Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life...

We were made to having meaning. This is why people try dubious methods, like astrology or psychics, 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 becuase I'm struggling to become something, and I don't even know what it is. All I know how to do is 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 spent my strength in vain and for nothing." Job said, "My life drags by - day after hopeless day" and "I give up; I am tired of living. Leave me alone. My life makes no sense." 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. Hope comes from having a purpose. If you have felt hopeless (as I have often struggled with hoeplessness), 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 am planning for you...'I have good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a good future.'" 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 even dream of - infinitely behond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, or hopes."

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. (So no, I won't join your home based business - it's just doesn't fit into my purpose. Please stop calling me now.) 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 you base decisions, allocate your time, and use your resources. You will tend to make choices 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.

Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, churches or other externals - hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart. You think, Maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn't solve your real problem - a lack of focus and purpose.