What's your purpose in life?  Why are you here on planet earth?  For the next few Sundays I want to examine that question with you, to help you answer it from God's Word, and maybe even change how you would answer it right now.  I recently read a helpful book, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.  His other book, The Purpose Driven Church helped us shape Epiphany's five purposes.  You know them from our bulletins:  Joyful Worship - Faithful Service - Positive Outreach - Loving Fellowship - Biblical Nurture.

          Rick helps answer these questions in 40 chapters, but I promise not to preach 40 sermons about this.  But many of his thoughts are worth sharing.  Since we can't all read the book, I want to share some of his findings from the Bible, good things, helpful to our life and our walk in the Christian faith.

          We need to start with a startling fact - the search for purpose in life is not about us.  Our purpose in life is greater than our own peace of mind, personal fulfillment or even our happiness.  It's greater than our family, career, ambitions or dreams.  If we want to know why we are here on this planet, we must start with God.  We were born by His purpose and for His purpose.  Today's Bible text says, "All things were created by Him and for Him."

          Finding life's purpose has puzzled people for ages, and it's usually because we start in the wrong place - with ourselves.  We ask, what do I want to be?  What are my goals and dreams?  What should I do with my life?  But focusing on ourselves won't reveal our life's purpose.  Contrary to popular books or seminars, you won't find your life's purpose within yourself.  You didn't create yourself, so there's no way you can tell yourself what you were created for.

          If I handed you an invention you had never seen before, you couldn't tell its purpose.  Only the inventor or the owner's manual can do that.  It's the same with us.  We must begin with our Creator.

          We exist only because God wills us to exist.  The Bible says, "All things were created by Him and for Him."  Only in God can we find our meaning, our purpose.  We were made for God, not vice versa, so life is all about God using us for His purposes.  Even atheist Bertrand Russell had to admit, "Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless."

          Self-help books are basically useless, because they all start with you.  They have predictable steps:  Clarify your values.  Set your goals.  Aim high.  Be disciplined.  Involve others.  Never give up.  Go for it!  Sometimes those will lead us to a kind of success, but being successful and fulfilling your life's purpose are not the same things!  You could be a raving success by the world's standards and still miss the goals God has set for you.  Jesus said, "Whoever wants to save his life will lost it, but whoever loses his life for Me will find it." (Mt. 16:25)   He's saying self-help is not the way to finding your true self - self-sacrifice is!

          There are only two ways to discover your purpose in life - speculation and revelation.  Most people choose speculation.  They guess, they theorize, they conjecture, but it's all just their best guess.  People have tried philosophy, science, even theology, to find the meaning of their life.  But it all comes down to a mere guess.

          Fortunately, there's another way - revelation.  We can turn to what God says about life in His Word.  The easiest way to discover the meaning of an invention is to listen to the inventor.  The same is true of life.  We can ask God.  He's not left us in the dark about this.  He's given us the owner's manual - the Bible.  It explains why we are alive, how life works, what to avoid, and what to expect in the future.  That's about all we need to know, and He even gives us the power to know it.

          St. Paul says, "We speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began." (1 Cor. 2:7)   God is not just the starting point in life, He's the source of life.  Andrei Botiv, Russian novelist, grew up under atheistic communism.  He said that once he was so overcome with despair that life seemed to stop.  Suddenly, seemingly all by itself, a phrase came to him.  "Without God life makes no sense."  That revelation from God changed his life forever.

          We are not an accident, dear friends.  Our birth was no mistake, our life is no fluke.  Our parents may not have planned us, but God did.  Long before we were conceived in our mothers, we were conceived in the mind of God.  The Bible says, "He who made you formed you in the womb." (Is. 44:2)   Again it says, "The Lord will fulfill His purpose for me." (Ps. 138:8)

          God custom-made our every detail - our race, hair, eyes, complexion, body type - and it all just the way He wanted it to be.  The people on our recent trip amazed me.  We are all so different.  No two people are alike.

          One evening we were at a Luau.  When it came time, those lovely young hula dancers really began moving to some fast Hawaiian music.  They were wonderful.  A portly lady ahead of us for some reason stood up to stretch and she blocked the view of an older gent at our table who is 91 years old.  He stretched to see around the big lady, this way and that, and finally stood up and said, "Get away!  Get away!"  The look she gave him and the look he gave her back were just priceless.  I guess when you're 91 and still like the view, you don't want anyone to get in your way!

          We're all so different - not one of us has an identical genetic makeup.  God never does anything accidentally, but has a reason for everything He does.  The Bible says, "He chose us in Him before the creation of the world." (Eph. 1:4)   Long before He laid down the foundations of the universe, God had us in mind.  In fact, you and I are the reason God made this world.  It's all for us - that's how much God loves and values us.

          God is not haphazard.  He plans all things with great precision.  The more physicists, biologists and other scientists learn about the universe, the better we understand how uniquely suited it us for our existence.  Our world is custom-made with the exact specifications that make human life possible.

          Dr. Michael Denton, Senior Research Fellow in Human Genetics at the University of New Zealand, has concluded after much study, "All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition... that the cosmos is a specially designed whole, with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose."  The Bible says, "God fashioned and made the earth;  He founded it;  He did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be inhabited." (Is. 45:18)

          Why did God do this?  Why did He go to so much trouble of creating a universe for us?  Because He is a God of love, the kind of love that's difficult to understand.  We were created as special objects of His love.  God made you so He could love you. Now there's a basic truth to build your life on - God made you so He could love you!

          The Bible tells us "God is love." (1 Jn. 4:8)   It doesn't say God has love - He is love.  Love is the essence of His character.  It moved Him to create us.  Better yet, it moved Him to forgive us our sins and imperfections.  It moved Him to sacrifice for us - to sacrifice His only Son Jesus Christ, so that we could live with Him forever.

          God didn't need to create us - He wasn't lonely.  He could have been content to be what He is - the Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The Bible says, "I have upheld you since you were conceived, and have carried you since your birth.  I am He who will sustain you.  I have made you and I will carry you." (Is. 46:3-4)

          If there was no God, we'd all be random accidents, and we'd have to end all discussion of our purpose.  But there is a God, and He made us for a reason.  The only accurate way to understand ourselves is in knowing who God is and what He does for us.  He's a God who loves us in Jesus Christ, and He has given us life with a purpose.  We'll examine what His purposes are for us in the coming weeks.  Amen!

Copyright © 2003 by Pastor Bob Tasler.  All rights reserved.