From his book ‘The Purpose Driven Life’, Rick Warren shares:
There are five great benefits of living a purpose driven life: Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life. We were made to have meaning. This is why people have dubious methods, like astrology, or physics to discover it. When life has meaning you can bear almost anything; without it, nothing is bearable.
A young man in his twenties wrote, “I feel like a failure because I’m struggling to become something, and I don’t even know what it is. All I know how to do is to get by. Someday, if I discover my purpose, I’ll feel I’m beginning to live.”
Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope. In the Bible many different people expressed this hopelessness. Isaiah complained, “I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in vain and for nothing.”6 Job said, “My life drags by—day after hopeless day”7 and “give up; I am tired of living. Leave me alone. My life makes no sense.”8 The greatest tragedy is not death, but life without purpose.
Hope is as essential to your life as air and water. You need hope to cope. Dr. Bernie Siegel found he could predict which of his cancer patients would go into remission by asking, “Do you want to live to be one hundred?” Those with a deep sense of purpose answered yes and were the ones likely to survive. Hope comes from having a purpose.
If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose. God says, “I know what I’m planning for you . . . .’I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.'”9 You may feel you are facing an impossible situation, but the Bible says, God . . . is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or dream of—infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes.”10
Knowing your purpose simplifies your life. It defines what you do and what you don’t do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential and which aren’t. You simply ask, “Does this activity help me fulfill one of God’s purposes for my life?”
Without a clear purpose you have no foundation on which to base decisions, allocate your time, and use your resources. You will tend to make decisions based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at that moment. People who don’t know their purpose try to do too much—and that causes stress, fatigue, and conflict.
It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God’s will. If you can’t get it all done, it means you are trying to do more than God intended for you to do (or possibly that you are watching too much television). Purpose-driven living leads to a simpler lifestyle and a saner schedule. The Bible says, A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.”11 It also leads to peace of mind: “You Lord, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you.”12 ~Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 USA) p. 30-31
Notes: 6. Isaiah 49:4, (NIV). 7. Job 7:6 (LB). 8. Job 7:16 (TEV). 9. Jeremiah 29:11 (NCV). 10. Ephesians 3:20 (LB). 11. Proverbs 13:7 (Msg). 12.Isaiah 26:3 (TEV).
