God's Purpose

God's Purpose

One weekend, many years ago, my wife and I were visiting her family. We were sitting together in their living room, engaged in a fairly casual conversation. It was obvious that my wife's sister was irritated by something. During a lull in the conversation, she finally turned to me and said in a puzzled voice, "Jim, why don't you just settle down to something?"
The question didn't surprise me. I had been restless. That was obvious to everyone who knew me. I'd changed jobs several times, moved from one church to another, and had an endless stream of new ideas and dreams for my life.
"I don't know," I said. "I know that God has a purpose for me. I know that I have a destiny, but I'm not really sure what it is. And I can't seem to settle for anything else."

When I became a Christian several years earlier, I thought my search for purpose in life had finally come to an end. I had changed radically. The guilt of a self-willed, sinful life was lifted from me as I came to trust Jesus as my Savior. I felt clean and free as I never had before. But before long-and to my surprise-I found myself still searching for something.
"Where am I going, Lord?" I would ask. "What is your plan for my life? Do you have something special for me to do?" Sometimes I would ache inside, longing to know, wanting my life to mean something.

Looking back, I can see why that searching was important, why I needed to reach out to God. I've learned that God can best speak to a man's heart when he is hungry, even aching to hear him.

God's purpose for my life didn't come to me as a startling revelation. Instead, it came slowly and quietly, the result of many frustrating years. Today my most heartfelt prayer is that I will never drift away from understanding that purpose.
What is the purpose of God?

Very simply, Scripture teaches that we have been created and we exist to bring pleasure to God, to glorify him.
Consider the constant appeal the apostle Paul made to the churches about this purpose: "We pray that the name of the Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thessalonians 1:12). "...whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:35). "...so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ..." (Romans 15:6).

At first this seemed too simple. "Of course we should glorify God," I thought. "Every Christian knows that." Despite what I thought I knew, my life was a contradiction.

Many of my efforts were calculated to please myself, to make myself happy and to bring glory to myself. My motivation wasn't to please God. I wasn't being consciously hypocritical. I really did love God and desire to serve Him. But I hadn't settled that my whole purpose for living was to bring honor and glory to Him. Instead, I gave myself to what I thought were good purposes and motivations for my life. Yet I could never escape the frustration of knowing that there was something more God intended for me.

In my forty years of ministry, I've met, counseled, and worked with all kinds of people. For every one of them the most important need was to find purpose in life. Even if only for a short while, each person experiences a yearning and a longing to know why they exist. During these times they're not content to accept the standard answers about life.

"You're here to raise a good family," they might hear. "You're here to make a name for yourself." "You're here to accomplish something good." But they reject such ideas because they know there is a deeper purpose to life.

For those who don't give their lives to Jesus Christ, the urgency to know this purpose eventually fades. They settle instead into self-centered purpose. On the deepest level they live with one point of view only: their needs, their wants, their aims and their desires.

Perhaps their purpose is to acquire a larger personal fortune, to become famous, to get married and raise a family, to live a quiet and problem-free life, or to live a life of excitement and pleasure. But ultimately they face the emptiness of their self-centered purposes. Why? Because they have violated one of the most basic truths of human existence: We find personal fulfillment and satisfaction only as we fulfill our reason for existence.

Christians fall into a similar trap. As their life begins to improve, they say, "Now I see why I wasn't happy, why I couldn't prosper, why I couldn't get what I wanted out of life. I didn't have God on my side. Now I'll be able to do all the things I've wanted to." Very subtly, the view emerges that God exists to meet their needs and to make them happy.

Of course God wants us to enjoy life, to raise good families, to prosper and find personal fulfillment. But the danger is that we will shift our aim in life from pleasing God and glorifying Him to pursuing and satisfying our own desires. "If only all of my needs were met and my problems solved," we might think, "then I would be free to really glorify the Lord."

The moment we shift our thinking from God's purpose to our self-centered human purposes we fall short of the glory of God. This is why Paul warned, "Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is-his good, pleasing and perfect" (Romans 12:2).
Unless our minds are renewed by understanding that we exist to glorify God, we will sink into self-centered, self-willed living. But if we truly and deeply give our hearts and lives to honoring and pleasing Him, we are assured of rich and satisfying lives.

back to Articles, Teachings, Etc. by Jim Durkin