Purpose Driven Life - Day 6

Day 6-- Life is a Temporary Assignment

 

To make the best use of your life, you must never forget two truths: First, compared with eternity, life is extremely brief. Second, earth is only a temporary residence. You won't be here long, so don't get too attached. Ask God to help you see life on earth as he sees it. David prayed, "Lord, help me to realize how brief my time on earth will be. Help me to know that I am here for but a moment more."

In order to keep us from becoming too attached to earth, God allows us to feel a significant amount of discontent and dissatisfaction in life--longings that will never be fulfilled on this side of eternity. We're not completely happy here because we're not supposed to be! Earth is not our final home; we were created for something much better.

In God's eyes, the greatest heroes of faith are not those who achieve prosperity, success, and power in this life, but those who treat this life as a temporary assignment and serve faithfully, expecting their promised reward in eternity. Your time on earth is not the complete story of your life. You must wait until heaven for the rest of the chapters. It takes faith to live on earth as a foreigner.

When life gets tough, when you're overwhelmed with doubt, or when you wonder if living for Christ is worth the effort, remember that you are not home yet. At death you won't leave home--you'll go home.

Purpose Driven Life - Day 5

Day 5 .. Seeing Life From God's View

 

How you define life determines your destiny. The way you view life is your life metaphor. It's your description of how life works and what you expect from it; it influences your life more than you realize and determines your expectations, values, relationships, goals, and priorities.

To fulfill the purposes God has for you, you will have to base your view on the biblical metaphors of life. These are: Life is a test, life is a trust, and life is a temporary assignment.

Life is a test. God continually tests people's character, faith, obedience, love, integrity, and loyalty. Character is both developed and revealed, and all of life is a test. When you understand that life is a test, you realize that every day is important. God wants you to pass the tests of life, so he never allows the tests to be greater than the grace he gives you to handle them.

Life is a trust. We are to be stewards of whatever God gives us. All we enjoy is to be treated as a trust that God has placed in our hands. If you treat everything as a trust, God promises three rewards in eternity: affirmation, promotion, and celebration.

Life is a test and a trust; the more God gives you, the more responsible he expects you to be.

Purpose Driven Life - Day 4

Day 4   Made to Last Forever

 

This life is not all there is. Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death--in eternity--than you will here. This life is preparation for the next.

The Bible says "God has planted eternity in the human heart. You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality. This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity. Even though we know everyone eventually dies, death always seems unnatural and unfair. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire!

Just as the nine months you spent in your mother's womb were not an end in themselves but preparation for life, so this life is preparation for the next. If you have a relationship with God through Jesus, you don't need to fear death. The Bible says, "This world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven."

Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever. Years ago a popular slogan encouraged people to live each day as "the first day of the rest of your life." Actually, it would be wiser to live each day as if it were the last day of your life. Matthew Henry said, "It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our final day."

Purpose Driven Life - Day 3

Day 3:  What Drives Your Life?

 

Everyone's life is driven by something. Most dictionaries define the verb drive as "to guide, to control, or to direct." Whether you are driving a car, a nail, or a golf ball, you are guiding, controlling, and directing it at that moment. What is the driving force in your life?

This forty-day journey will show you how to live a purpose-driven life--a life guided, controlled, and directed by God's purposes. Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason.

There are five great benefits of living a purpose-driven life: Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life, simplifies your life, focuses your life, motivates your life. And knowing your purpose prepares you for eternity.

Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says. In college James Dobson's goal was to become the school's tennis champion. He felt proud when his trophy was prominently placed in the school's trophy cabinet. Years later, someone mailed him that trophy. They had found it in a trashcan when the school was remodeled. Jim said, "Given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed by someone else!" Living to create an earthly legacy is a shortsighted goal. A wiser use of time is to build an eternal legacy. You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.

Purpose Driven Life - Day 2

Day 2:  You Are Not An Accident

 

Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it. God never does anything accidentally, and he never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything he creates. God planned every plant and every animal, and every person was designed with a purpose in mind. God's motive for creating you was his love. The Bible says, "Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love." Dr. Michael Denton, senior research fellow in human molecular genetics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has concluded, "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, a whole in which all facets of reality have their meaning and explanation in this central fact." The Bible said the same thing thousands of years earlier: "God formed the earth -- He did not create it to be empty but formed it to be inhabited." Why did God do all this? Why did he bother to go to all the trouble of creating a universe for us? Because he is a God of love. This kind of love is difficult to fathom, but it's fundamentally reliable. You were created as a special object of God's love! God made you so he could love you. This is a truth to build your life on.