The Priceless Question
For thousands of years, we as humanity have been walking this earth asking the same question: Why are we here?
If you asked the greatest ancient Greek philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, or Socrates, they would tell you that we are here to pursue wisdom, truth, and virtue; becoming the best versions of ourselves and finding deep fulfillment.
The Buddha would tell you our purpose is to wake up, be enlightened, and break free from the cycle of suffering.
The Atheist believes there is no Creator, so we are free to create our own meaning and purpose in life.
The Bible tells us something different though and it’s so simple, yet we make it difficult at times.
God isn’t the author of confusion and He’s not trying to trick us about why He put us on this planet. He lays out His purposes for humanity from Genesis all the way to Revelation for us to learn from.
The truth is you were made for more, but “more” doesn’t necessarily mean what our carnal minds might automatically think of.
“More” in this sense, means God created you for specific purposes and when you walk in these purposes, life makes a lot more sense and you find fulfillment because your reason for being is no longer rooted in searching and striving, but instead in just being who God created you to be.
Perspectives of Purpose
Purpose is the reason why something exists, is done, or is created.
Now a creation can only be defined by the one who created it.
We can try so hard to make our own purposes outside of God, but it will never change the fact that we were created by God.
“Live your truth” will never change The Truth.
There is only one truth; everything else is opinion. And if everything were true, then nothing would be true.
When we try to define our lives apart from God, we are going rogue from our Creator, and although we are allowed to do that, we will be missing out on the abundant and eternal life of knowing the abundant and eternal God.
We are multi-purpose beings and when we understand our purpose, we can learn to see the meaning in the mundane—because it all matters.
We Are Purposed To Glorify God
“The twenty-four elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and worship Him who lives forever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: “You are worthy, O Lord, To receive glory and honor and power; For You created all things, And by Your will they exist and were created.”
The King James Version says, “for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”
The glory of God is hard to put into words. It’s His magnificence, excellence, and splendor—the beauty of His character.
In the Old Testament, the Shekinah glory was a visible manifestation of God’s presence with the Israelites on earth. In one instance, He led them by pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
God’s glory is also revealed in Christ as we see in John 1.
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”
And then, God also reveals His glory through His creation. We see this in three ways:
Firstly, we express God’s glory just by being created by Him.
“For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.”
Everything that was made is an expression of God’s beauty, goodness, and creativity.
Anytime you look at another human being, you are looking at someone who was fashioned and formed by God—someone He loves very deeply.
The earth itself, the sun, the moon, and the stars, and everything else reflects the glory of God.
“For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,”
Secondly, we extend glory to God through our words and actions.
Unlike the universe, the earth, and its creatures, mankind has free will and we can either bless God with our lives (glorifying Him) or curse Him.
To glorify God means to honor, to praise, to worship Him; it’s an act of lifting Him up through your words and actions.
“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord; The humble shall hear of it and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together.”
All of creation cries out the praises of God, but we as people have a privilege to praise and worship God with our mouths and more importantly with our hearts (from which everything we do flows.)
Lastly, God exhibits His glory through us.
In John 9, we see Jesus and His disciples come across a blind man and the disciples ask Jesus an interesting question.
“Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.”
After this, Jesus would heal the blind man and every one of the man’s neighbors would be in complete shock, asking what happened.
The man whose sight was restored told them about what Jesus had done and later he would go on to believe that Jesus was the Son of God.
There are countless instances throughout scripture where God showed His power to an unbelieving world through healing people and miracles.
It’s the same in our lives. God can use our lives, hurts, and thorns to reveal His love and power to the non-believers we come across.
We Are Purposed For Relationship
God is perfect and awesome on His own and doesn’t need mankind, yet He’s also personal, loving, and creative, and desires that we would have a relationship with Him.
Every word in scripture shows God’s desire for relationship with people. We see it:
When He created the first two people in the Garden of Eden
With His warning to Cain in Genesis 4:7
When He led His people out of Egypt into the Promised Land
And every other book of the Old Testament: God conversing with, dwelling with, and moving on the behalf of His people.
Then in the New Testament, we see God arrive physically on this earth in human form in the person of Jesus Christ, 100% God and 100% man.
As Jesus walked and sat with people, He preached reconciliation to the Father through repentance because He knew how far we were from God.
His life, death, and resurrection allows us who believe in Him to made right in the sight of the Father, walk in relationship with Him, and experience eternal life here on earth and in the time to come—as we know that eternal life is to know God.
“And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”
Secondly, God has purposed us to walk through this life with others.
In Genesis 2, God says that it’s not good for man to be alone, so He makes someone comparable to him—Eve.
If God says it’s not good for us to be alone, then it’s impossible for us to thrive walking out our assignments and callings being alone.
We were made for connection, and isolating from God and others is a dangerous game when there is a very real enemy out there seeking to steal, kill, and destroy.
“Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; but how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
Life is a lot more fulfilling and purposeful when we walk through all the highs and lows with the people God has put us around.
We Are Purposed For Work & Rest
The average person spends around 70% of their day doing work, whether it be at a job, taking care of family, maintaining other responsibilities, or work for the Kingdom.
Add 5-6 more days in a week, and needless to say, working takes up a lot of our time.
God put man in the Garden of Eden to tend to it and before Adam and Eve sinned, work was enjoyable. But now most of us wake up dreading what we have to get done in a day.
Although some of the work we do here on earth may feel futile, it’s not.
“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.”
The judgment seat of Christ or the Bema seat, isn’t a matter of salvation, but of rewards. We as believers will stand before God one day and give an account for our stewardship and service on earth.
While we can’t lose our salvation, we can lose rewards based on how well we stewarded the assignments and resources God gave us and the commission to make disciples.
This isn’t something to be afraid of, but to be excited about. One day, we will be able to cast our crowns at the feet of Jesus because He’s worthy of the glory and honor.
Our lives here are the precursor, the training grounds for the faultless work we will do during the millennial reign of Christ, but we make work so difficult sometimes.
We wonder if God has some specific work we should do with our lives, but I would argue that He is more concerned with our sanctification in Him than what we do for Him.
There are times where God calls us to specific works and there are other times where we can just do something and trust that God will work through us in those moments and redirect us when need be.
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”
Whatever works we find ourselves doing in our lifetime, whether it be occupational or Kingdom work, would it glorify God (because at the end of the day, we’re all in full time ministry!)
Work is part of a small cycle of work and rest.
In Genesis 1, God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days, and then He rested on the 7th to enjoy the work He did.
He didn’t rest because He needed to, but to model a system of work and rest for us (who do need to rest!)
Working too much can lead to burnout and also can be a form of idolatry.
But taking the Sabbath day to rest (which by Jewish tradition is Saturday) helps us remember that God is the source and provider of our lives. It allows us to focus more on the relationship with Him and others.
So What Does All Of This Mean?
To sum it up, our purpose is simple:
We’re here to glorify God in everything we do
We’re here to love God and love people; to live this life and walk out our assignments with Him and the individuals He’s put around us
And we’re here to steward it all well—going full circle—for His glory.
Hope this blessed you in some way.
Hannah