Life on Purpose
Live on purpose so that you can reflect, design, and discover context for your life.
Our lives are far to noisy. We are constantly bombarded with reality television, social networks, and targeted advertising. New and shiny things dominate the landscape of our lives while many of us develop a fear of being left out. Our appetite for the new x-phone, x-fashion, or x-movie is veracious. More is never enough when the tides of desire toss us about in a sea of want. We lack time, energy, and meaning. Our hope is an escape to other worlds: television is our imagination. We never think, never plan, and have lost a sense of where we are.
Reflect on what you do and who you are. Write down the events of the day; what do you see? A person with too much on their plate? Someone with motivation issues? Or a work-drunk professional who spends left-over time with their family? You can't know who you are until you think about who you are. Someone said that, "the unexamined life is not worth living." I contend that the unexamined life is not really alive. Make better choices by examining your past. Question why things happen and think about your day. Without reflection you become an innate object; your not really moving, just being pushed around.
The unexamined life is not really alive.
Design your life before someone else does. The world is ready to profit from your existence; employers and vendors have a plan for your day and your dollar. They are the path of least resistance, the path of many. It is easy to go with the flow but the flow is usually a downward spiral into a sea of waste. Call it sick, call it sin; we must resist wallowing in self indulgence. When we gratify the desires of a sinful nature we reap a crop of sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. Pausing to think gives you the time to develop a plan, a strategy for living. What are your values? Dreams? For who will you work, for what will you spend?
Discover where you are by examining the past, both near and far. Everything you can remember is history, everything you can discover has already happened. The past reaches into the depths of creation and the shallows of today. Your context is an assembly of these pieces. Where do you live? How do people think? Where do ideas come from? The answers to these questions are not obvious. They are intricate, complicated, and diverse. Understand them and understand yourself. You don't happen in a vacuum. Describe what you see, become a student of yesterday. Historians see clearly because of their ability to draw a straight line from the past and the present. Such a line points most clearly into the future.
Everything you remember is history.
Live on purpose. Think about who you are and your patterns of behavior. You don't need to be a philosopher, just be intentional with your time. Develop a strategy and plan to win. Don't get stuck in the same traps; overcome! Begin to see the story of the world around you: everything came from something. Soon you will realize that you don't have the answers and that we are all part of something greater. Only one person can quench your thirst for purpose, rest, and community. His name is Jesus and there is evidence of Him all around you if you take the time to live life on purpose.
