What Does The Bible Say About A Life Of Purpose?
Video Timeline
WELCOME
0:00 - Welcome with Matt & Dan
TALK with James Sloan
06:20 - What Does The Bible Say About A Life Of Purpose?
07:57 - What Does The Bible Say About Your Purpose?
11:37 - How Can The Bible Help You Live A Life Of Purpose?
14:50 - How Do You Start Living With Purpose Today?
PRAYER
19:02 - Prayer For Ukraine
WORSHIP
21:37 - Only In You Jesus with Lyrics
CONVERSATION STREET with Matt & Dan
26:28 - Conversation Street
CLOSING WORSHIP
58:50 - O God Be Our Guide with Lyrics
Podcast:
What Does The Bible Say About A Life Of Purpose?
— James Sloan
Today we’re exploring a topic that humans have asked for thousands of years. The topic of purpose. On average we each have 25,000 days on this earth and we want them to have some meaning. If you google ‘purpose of life’ the top answer is “Your life purpose consists of the central motivating aims of your life” and other similar wellbeing phrases. But I want to unpack what the bible says about purpose and how we as Christians interpret those scriptures to help shape the lives we live. I’d highly recommend the book ‘The Purpose Driven Life’ by Rick Warren. So let’s look at 3 questions:
What does the Bible say about your purpose?
How can the Bible help you live a life of purpose?
How do you start living with purpose today?
What Does The Bible Say About Your Purpose?
As Christians, we believe that God is the source of our lives, so to discover his purpose we must turn to His word, not the world’s wisdom. The Bible is full of verses that talk about purpose, I’d encourage you to search for it in your bible app and see what stands out to you. In the book of Ephesians, it says,
“It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.”
Here we can see that identity and purpose come from relationship. In the same way that I know who I am as a husband and a father through the relationship with my wife and children. We see that God was thinking of us before we existed! We are not an accident, but are alive because God created us, and we see that our purpose fits into a wider purpose. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfilment or happiness. The book of Colossians affirms this further saying,
“Everything got started in Him and finds it purpose in Him.”
To understand creation and the created, we must understand the creator. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to build IKEA furniture without the instruction manual, in my experience it doesn’t generally go well! All the individual parts were created with a purpose in mind and the person who created them knew the plan to bring them together so wrote it down. Looking at the pieces alone wouldn’t help us understand the purpose, but through the instructions we know the plan of their creator and bring about their purpose. If we trust the word of God we can trust that God has a purpose for our lives, and that purpose will be discovered as we live in relationship with him. We were made by God and for God, until we understand that, life will never make sense. In the book of Ephesians it says,
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
This doesn’t mean we need to go on a lifelong adventure to find out what God has prepared for us to do, it’s not like a wild scavenger hunt! Instead, we trust that God has created us individually with gifts and strengths, with unique characters and when woven together it creates a beautiful tapestry called the church. When we live in relationship with God and in relationship with His people, the church, we began to understand more of his purpose for our lives.
How Can The Bible Help You Live A Life Of Purpose?
The idea of “purpose” is something I was quite confused about growing up in church. I didn’t really understand how God could tell me what to do.
How did God want to use me? When would I find out? What was I supposed to do until then? I would ask these questions and come up empty.
In my early twenties I came across this verse which says,
“Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
At the time I was doing a degree in Psychology and had been looking at research methods and the use of outputs and outcomes. If you’re not familiar with these terms, outputs often refers to an activity, programme or project (what you did) and outcomes are the intended results of the activity i.e. behaviour change (what you changed).
I realised that our plans are like outputs (things we want to do) and God’s purpose is like outcomes (who he wants us to be). It meant that I wasn’t so focused on what I was doing with my life but more on who I was becoming. This one scripture put things into perspective and changed my outlook.
Now of course, we need to do something with our lives. We can’t just simply be and watch miracle after miracle happen as we are so godly!
Again, let’s turn to scripture for wisdom and direction -
“Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ”
God loves us whether we glorify Him or not, but his desire is for us to know the fullness of that love, to give him glory, to give him thanks and to worship him. As we learn these foundational steps, we grow in maturity and character, we grow in responsibility and leadership and God takes us on new adventures. It requires us to focus less on our plans, but to submit to Him and seek his purpose in our lives. Often this starts through time reading his word, time in his presence and time with other believers.
God is far more interested in who you are than what you do!
How Do You Start Living With Purpose Today?
As Westerners, we live in an instant society. We expect results quickly, deliveries the next day and often prayers to be answered overnight. Yet the majority of the developing world often have time and appreciate that often God works slowly. Throughout the Bible we see that things take time. Abraham waited decades for a son. David waited years and years before he became king. Jesus was 30 before he did anything miraculous.
God’s ultimate goal for your life on earth is not comfort but character development. He wants us to become like Christ. And that takes time!
An impatient man once asked Jesus what was the most important commandment in the Bible. In essence, what do I need to focus on to be more like God? What’s the shortcut to being holy?
Jesus said,
“Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence... But there is a second to set alongside it: Love others as well as you love yourself.”
Far from a shortcut, this was a call to a life of sacrifice, a life of generosity and a life of service. Jesus wants us to give ourselves to Him, to live in relationship with Him, to love Him above all else. To love those around us as ourselves.
If you want to start living with purpose today then you can start by responding to the call Jesus made to each of his disciples to ‘follow him’, to say ‘yes’ to knowing Christ Jesus, to lay down your way of living and ask for His way of living, to surrender your plans and to accept His purpose for your life.
In the book of Acts we read that,
“David... served God’s purpose in his own generation”
David dedicated his life to fulfilling God’s purpose on earth and God called David a man after my own heart (Acts 13:22).
At the end of my life, I don’t think I’ll be too interested in what others thought of me as long as I glorify God and serve His purpose in my generation. I pray that today you will connect with the one who gives you purpose and that you will find the hope, the love and the joy that comes from discovering what God put you on this planet for!
CONVERSATION STREET
With: Matt Edmundson & Dan Orange
What is Conversation Street?
Conversation Street is part of our live stream, where the hosts (in this case, Matt & Dan) chat through James’ talk and answer questions that were sent in through the live stream. You can watch the conversation in the video, it starts at 26 min 28 seconds into the live stream, or you can go straight there by clicking here. This week’s questions and topics of conversation are:
How can we find our purpose in Christ?
How do we understand God’s purpose for us as individuals?
Why is God more interested in who we are versus what we do?
Have you ever felt purposeless or lost? How did you cope?
What does it mean to trust God with your life?
Why should we not measure our lives by how well things are going?
More Bible Verses About Purpose
1 Corinthians 1:30 - And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption,
Ecclesiastes 12:13-14 - The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
1 John 5:20 - We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Ephesians 2:10 - For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Romans 8:28 - And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Isaiah 46:10 - I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.
John 15:16,17 - You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.
Genesis 1:26 - Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Colossians 3:17 - And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
More from this series
