – but only on the condition that the instrument never be played again. It was an unfortunate condition, for it is the characteristic of wood that as long as it is used and handled, it shows little decline in quality. However, as soon as it is set aside in storage, it begins to decay.

The fabulous, mellow-toned violin became worm-eaten stored in its gorgeous case, valueless now except as a relic. The deteriorating instrument is a reminder that gifts and talents are tools meant to be used, not treasures to be stored up. Likewise, a life withdrawn from love and service to others loses its meaning.

Source: Brain Cavanaugh, Sower’s Seeds That Nurture Family Values, p.66

Rick Warren writes: ‘If you want to know God’s will for your life, you’ve got to look at what you’re good at. Why would God give you certain gifts, abilities, and talents and not expect you to use them? That would be a waste. God gives you Spiritual gifts, Heart/Passions, Abilities, a Personality, and Experiences (SHAPE) that make you unique, and when you take time to figure out how God has shaped you, it gives you direction for where you should go with your life. Ask yourself, “What am I good at? What do I love to do? What is my passion? What turns me on, and what turns me off? What is it that people affirm in me? How can God use those abilities for his Kingdom?” Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (NIV). The word for God’s handiwork in Greek is the word poema, from which we get the word poem. You are God’s poem. You are a work of art. You are unique. There is nobody like you! But there’s more to life than being unique. God wants you to be unique and effective. He designed you the way he did so you could do good works. Even before you were born, God predesigned a role for you in life. He said, “I’m going to make this person and give him certain gifts, abilities, and talents, and I’m going to allow him to go through certain experiences — some good, some painful, and some educational. I’m going to bring all of these things together, because I want something done in the world that will take that kind of person to do it.” One day you’ll stand before God and he’ll ask, “What did you do with what I gave you?” If you don’t use your experiences and your shape for what God intended, you missed the point. We are saved to serve. It’s called having a ministry — using your talents and gifts to help other people. Fulfilment means being who and what God meant for you to be.’

Source: Rick Warren, God’s Dream For Your Life, a 19-Day Devotional on YouVersion, day 5

At the start of his influential book, Knowing God, J.I. Packer explores some of the big questions about life and the meaning and purpose of our existence. He writes:

• What were we made for? To know God.
• What aim should we set ourselves in life? To know God.
• What is the “eternal life” that Jesus gives? Knowledge of God …
• What is the best thing in life, bringing more joy, delight, and contentment, than anything else? Knowledge of God …
• What, of all the states God ever sees [us] in, gives Him most pleasure? Knowledge of Himself.’

Source: Bible in One Year – Alpha devotional, Day 136 of 365

I once saw a bumper sticker on the back of a speedboat that said: ‘He who dies with the most toys wins!’ But my question to that is… wins what? He who dies with the most toys still dies! Nobody on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I had more toys.’ Similarly, nobody on their deathbed ever said I wish I’d spent more time at the office or at work. At the end of life what people want around them most are the people they love. So is life about our relationships then? In a word, yes, but it’s not so much about our relationships with others, even though they matter a great deal and are extremely important. Nevertheless life is more than our relationships with other people: Ultimately it’s about our relationship with God. The meaning and purpose of life is that we might know our creator, God: that we might love Him and be in an intimate relationship with Him.

R. Ian Seymour

Brian Houston writes: “Did you know the word calling literally means “to shout aloud”? Some people are waiting for a whisper from heaven to direct their path, when the opportunity before them, is shouting loudly. The same is true for you. Your calling may be blaring like a siren in your ear, sounding an alarm that’s been going off for some time. What are you good at? What seems to come naturally to you? What opportunity lies right in front of you? Are you artistic? Love numbers and balanced order? Enjoy working with your hands in the garden? Have a passion for music? Feel at home in the classroom? Often you may be waiting for some still, small voice to whisper in your ear, when you calling is blasting out loud all around you! (…) Use what’s in your hand. This is the response God gave Moses after choosing him to lead the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt.” Use what’s in your hand.

Brian Houston, Live Love Lead, 2015, London: Hodder & Stoughton, p.223-224, 226

Mark Batterson relates how Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu felt called to ministry when she was a teenager. She did her ministerial training in Ireland and India. And one day she approached her superiors with a God-ordained passion. She said, “I have three pennies and a dream from God to build an orphanage,” Her superiors said, “You can’t build an orphanage with three pennies. With three pennies you can’t do anything.” Agnes smiled and said, “I know. But with God and three pennies I can do anything.”

For fifty years Agnes worked among the poor in the slums of Calcutta, India. In 1979 the woman we know as Mother Theresa won the Nobel Peace Prize. Listen it’s a long way from three pennies to a Nobel Peace Prize. And my question is, how did a woman with so little do so much? The answer is simple. Never underestimate someone who has the courage to come out of the cage and pursue a God-ordained passion. Toward the end of her ministry Mother Theresa was often asked by her admirers how they could make a difference with their lives the way she had with hers. Mother Theresa’s oft-repeated response was four words long: “Find your own Calcutta.”

Source: Mark Batterson, Wild Goose Chase, 2008, Colorado USA, Multnomah Books, p.38-39

The Westminster Confession of Faith (first published in 1646) is acclaimed as one of the greatest creeds of the Christian Church. In ‘The Shorter Catechism’ the first question pertains to the purpose of man and the reason for our being: Question 1 asks. “What is the chief end [purpose] of man?” And the answer: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” – Your purpose in life, the reason you were born, is to bring glory to God and enjoy a personal relationship with him, forever. This is the relationship we were born for.

We’re quite literally designed to be like God, to reflect him, to bear his image. That’s the point of our life; that’s also the way to be most satisfied in our life. We’re made to be mirrors of God, to reflect his beauty and his love, his justice and his goodness, to each other and the rest of creation.

Source: Rico Tice & Nate Morgan Locke, 2015, A Very Different Christmas, The Good Book Company, p.20-21

Some people think we all came from an amoeba. The problem is they can’t tell us where the amoeba came from! The Bible says, ‘God created man in His own image… male and female He created them’ (Genesis 1:27). Some people say that the earth came into existence as a result of the ‘big bang’ theory. Yet if you told them, ‘The car you drive right now was the result of an explosion at an assembly plant in Swindon,’ they’d question your sanity. If there’s a design, there must be a designer. If there’s a creation, there must be a Creator. (…) Not only did God create you, He gave you certain gifts so that you could fulfil His purposes and bring glory to Him.

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 19/9/2013

You have been called and anointed; you have been chosen for a reason. You have been cherry picked for a specific purpose. Author and pastor, Tony Evans puts it like this: ‘You were designed to know Him, not simply to have a comfortable life. You were not created just to get married, have children, a career, then grow old and enjoy retirement. [Those things are not the main event.] Those are some of life’s benefits; its side dishes, but not its main purpose. The tragedy today is that we have taken life’s benefits and tried to make them our purpose. We are trying to make the side dishes the main course. And the result is that we [are often so dissatisfied]. No wonder. – So if the purpose of life is not marriage, or career success, or happiness, or any of that, what is it? What were we created for? We were created to know and to worship God with an all-consuming passion.

Source: Tony Evans, Time To Get Serious, 1995, Illinois: Crossway Books, p.34

What’s in your hand? Colonel Sanders didn’t begin to fulfil his dream until he was 65 years old! What drove him to finally take action? He was broke and alone. He got his first Social Security cheque for $105, and he got mad. But instead of blaming society or just writing congress a nasty note, he started asking himself, “What could I do that would be valuable for other people? What could I give back?” He started thinking about what he had that was valuable to others.

His first answer was, “Well, I have this chicken recipe everyone seems to love! What if I sold my chicken recipe to restaurants? Could I make money doing that?” Then he immediately thought, “That’s ridiculous. Selling my recipe won’t even pay the rent.” And he got a new idea: “What if I not only sold them my recipe but also showed them how to cook the chicken properly? What if the chicken was so good that it increased their business? If more people came to see them and they made more chicken sales, maybe they would give me a percentage of those additional sales.”

Many people have great ideas. But Colonel Sanders was different. He was a man who didn’t just think of great things to do. He put them into action. He went and started knocking on doors, telling each restaurant owner his story: “I’ve got a great chicken recipe, and I think if you use it, it’ll increase your sales. And I’d like to get a percentage of that increase.”

Well, many people laughed in his face. They said, “Look, old man, get out of here. What are you wearing that stupid white suit for?” Did Colonel Sanders give up? Absolutely not. Instead of feeling bad about the last restaurant that had rejected his idea, he immediately started focusing on how to tell his story more effectively and get better results from the next restaurant.

How many times do you think Colonel Sanders heard no before getting the answer he wanted? He was refused 1009 times before he heard his first yes. He spent two years driving across America in his old, beat up car, sleeping in the back seat in his rumpled white suit, getting up each day eager to share his idea with someone new. Often, the only food he had was a quick bite of the samples he was preparing for prospective buyers. How many people do you think would have gone through 1009 noes – two years of noes! – and kept on going? Very few. That’s why there is only one Colonel Sanders. I think most people wouldn’t get past twenty noes, much less a hundred or a thousand! Yet this is sometimes what it takes to succeed.

– Anthony Robbins

What has God given you? What could you do that would be of value to others? What’s in your hand?

Anthony Robbins, 1995, Notes From A Friend, New York, Fireside Books, p.28-30

Somerset Maugham, the English writer, once wrote a story about a janitor at St Peter’s Church in London. One day a young vicar discovered that the janitor was illiterate and fired him. Jobless, the man invested his meagre savings in a tiny tobacco shop, where he prospered, bought another, expanded, and ended up with a chain of tobacco stores worth several hundred thousand pounds. One day the man’s banker said, “You’ve done well for an illiterate, but imagine where you would be if you could read and write?” “Well,” replied the man, “I’d be janitor at St Peter’s Church in Neville Square.”

Source: The Best of Bits and Pieces, 1994, New Jersey USA: The Economics Press, p.178

A fireman risked his life to rescue a young boy from certain death in a burning building. Afterwards the boy came and thanked the fireman profusely for saving him and asked if there was anything at all he could do to repay him. The fireman smiled warmly as he ruffled the boy’s hair, then he looked him in the eye and said, “Yes, son there is something you can do… Just make sure yours is a life that was worth saving!”

Some of us are forty, or fifty, or sixty years old and we’re still not happy with what we are. We’re frustrated and frantic because we’ve never found that feeling of contentment. The problem is we’ve made it our goal to become something God never meant us to be. You must go to God, like a house to a builder, and say, ‘Lord, what building materials have You put within me? How much weight can I bear? What is my purpose? Who should I be? Show me Your plan at every age and every stage.’ You are the question God is the answer.

Source: The UCB Word For Today, 9/12/2012

Every human being goes through the stage where they feel as though they are stuck between floors in an elevator, destined to spend the rest of their life going nowhere? It’s as though each and every one of us has an in-built timer that eventually asks the questions, what is the meaning of life and what is my purpose? – Keep searching until you find it.

Don’t be tempted to become a Jack-of-all-trades, instead, concentrate on what you love to do and become a master of one. The following fable illustrates the point: Brer Rabbit, Brer Duck and Brer Squirrel enrolled in the school for animal welfare. Each animal was an expert in his own field of athletics, Brer Rabbit at running, Brer Duck at swimming and Brer Squirrel at climbing. However, although each excelled in his own field, they all achieved very poor results in the other events. It was felt that they needed to put in extra time on the events that they weren’t particularly good at. So, Brer Rabbit had to cut back on his running and instead concentrate his efforts on swimming and climbing. Eventually, he improved, but in doing so he had become just an average runner. Brer Duck, instead of swimming, practised full time on his running and climbing skills. He, too, improved a little, but in the end his webbed feet were so badly torn, because of all the running along stony pathways and the climbing of rough tree bark, that he could no longer swim properly. And as for Brer Squirrel, well, he spent so much time swimming and running that his claws were simply worn away to nothing. In the end, he could no longer grip the trees trunks and so he stopped climbing altogether! And the moral of this story is simply this: Concentrate on what you do best and become an expert at it.

R. Ian Seymour

R. Ian Seymour (excerpt from Maximize Your Potential.)

When Ludwig Nobel died in 1888, a journalist, who mistakenly identified the deceased as Alfred Nobel, published his obituary instead. Alfred Nobel was able to see written before him a summary of the achievements of his life. Materially, it had been a great success – he was very rich. He was a scientific genius; he invented dynamite together with the even more potent solution, blasting gelatine, and in 1880 he patented an almost smokeless gun powder that European armies rushed to buy. In his obituary he was described as ‘the merchant of death’. Alfred Nobel was shocked. Was this all his life had been about? Enabling mankind to destroy itself more efficiently?

This chilling incident caused Nobel to work for world peace. He also re-wrote his will. He instructed his executors to convert all his remaining property to cash (it came to $9 million) and to invest it in safe securities, the interest from which would be awarded annually in five prizes to those persons who contributed most to the benefit of humankind during the preceding year. The five categories were physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace. Alfred Nobel died on 10 November 1896; since then over 600 Nobel Laureates have been recognised.’ How will you be remembered?

How would you like to be remembered forever… for doing something that was so significant that your name goes down in the history books for all of eternity?

Source: Nicky Gumbel, 30 DAYS: A Practical Introduction to Reading the Bible, 2006, Alpha Publications, p.25