FRIDAY
The last couple of days we’ve looked at our big-picture purpose. This can seem a little lofty and too large to have any real practical application in our day-to-day lives. Remember Shiloh’s questions of “why.” There are many layers of answers before we get to the answers we have been discussing this week. My plan for today was to look at some of those layers to help us see how we live out our purpose in the small things. As I thought more about that, however, it’s a topic worth spending a whole week on. So we will talk more specifically about the layers of purpose next week.
For today I’d like to emphasize how the previous layers of purpose, as I’m calling them, stop short of our ultimate purpose. My aim is to reveal why we need to maintain a vision of this larger purpose and we cannot stop at the previous layers. This will give you a clue as to where we are going next week, but we will frame it differently then.
You’ll remember from Tuesday’s devotional, we talked about a number of alternative bases for meaning. The largest and most common category in our modern culture I described as self-determined. The idea is to look inside yourself, discover who you are and live out of your true identity (i.e., your values, your interests, your skills etc). This gets so close to the truth, but close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades (we can add bags to that list 😊). Every good lie has a kernel of truth and this one is especially toxic. In fact, it is similar to the first lie that Satan told in the Garden.
Self-Determination
Our true purpose is not self-determined; it is God-given. It is true that we should find out who we are and live according to it. However, the lie is that we look inside ourselves to find out who we are. No! We must look to God, his word, his revelation to find out who we truly are. What we think of ourselves often changes and could be wrong (both too highly and too lowly). Instead we must look at who God says we are and trust that. In the Garden Adam and Eve failed to trust in God to define good and evil and they took it upon themselves to do so. God said they were stewards; they tried to be gods. The sad reality is that we humans will never be satisfied while looking within ourselves to find our purpose. We will only be satisfied when we find it in God.
Happiness
When we look inside ourselves to find our purpose we often find happiness as our ultimate aim or purpose in life. As we said on Tuesday, this leads to a hedonism and doesn’t actually lead to happiness because this is too small a category for our purpose. Instead, when we let God define our purpose we find in Scripture that he satisfies us and in him we find joy.
Galatians 5:22 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy…
Psalm 16:11 11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.
John 15:11 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
The irony of life is that God wants to give us joy, but we don’t find it by looking in ourselves and pursuing it there. It is only truly found in God.
Love
Another alternative that we talked about on Tuesday is family, the more basic purpose to pursue here is love. Next week we will talk about how love is a layer, or step towards our ultimate purpose, but it is not sufficient to describe our purpose.
1 John 4:8–10 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
John 15:12–13 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
1 Corinthians 13:4–8 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.
Galatians 5:22 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy…
Love is lovely idea. The deeply philosophical social critique of Frozen got so close. Unfortunately if we “look inside ourselves” to discover love we won’t actually find it in it’s purest form. God is love. Jesus’ death on the cross defines love as it is the greatest act of love in creation. The Spirit of God produces this love within us. Therefore, without a desire to know God, be with God and glorify God, our concept of love will not come close to genuine love.
Achievement
Lastly, on Tuesday we talked about achievements as a grounding for meaning. Achievements are, yet again, a layer in our ultimate purpose. But we must not end there as so many in the church have done to catastrophic results. As we talked about last week, God calls us to good works (Eph. 2:10). Jesus wants us to bear fruit (Jn. 15:8). But we must not miss the big picture in our pursuit of achievements.
John 15:8 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
Ephesians 2:10 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Without a secure identity in Christ, knowing that we are created by God, to be with God, without a big-picture purpose of glorifying God, we so quickly pursue achievement for our own glory and out of our own insecurities to validate ourselves. We abandon the will of God and opt instead for our own will.
Again, today my aim was to reveal how this big-picture vision of our purpose is so vitally important for us to keep in mind. It may not seem applicable in everyday life as there are so many layers between this and our initial question of why. We don’t often think about it in our day-to-day and that’s okay. If someone asks my why I’m going to take a shower I’m not going to say, “To glorify God with my body.” That’s a little much. But I must ultimately have a sense that this is why I do what I do. Without this ultimate meaning we will so quickly get off course, chasing a lesser purpose than we were truly designed to live in.
“God created us male and female in his own image to know him, love him, live with him, and to glorify him. And it is right that we who were created by God should live to his glory.”