Living on Purpose: Finding God's Best for Your Life

difference.

Introduction: High Costs of High-Speed Living

Recently we were driving the 1–5 freeway back to Seattle when it began to rain—not an unusual occurrence in our part of the world! But suddenly the rain came down in torrents, which is unusual. It was a downpour that would have impressed Noah. We slowed to 25 miles per hour in the almost zero visibility, watching with amazement as other drivers zoomed past at 65 to 80 miles per hour. Suddenly we slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt. We narrowly missed colliding with the car ahead.

Some of those drivers who had sped by weren’t as fortunate. Over the next hour we slowly threaded our way through the forty-five-car pileup of those who had been in a hurry. Glass and broken metal littered the highway, and occupants huddled in stunned groups by what was left of their cars. At the front of the pileup, the emergency crew huddled around an overturned car. Beside it on a stretcher lay a body cloaked in a white sheet.

All of us know that speed kills. However, we have become obsessed with saving time. When the unexpected hits and we end up in the middle of a disaster over which we have no control at all, we become victims of our own hurried and harried lives.

Where Does Our Drivenness Come From?

Many of us dash along the freeways of our lives at a mad pace. We hurry frantically from job to home to church. Even Christians aren’t immune. A recent bumper sticker read Jesus Is Coming Back . . . Look Busy! And most of us not only look busy, we are drowning in busyness. Yet, in the back of our minds, a small nagging voice keeps asking, Is this what life is really meant to be about? Is this the best that life has to offer? Why has my life become so driven?

A friend of ours in the Dominican Republic was recently watching the hit film Titanic with Spanish subtitles, and the audience was very energetic. As the Titanic began to sink, the young heroine, Rose, and hero, Jack, were literally hanging over the side by their fingernails. Huge waves reached up to consume them. As Rose turned to Jack in desperation, the subtitle flashed up on the screen, ¿Qué pasa, Jack? (What’s up, Jack?). The audience roared. Something obviously got lost in the translation. But seriously, do you ever find yourself hanging by your fingernails, wondering what’s happening and how you got into this fix?

Why are many of us in such a hurry? One of the major reasons is we have unwittingly allowed others to define what is best for our lives. A number of men, and women as well, allow their work to define their sense of purpose. Take Ed for example. He works for a corporation and spends half of his life traveling. Ed rarely takes a day off and at home he is constantly on his cell phone. His wife feels he is more familiar with the inside of a plane than with their own home. Ed’s drivenness comes from his unwavering belief that his purpose in life is to get ahead in his career. Family, friends, and church share the leftovers of Ed’s driven life.

For others, the pressures of family life and the expectations of the suburbs define the direction of their lives. Lois is totally invested in her kids, wanting them to be the high achievers in their upscale, suburban neighborhood. As a consequence, she has signed her two girls up for a raft of activities from music lessons to modeling classes. But Lois has never noticed that she has allowed her neighborhood’s expectations about what constitutes high achievement and the good life to define not only the direction of her family’s life but to chart her daughters’ futures. Nor has she noticed that, though she and her family are active in the church, their faith seems to have little to do with the direction of their lives, though their church activities do add to their busyness.

In Quest of the Best

Many of us can relate to one of the lines in a Bruce Cockburn song Laughter: He tried to build the New Jerusalem but ended up with New York! We start our lives with a lot of idealism, heading toward God’s New Jerusalem. Then we wake up one morning, finding ourselves caught up in a very frenetic New York City kind of timestyle, and we are exhausted.

The premise of Living on Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life We believe you want the best God has for you and your loved ones. The tragedy is that too many of us settle for less, much less, and we miss God’s best. We have little sense of how to find a direction and a rhythm for our lives that flow directly out of our faith. When we fail to find a compelling sense of direction from our faith, we unwittingly allow others to define both the purpose and the pace of our lives. Many of us wind up exhausted and unfulfilled. The question we fail to ask is Why does our faith seem to have so little influence in defining both the direction and tempo of our lives?

Making the Connect between God’s Purposes and Our Lives

We are convinced that our faith has so little influence on the direction and tempo of our lives primarily because of a disconnect between our daily life and our Sunday faith. We often tell pastors that the people in their church have no idea how to connect what is preached on Sunday morning to how they spend their time and resources Monday through Saturday

In this book we not only want to help you find a connect between Sunday faith and daily life, we also want you to find the enormous satisfaction of living on purpose. One of the few positive consequences of the horrific terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, is that a growing number of people are expressing a desire to live their lives with a greater sense of purpose. We dare not underestimate the power of purpose to shape our lives for better or worse. Richard Leider, writing for corporate leaders, states, Purpose is that deepest dimension within us—our central core or essence—where we have a profound sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.[1]

As people committed to an ancient faith, we will never be satisfied allowing the driven purposes of modern culture to define our direction or set our tempo. We will only find the best that God has for us by rediscovering in the Great Story a profound sense of who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. It is only as we merge our story with God’s Story that we can find the purpose for life we seek and a rhythm of life that is renewing instead of exhausting.

Syd Hielema, a professor of theology at Dordt College, points out that we all have the opportunity to become a part of the Great Story that began in the Garden and will be consummated in the New Creation. He writes invitingly that we are all like actors in a play. . . . And we are told, ‘here is your script. You know the character and the plotline. . . . Improvise your parts in the drama so that what you do is consistent with everything I have revealed to you about this drama.’[2] In other words, not only does the Author invite us to be a part of this drama, but we are also invited to improvise how we blend our story with God’s Story. If we accept this invitation, we will find direction for our lives that comes directly from God’s Story instead of the driven aspirations of modern culture.

Jesus was born into a world that, like ours, had two dominating stories. One was a story of self-interest and commerce in an oppressive Roman world. The other was a story of an ancient Jewish faith that began with Abraham and Sarah—a faith that was destined to transform the world. As he grew into adulthood, Jesus lived in both stories and both worlds. But he made a very conscious choice not only to embrace God’s Story but to make God’s purposes his purposes. The mission statement he chose for his life came from Isaiah 61:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to preach good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to release the oppressed,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

LUKE 4:18–19

Many of the first disciples and millions throughout the centuries have also chosen, like Jesus, to commit their lives not only to God but the purposes of God. They found God’s best by turning their backs on the purposes of the dominant culture and giving their lives to the purposes of God’s kingdom. Over and over again we read that those who found God’s best for their lives, from St. Francis of Assisi to John Wesley, were used by God to make an extraordinary difference in their world just like Jesus did. God is still inviting disciples to discover the difference their lives can make if they, like Jesus, make God’s purposes their purposes.

We will show how you begin living on purpose by doing what Jesus did . . . using Scripture to discover a mission statement for your life. Once you have drafted a mission statement, we will show you how to use that statement to create a more celebrative way of life that makes a difference in the world in ways you never imagined

Remembering the Possibilities of the Mustard Seed

Jesus let us in on an astonishing secret. God has chosen to change the world through the lowly, the unassuming, and the imperceptible.[3] Jesus said, What shall we say the kingdom of God is like, or what parable shall we use to describe it? It is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest seed you plant in the ground. Yet when planted, it grows and becomes the largest of all garden plants, with such big branches that the birds of the air can perch in its shade(Mark 4:30–32). God is still using the foolish things of the earth to confound the mighty . . . which should give us all hope. The Bible teaches that God is still working through ordinary people to make a kingdom difference in our world.

Checking Out the Road Map

This book is intended to provide a practical, creative way to enable you to journey with us to find God’s best and to make God’s purposes your purposes. It is designed to be used by individuals or couples, but probably has the greatest value if it is used by small groups or Sunday school classes as an eight-week curriculum. It is also designed to be used as a college or seminary textbook in courses on applied faith. In every chapter we include two off-ramps where you have the opportunity to pull off to the side and actually apply these principles to your life. During these exercises you will not only be able to draft a biblical mission statement but also put wheels under it and create a more satisfying way of life.

The whole idea of life as a journey is basic to Christianity. In the Middle Ages, pilgrimages became a popular expression of a Christian’s whole-faith experience and a way to enter more fully into God’s Story. Devout and humble believers often spent months trekking to a holy shrine as a symbol of their journey toward the City of God and away from the appetites and addictions of the world. In the first two chapters we contrast two different stories about our world with two different visions for what constitutes the good life and a better future. In chapter 3 we will discover how to use a biblical sense of God’s purposes to draft a personal mission statement to begin refocusing our lives. In succeeding chapters we will outline imaginative ways you can use your mission statement to reinvent your lifestyle and timestyle to more authentically reflect the purposes and rhythms of God’s kingdom. In this journey together we hope to help you discover a more festive, less stressed way of life, in which you see how God can use you to make a difference in your world.

Why Another Book on Mission Statements?

Let’s be clear. There is no shortage of books on mission statements. But we have found very few books on the topic that seriously use Scripture to help believers find purpose for their lives. Most of the books we have reviewed tend to start with what turns us on instead of asking what God’s purposes are and how these can be a part of the purpose of our lives.

For instance, Stephen Covey’s recent best-seller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, is a very useful book on mission statements that starts by asking, What kind of family do we really want to be?[4] For a secular audience, this is a great question to begin with, but those of us who are Christians must start with a prior question: What kind of people does God want us to be, and how does God want us to be involved both as individuals and families in the work of God’s kingdom?

And Laurie Beth Jones stresses in her helpful book The Path the importance of developing mission statements to enable us to clarify our purpose and reconsider our life priorities. But she also begins with the individual, what the individual wants, what makes him or her unique, and what stirs that person’s passions, instead of beginning with what God wants and how a person’s uniqueness and passions can become a part of God’s agenda.[5]

Making a Beginning

God has a purpose for all of us that is far more satisfying and rewarding than the drivenness and exhaustion that characterize too many of our lives. In the life God maps out, there is time for spirituality, for family and friends, for celebration and recreation, as well as for caring for others. There is even time to just sit and soak in the beauty of God’s wonderful creation. And in living God’s Story, you will join other Christians who are quietly changing our world. So buckle up your seat belts and let’s begin our journey.

ONE

Looking for God’s Best in All the Wrong Places

The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.

It makes me lie down only when exhausted.

It leads me to deep depression, it hounds my soul.

It leads me in circles of frenzy for activity’s sake.

Even though I run frantically from task to task,

I will never get it all done, for my ideal is with me.

Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.

They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.

They anoint my head with migraines, my in-basket overflows.

Surely fatigue and time pressure shall follow me all the days of my life,

And I will dwell in the bonds of frustration forever.

MARCIA K. HORNOK, PSALM 23, ANTITHESIS

Extreme Cool, High Status, I Want to Be a Millionaire, A Mo Betta Life Man! Everyone is going for the gold. We are all racing along on the freeway of life in quest of the best. Where are we likely to find the good life for ourselves and those we care about? If the skyline of that land of milk and honey suddenly appeared over the next horizon, would we even recognize it? Or would we be taken in by some very seductive, glittering counterfeits and exit on the wrong off-ramp?

Finding the Focus

We are convinced that deep down inside, everyone wants the best God has planned for them. People are looking for the good life, which at its core includes wanting a satisfying way of life that counts for something. But evidence suggests that most of us are missing the best and settling for less, often a lot less. We are surrounded by many stories and competing visions of what constitutes the best—the good life and the better future. The most prevalent story that fills our world today is a product of modern culture and our new global economy. The dream of the good life and the better future at the center of this story is a dream of economic growth, individual upscaling, and ever-expanding consumer choice that we call Boom City. And its dazzling skyline has become the most attractive dream for people all over the planet.

If we don’t draft a mission statement that flows directly out of our faith, like Jesus did, then Boom City will define our mission statement for usWhile many of us are constantly aware that the pressures we are under make our lives one long stress race, we don’t seem to understand where the pressure comes from. We seem to be largely unaware that many of us, including very sincere Christians, have allowed Boom City instead of our faith to define what’s best for our lives and families. To the extent that we allow the dream that drives Boom City to define the direction and