The Reason For Everything (Part 1)

The ancient Hebrews didn’t try to prove the existence of God. They didn’t function with the kind of logic Aristotle brought to the Greeks (of course, the Greeks didn't have that kind of logic before Aristotle either). Their relationship with their environment was less cerebral, more practical.

They simply saw the expression of God in everything that exists—even themselves. In the world around them they saw God’s power, beauty, love, care, honor, wisdom, creativity—in other words, His glory.

They also saw that something was wrong. This beautifully created and wonderfully organized world also contained some ugliness, chaos, and especially in fellow humans, something that didn’t seem to fit. Something was not in sync with the glory in the rest of God’s creation. Being out of harmony with God’s glory produced something undesirable—evil.

Providentially, the Creator revealed Himself from time to time so that one part of creation God made to be most like Himself, people “created in His image”, could know and relate to Him in love.

Those revelations came to us through many different ways (actions, words, prophets, etc.) until at last God revealed Himself in humanity as one of us—Jesus Christ.

We most clearly see our raison-d’etre, our reason for being or purpose for life, when we are in sync with God as He has revealed Himself. Somehow, life begins to make sense when we get to know God, relate to Him in love, and especially when we ourselves begin to reflect His glory.

Warren summarizes the purpose for life as bringing glory to God, and lists 5 aspects of that purpose in our study booklet, “What On Earth Am I Here For?”. These 5 purposes are covered more fully in "The Purpose Driven Life". For now, write them out for yourself as Warren states them on pages 51-55 of the booklet.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

You might list some additional purposes (or even a completely different purpose) for your life.

We’ll cover the last part of this chapter in our 8th (and final) installment of this study next week.

Questions for today:

Have you ever clearly stated what you think is your own purpose for life?

How does your purpose for your life fit with (or compare to) the 5 purposes Warren lists?