WHAT DRIVES YOUR LIFE?
I observed that the basic motive for success is the driving force of envy and jealousy! Ecclesiastes 4:4 (LB)
ţħέ мάή ώίţħόùţ ά ρùŕρόşέ ίş Ļίķέ ά şħίρ ώίţħόùţ ά ŕù∂∂έŕ—ά ώάίғ, ά ήόţħίήģ, ά ήό мάή.-
.---
Thomas Carlyle
Everyone’s life is driven by something.
Most dictionaries define the verb drive as “to guide, to control,
or to direct.” Whether you are driving a car, a nail, or a golf ball,
you are guiding, controlling, and directing it at that moment.
What is the driving force in your life?
Right now you may be driven by a problem, a pressure, or a
deadline. You may be driven by a painful memory, a haunting
fear, or an unconscious belief. There are hundreds of
circumstances, values, and emotions that can drive your life. Here
are five of the most common ones:
Many people are driven by guilt. They spend their entire lives
running from regrets and hiding their shame. Guilt-driven people
are manipulated by memories. They allow their past to control
their future. They often unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success. When Cain sinned, his guilt
disconnected him from God’s presence, and God said, “You will
be a restless wanderer on the earth.” 1 That describes most people
today—wandering through life without a purpose.
We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners
of it. God’s purpose is not limited by your past. He turned a
murderer named Moses into a leader and a coward named Gideon
into a courageous hero, and he can do amazing things with the
rest of your life, too. God specializes in giving people a fresh start.
The Bible says, “What happiness for those whose guilt has been
forgiven! . . . What relief for those who have confessed their sins and
God has cleared their record.” 2
Many people are driven by resentment and anger. They hold
on to hurts and never get over them. Instead of releasing their
pain through forgiveness, they rehearse it over and over in their
minds. Some resentment-driven people “clam up” and internalize
their anger, while others “blow up” and explode it onto others.
Both responses are unhealthy and unhelpful.
Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense
and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain,
perpetuating the past.
Listen: Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue
to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through
resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are
only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake,
learn from it, and then let it go. The Bible says, “To worry yourself
to death with resentment would be a foolish, senseless thing to do.”
Many people are driven by fear. Their fears may be a result of
a traumatic experience, unrealistic expectations, growing up in a
high-control home, or even genetic predisposition. Regardless of
the cause, fear-driven people often miss great opportunities
because they’re afraid to venture out. Instead they play it safe,
avoiding risks and trying to maintain the status quo.
Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you from becoming
what God intends for you to be. You must move against it with
the weapons of faith and love. The Bible says, “Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death,
fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.”
Many people are driven by materialism. Their desire to
acquire becomes the whole goal of their lives. This drive to always
want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will
make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all
three ideas are untrue. Possessions only provide temporary
happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become
bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.
It’s also a myth that if I get more, I will be more important.
Self-worth and net worth are not the same. Your value is not
determined by your valuables, and God says the most valuable
things in life are not things!
The most common myth about money is that having more will
make me more secure. It won’t. Wealth can be lost instantly
through a variety of uncontrollable factors. Real security can only
be found in that which can never be taken from you—your
relationship with God.
Many people are driven by the need for approval. They
allow the expectations of parents or
spouses or children or teachers or
friends to control their lives. Many
adults are still trying to earn the
approval of unpleasable parents.
Others are driven by peer pressure,
always worried by what others
might think. Unfortunately, those
who follow the crowd usually get
lost in it.
I don’t know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to
try to please everyone. Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God’s purposes for your life. Jesus
said, “No one can serve two masters.”
There are other forces that can drive your life but all lead to the
same dead end: unused potential, unnecessary stress, and an
unfulfilled life.
This forty-day journey will show you how to live a purpose-
driven life—a life guided, controlled, and directed by God’s
purposes. Nothing matters more than knowing God’s purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them—not success, wealth, fame, or pleasure.
ωιтнσυт α ρυяρσѕє, ℓιfє ιѕ мσтισи ωιтнσυт мєαиιиg, α¢тινιту ωιтнσυт ∂ιяє¢тισи, αи∂ єνєитѕ ωιтнσυт яєαѕσи.
Without a purpose, life is
trivial, petty, and pointless.
The Benefits of Purpose-Driven Living
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 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
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 havespent 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. 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 life purpose answered yes and were
the ones most 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 am planning for you. . . . ‘I have
good plans for you, not plans to hurt you. I will give you hope and a
good future.’” (Jer 29:11) 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 beyond 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. 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.
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’re trying to do more than God intended for
you to do (or, possibly, that you’re 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.” 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.”
Knowing your purpose focuses your life. It concentrates
your effort and energy on what’s important. You become effective
by being selective.
It’s human nature to get distracted by minor issues. We play
Trivial Pursuit with our lives. Henry David Thoreau observed
that people live lives of “quiet desperation,” but today a better
description is aimless distraction. Many people are like gyroscopes,
spinning around at a frantic pace but never going anywhere.
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.
The Bible says, “Don’t live carelessly, unthinkingly.Make sure you understand what the Master wants.”
The power of focusing can be seen in light. Diffused light has
little power or impact, but you can concentrate its energy by
focusing it. With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be
focused to set grass or paper on fire. When light is focused even
more as a laser beam, it can cut through steel.
There is nothing quite as potent
as a focused life, one lived on
purpose. The men and women who
have made the greatest difference in
history were the most focused. For
instance, the apostle Paul almost single-handedly spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His secret was a focused life. He
said, “I am focusing all my energies on this one thing:Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.”
If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling.
Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with
productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what’s the
point? Paul said, “Let’s keep focused on that goal, those of us who
want everything God has for us.”
Knowing your purpose motivates your life. Purpose always
produces passion. Nothing energizes like a clear purpose. On the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack a purpose. Just
getting out of bed becomes a major
chore. It is usually meaningless
work, not overwork, that wears us
down, saps our strength, and robs
our joy.
George Bernard Shaw wrote,
“This is the true joy of life: the
being used up for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature
instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances,
complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you
happy.”
Knowing your purpose prepares you for eternity. Many
people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth.
They want to be remembered when they’re gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says. What people fail to realize is that all achievements are eventually surpassed, records are broken, reputations fade, and tributes are forgotten. In college, James
Dobson’s goal was to become the school’s tennis champion. He
felt proud when his trophy was prominently placed in the school’s
trophy cabinet. Years later, someone mailed him that trophy. They
had found it in a trashcan when the school was remodeled. Jim
said, “Given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed by
someone else!”
Living to create an earthly legacy is a short-sighted goal. A
wiser use of time is to build an eternal legacy. You weren’t put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for
eternity.
One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of
your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity. The Bible says,
“Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat
of God. . . . Yes, each of us will have to give a personal account to
God.” Fortunately, God wants us to pass this test, so he has
given us the questions in advance. From the Bible we can surmise
that God will ask us two crucial questions:
First, “What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?” God won’t
ask about your religious background or doctrinal views. The only
thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you
and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, “I am the way
and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except
through me.”
Second, “What did you do with what I gave you?” What did
you do with your life—all the gifts, talents,
opportunities, energy, relationships, and
resources God gave you? Did you spend
them on yourself, or did you use them for
the purposes God made you for?”
Preparing you for these two questions is
the goal of this book. The first question will
determine where you spend eternity. The second question
will determine what you do in eternity. By the end of this book
you will be ready to answer both questions.
Day Three
Thinking about My Purpose
Point to Ponder: Living on purpose is the path to
peace.
Verse to Remember: “You, Lord, give perfect peace to
those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in
you.” Isaiah 26:3 (TEV)
Question to Consider: What would my family and friends say is the driving force of my life? What do I
want it to be?
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