Over these last few weeks I’ve been thinking a lot about purpose and pupose is a hot topic, obvious by Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life”. People want to know, “what’s my purpose in life?” and, “why was I created and what was I created to do?” Heck, even I want the answer to these questions and have often found myself asking them of God, “God, what am I supposed to be doing?” Yes, doing. And lately I’ve been giving this a lot of thought and every time I find myself in an internal dialogue with God about it, every time it seems I hear Him in my spirit simply say, “glorify Me.” And that’s it, “glorify Me.” And that’s it? The answer to all of life’s questions and perhaps even the answer to living? in everything, glorify Him? “Yes, in everything, glorify Me.”
Imagine, the newest, hottest book on the Christian bookshelf that’s going to give you all the answers, that’s going to tell you what your purpose is, the meaning to life, your reason for living. You buy it, can hardly wait to dig in to it’s pages, and when you get home and open it up, two words, “glorify Me.” And I can’t help but wonder if and when we hear those two words, do we find them… disappointing?
So simple, but so easy? Nothing is ever that easy. “Glorify Me.” Just two words, and when I really think about what God is saying here, what I really believe He means is “in everything.” Not just part of my life, “oh, here I’ll praise you, Lord, or this area of my life I’ll point to You, or this day I’ll set aside to worship you, God,” but literally, in everything. God never said, “give me part of your life.” But He required that we give Him our all, our everything, even as He gave His all and everything for us.
“Glorify Me.” And what’s that mean to me? It means that my purpose in life, in everything I do, is to be used for His glory. In every situation I find myself. Whether at work, church, or waiting in line at the post office. Every encounter I have with another, everything I set my hand to, everything. In everything I do I have to ask it of God, “God, will this glorify You?” And if not, “how will others ever see Jesus in any of us unless this is our purpose; to glorify You?”
“Yes, glorify Me.”
Your post stimulated several thoughts and questions in mind. And so you’ll know, I am atheist.
1) The ‘purpose’ of life is what you make of it. The very bottom rung of the purpose ladder is to spread your genes, to pass on the best attributes to your children. This is the main purpose of all living things.
But we humans are different. We became self-aware. With that knowledge comes the awareness of death. And with that knowledge comes the need to explain death. The human mind is simply not capable of contemplating or understanding nothingness. So we create fanciful stories to sooth ourselves that we will be ’saved’ after we die.
2) Which god? In recorded human history, there are now just shy of 5000 identified gods. So which god? Thor? Jupiter? Ahadram? Zeus? Their ‘teachings’ all say the same as the Abrahamic God, that belief in them is the ONLY way to salvation, and that belief in other gods is wrong.
3) If you lived 2500 years ago in South America in the Maya culture, you would have believed with every fiber of your being that you had to sacrifice a human being every day in order for the sun to rise every day. If you were born 500 years ago a Cherokee Native American, you would have believed with every fiber of your being that Eagles carried the souls of the dead. If you were born 700 years ago in the Inuit culture in the Arctic Circle, you would have believed with every fiber of your being that the Aurora Borealis was where souls went after death. All of these were wrong.
4) For my wife and I, both atheist, the ‘purpose’ of life is to LIVE it. To enjoy every day and our love for each other. To get out and explore culture, good food, the company of other people, reading great books and walking on the beach looking for cool shells and shark teeth.
What more ‘purpose’ could you want than that? Why does the belief in a god(s) need to be present to have a wonderful purpose?
Great truth! Thanks for sharing…
-cs
http://chrisschellenberg.com/
Recently I was asking myself the same question recently, What is God’s purpose for my life?
God directly me to this Sermon; The Pursuit of Purpose by Pastor Dr. Myles Munroe.
Watch it and let me know what you think.
All 10 parts of the video can be found on my YouTube Channel at http://www.youtube.com/sgdavid
God Bless You Richly!
David
Singapore
Hey Croixian1,
Thanks for stopping by and I can appreciate your comments. Obviously, you being Atheist and I being a Believer we come from very different viewpoints and I suppose the only true difference between us is this; I choose to believe and you choose not to, yet, we both have a set of “belief” systems.
But in answer to your question, “why does the belief in a god need to be present to have a wonderful purpose?” For some people the answer could be, “it doesn’t,” and for others, “it most definitely does.” Perhaps it’s all a matter of perspective, or where you’re at in life. Like an old saying that goes something like this; a man might be an Atheist until he finds himself stranded in the middle of an ocean.
It’s funny, I just had a similar conversation with another Believer this past week on this very topic, and the question we both wanted to pose to Unbelievers was this, “what would you have to lose if you did believe there was a God?” And so, you being an Atheist, what would you?
I mean, the way I see it is this; “Why would I want to believe in nothingness when I die, when I could rather believe that there truly is a God up there who loves me that I get to spend eternity with?” If you’re right, then I’ll just cease to exist and won’t have any recollection of what I believed or didn’t believe while living here, but if I’m right and there is a God, then I’ll sure be glad I did:)
What it all comes down to is faith and that is the only way I know how to describe it. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not yet seen.” Some people want proof there is a God. Some people say, “well, how can you say your God is the only true God?” Like you said, there’s thousands of deities, and honestly, I probably couldn’t convince you anyway. The only thing I can say is this; that when I look at the life of Jesus, He’s the only one I know of that came down, made Himself of no reputation, hung out with the “ugly” crowd, healed the sick and broken hearted, and then died for the sins of all mankind in one of the most horrible deaths imaginable and yet, He didn’t even deserve it. No other god, or god’s will ever compare, and He did it because He loved us; you and me.
Again, I can’t convince anybody, only God can do that, but I do know this, that if any man truly wants to know and find the truth, and says to God, “if you are real, then let me find you,” he will.
God’s blessings!
~Jen
P.S. And a good book on the subject that comes to mind is “The Case For Christ” written by Lee Strobel, who started out as a spiritual sceptic.
Cschellenberg,
Glad you were blessed and thanks for stopping by! God’s blessings!
~Jen
Hey David,
Thanks for letting me know about the video – sounds interesting. I will definitely check it out when I have the time and then will get back to you. I love youtube!
God’s blessings!
~Jen
I was going to leave another thought, but got sidetracked into reading your response to Croixian1.
Essentially my point of view as well; the believer in God has nothing to lose. Well put!
On a side note, I just wanted to add that I believe you are absolutely correct in stating that a believer can’t convince a non-believer of God, His existence, etc; We can only tell them the Good News that Christ lived as God amongst us, died for our sins (all of humanity), and rose three days later from the dead. The Holy Spirit will be the one to convict a man’s heart, if that man desires to believe.
Grace and peace be with you all.
Hey Christopher,
It’s always good to hear from you! I need to get over to Got Fruit and see what you’ve been blogging about lately. But it’s so true… only God can draw a man’s heart unto Himself. We’re just the sign posts
God’s blessings!
~Jen