Memory verse: 1 John 4:18 “Perfect love casts out all fear.”
The fulfilment in your life is dependent on your becoming and doing what you were born to do and be. Anything less makes life your enemy and death your friend. It is essential, vital, crucial and necessary that you understand this fundamental principle of purpose and pursue it with all your heart. For going without purpose, life has no heart. Remember, those who don’t know where they are going will probably end up someplace else.
“Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating air” (1 Cor. 9:26).
Discovering purpose
Until purpose is discovered, existence has no meaning, for purpose is the source of fulfillment. Anyone who does not live a life of fulfilment can never live a better life. The societal disease of our time is short term thinking. In essence, we have lost our long term vision and our sense of destiny. Where there is no purpose, no internal reason for living, no significance in life, the demand for discipline commitment, self-control and respect for authority will gradually diminish until we sit among our life-long accomplishment and cry with regret.
In more than 12 years of dealing with people as a servant of God in the ministry, I have met countless individuals who have achieved an incredible degree of success, but have found themselves struggling with an inner hunger that revealed a deep need for personal fulfilment and a yearning of individual significance. This feeling of emptiness and internal failure, even after a significant measure of material and social success, is a direct result of failure to discover purpose in life – a reason for being born. Better life emanates from your purpose. Until your purpose is discovered, life remains an experiment that is based on assumption and hypothesis.
No amount of accomplishment can replace the power and motivation of finding your own special niche and working towards your dreams. Fulfilling purpose must be the primary goal of every person. Without a commitment to the purpose, there can be no better life and lasting success.
What is purpose?
It is essential that we understand and discover our purpose in life, so that we can experience an effective, full and rewarding life and live a better life. Everything in life has a purpose. Everyone on earth was born with and for a purpose. It is this purpose that is the only source of meaning. Without purpose, life is an experiment that results in frustration, disappointment and failure. Without purpose, life is subjective, or a trial-and-error game that is ruled by environmental influences and the circumstances of the moment. Likewise, in the absence of purpose, time has no meaning, energy has no reason, and life has no precision.
Purpose is, therefore, the original intent in the mind of the creator that motivated him to create a particular item. It is the ‘why’ that explains the reasons for existence. Every product is a child of purpose. In order words, before any product is made, there is a purpose established in the mind of the manufacturer. This gives credence to the idea that becomes the substance for the design and production of the product. Thus, purpose precedes production.
Every production is produced by purpose for a purpose. It exists for its original purpose and thus can find its true fulfilment only in performing the purpose for which it was created. Until purpose is discovered, existence has no meaning.
Your existence is evidence that this generation needs something that your life contains. As you discover who you are, you will learn that your purpose, your identity, your uniqueness and your potential are inter-dependent. You cannot truly “know thyself” until you discover your purpose. This is true because known purpose reveals the particular components God built into you, to enable you to achieve all that he prepared for you.