What's It All About?

If you're thinking that title sounds like a song from the 1960s, you would be right.  Asked another way, the question might be "what is the purpose of my life?"  And that is the question I'm asking today.  What's your purpose?  What's my purpose?

You may be answering this way:  I'm a teacher; I'm a nurse; I'm a pastor;  I'm an engineer;  I'm a sales person; I'm a mom.  All those are valid answers, but they really only answer what you do.  They don't address your purpose for doing it.

And that's a core question we each need to answer.  Why do we do what we do?  Why do we not do the things we don't do?  What is our purpose?

I've been reading anything: the prayer that unlocked my God and my Soul by Jennie Allen.  In a chapter titled "seeing God", she writes about Jesus' prayer in John 17.  This is some of what she has to say:

Not only did Jesus pray for himself but he prayed for his disciples and us.
He prayed this prayer: "Father, glorify yourself through me.  Glorify yourself through them."  (John 17, paraphrased) 

Everyone sitting with him that night felt the weight of a call so large, so costly, so significant:  the call to show the glory of God to the earth.  A few men meant to display God.

Friends, we're up.  Those men are gone.  Now we show God.  But we would rather be at Target and on Facebook.

Those are powerful words, wouldn't you agree?  And they hit right at the core question that began this post.  What is life all about anyway?  What is my purpose?  What is your purpose?

Jennie would say - and I would agree with her - that our purpose is to display God.

We're here on this earth for a reason.  For a purpose.  And that purpose is to glorify God.  To display God to the world.

That purpose is not to make more money or have a bigger house or have a nice vacation or a lot of Facebook friends.  It is not to have more stuff.  It is not to have a closet stuffed full of more clothes than we could possibly wear.  It is not for our children to wear name-brand sneakers and have 10 different Iron Man (or Superman or Buzz Lightyear or whatever) action figures.

It is to display God. To our families.  To our children.  To our communities.  To the world.

Something to think about.

"Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God."  (1 Corinthians 10:31b ESV)