THE Purpose of Life

We were designed by God to be loved by Him and to love Him in return. Since the very first days He has guided us, fought for us, disciplined us, been our teacher, protector, lover, friend. He sent His Son to show us how to live and to die for us. God's love for us is never ending and His desire is for us to be like His Son whom He loves.

Christ is our example of how to love God and walk through our days on this earth before Him. He tells us to love God out of the depths of our being. Loving God is the highest accomplishment in life and the greatest aspiration of mankind.

When Paul was speaking to a group of those seeking God but not knowing Him, Paul told them this:

You have been worshiping him without knowing who he is, and now I wish to tell you about him. He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn't live in man-made temples, and human hands can't serve his needs-- for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need there is.

Every culture on earth seeks to know God and worship Him. God has "set eternity in our hearts" and the depths of each of us searches for the answer to life.

From one man he created all the nations throughout the whole earth. He decided beforehand which should rise and fall, and he determined their boundaries. His purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him--though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. As one of your own poets says, 'We are his offspring.' And since this is true, we shouldn't think of God as an idol designed by craftsmen from gold or silver or stone.

Many turned to worship the creation they saw, some have attributed gods to phenomenon such as thunder or earthquakes, others made up gods to worship, in recent years we have turned to worship ourselves. The point is that all people need to worship because God has placed in us a desire to seek Him.

God overlooked people's former ignorance about these things, but now he commands everyone everywhere to turn away from idols and turn to him. For he has set a day for judging the world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead.

Since He created mankind He has set about to make Himself known. He has done so in many ways, as you can read in the Bible, and then He sent His Son so that we could see Him, speak with Him and He could reveal to us the Father.

As followers of Christ, we believe in one God who sent His Son Jesus to rescue us and restore us to the Lord. Jesus Christ showed us the Father as He walked the earth. He showed us how to live before God and the right priorities of life. We are to love God with all that we are and then to love those around us as well.

The purpose of life then is to follow Christ as our example in how to love the Lord with all that we are and live each breath for Him.

Resources

Don't Waste Your Life By John Piper