What's Your Purpose in Life?

It's easy to get sucked into the rhythm of work, bills, sleep (not enough), chores (too many), and the drudgery of life. Years pass and we're no closer to our dreams than before. Life coaches tell you to explore the deepest desires of your heart, then start pursuing those. But what is
your deepest purpose? A different career, more money, more leisure, better health? Those are all fine, but secondary to your real purposes -- and mine. Let me show you what I've learned over these 60+ years. I pray this focus will help you like it's helped me.

Jesus tells us the great commandments of the Hebrew tradition: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” You could say Jesus is giving us our life purposes. 

Remember, God created us in his image (Gen. 1:26) which includes, as most Bible scholars insist, the ability to have relationships,with him and with one another. They were "wired" so to speak, given the ability, and put in the right position, to love God and love one another. The two primary commands that Jesus quoted were part of early human life, before they turned to their own devices ("original sin" if you will) and lost that primal ability.

God never gave up on us, of course. He continued to pursue human beings through a string of chosen leaders. He raised up Israel as his model nation, but they too were unable to love him and love each other, even though he gave them over 600 detailed commands on how to do it. Finally, the eternal Son of God himself became human to live with us. As our Savior, Jesus lived a perfect life, taught and showed us what God is like, died a perfectly obedient death, and was resurrected to new life. He restored the original relationship between God and humans in his own body and life. When he sent the Holy Spirit, he enabled us to obey those two Great Commands again, as we had been wired to do in the first place, as our life purposes.

Then he gave us one more life purpose: "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

One more thing: in Matthew 22, and in Acts 1 "shall" is a verb tense called the "future indicative." Jesus is predicting what people "shall do" as they come to know him and are filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. In these passages, he's telling us our three life purposes: to love God with all that we are; to love one another; and to tell others the wonderful news Jesus gave us (which is really an extension of the other two commands). There's the key to a happy, fulfilling life!

If your life is unhappy and unfulfilled, let me suggest it's because you're not pursuing one of these three life purposes. Give me a shout and let's talk about how to change that.