I think most people who know me would say the answer to this question for me would be the desire to please. At best, it would be the desire to please God. I also think I want to please people, too, and sometimes this is not necessarily a good thing.

If you’re having trouble with this one, think about why you get up in the morning. I have a feeling a high percentage of people would say they would get up because they have so much to do. I know I would. But that doesn’t take it far enough back. You can do things just because they are there to do, but forget why you are doing them. Go one step further and ask yourself why you are so busy. Let me guess: you’re busy because you are trying to provide for your family. I understand that. I work because I want to provide for my family’s needs and my children’s education so they can go to college and figure out what they want to be when they grow up, so they can be busy making a living, so they can provide for their kids and send them to college, so this can keep on going on and on…

You can see why it has to be more than this. That is a maddening cycle of events, each one justifying itself by the next goal in sight, but there is no higher purpose above it all. T.S. Elliot once asked, “Where is the life we have lost in living?” That’s what we are looking for in a purpose-driven life: The one big reason that drives everything. The value of answering this question is to step back and see what really rules your life. It may not be what you think it is. Don’t be afraid to ask family members to help you with this. What they say and what you imagine they would say might very well be two different things.

Could it be as simple as the fact that we don’t have one? We just never gave the whole idea of a purpose much thought?

It was pointed out that Henry David Thoreau spoke of the “quiet desperation” with which we live our lives but the more accurate rendering of that today might be aimless distraction. Aimless: because we don’t have a purpose, distraction: because it’s too uncomfortable to face that fact.

Actually, Thoreau’s quiet desperation would be an improvement. It might even lead to something good. If we could be quiet long enough to encounter our desperation it might make us do something about it. As it is, we distract ourselves by watching sitcoms and dramas of the desperate lives of other people, and never take the time to assess our own true goals and purposes.

Thinking about purpose often opens up big questions that we may not have answers for. Thoughts regarding ultimate purpose lead to thoughts of about the future of our lives.

I am reminded of a cartoon where the lead character is reading a magazine surrounded by a number of his friends. He is looking at an advertisement and wondering if there could be anything more important in life than owning the fancy sports car he is looking at. Just then one of his friends thinks of a famous movie star who had recently died of cancer. They reflect on the fact that this person, with only a few months left to live, probably figured out what was really important in life. “So why don’t we try and figure it out when we’ve got lots of time left?” This important question leads them all to lie back and stare at the sky for a moment in silence. Then, in the last frame, they are looking at his sports car again, “Red,” one says, and the rest of them heartily agree. “Gotta be red.”

In other words, you can’t focus very long on your ultimate destiny when you don’t have any answers for the big questions—questions like: “Where did we come from? Where are we going? What are we here for?” And the most natural thing to do, if you don’t want to face into these questions, is to avoid them by turning up the volume on what distracts you. One thing you can surely say about this culture: We have an overabundance of stuff with which to distract ourselves from the more important questions of life. Movies, entertainment, non-stop music, computer games, videos, television, and an endless stream of eye-candy keeps our current generation thoroughly engaged with anything but wondering about what we are here for.

Thinking about your ultimate purpose in life can lead you either to a big black hole or to God. If you don’t want to deal with the issue of God, you will have to avoid these big questions of purpose and destiny because to face them without God leaves us with too much emptiness, meaninglessness and futility. Having said that, thousands of people who pick up this booklet will get connected to God. If you don’t know God yet, in a personal way, you can. That’s why the question about Jesus Christ comes at the end of this chapter. Jesus is the key to knowing God.

Jesus Christ has taken the sting out of dealing with God. He is God’s son who was conceived without a human father so he could break the chain of automatic death that is built into our DNA. Jesus, because he came directly from God and proved it by rising from the dead, lived a perfect life, and thus became the ultimate sacrifice for all of us so that, through faith in Him, we too can escape death through a similar resurrection when we die.

We were made for God, it’s just that our rebellion against Him as a human race put a barrier between us and God and it took Jesus to remove it. This is why Jesus Christ is essential to the realization of our purpose. He is the one who puts us back in touch with God.

Jesus once came upon a man who had been crippled for 37 years, and asked him if he wanted to be well. Instead of an immediate “Of course I do!” as you would expect, the man gave Jesus the same old excuse he’d used for most of his life. So stuck in his excuses he couldn’t conceive of another way out. (John 5:1-15)

Sometimes we get so entangled in our dysfunctions, coping systems and even abuse, that it seems hard—even impossible—to break out of their hold on us. This is when we might need some help from the outside, and I’m not only talking about God, but help from other people who have struggled with similar addictions. The recovery movement is important in that it acknowledges that some of our unhealthy relationships are too persistent for us to deal with on our own.

This is when it would be important to get together with a friend with whom you can be honest. There may be formal recovery groups for your particular hang-up, but for others, it may take a friend or two to serve the same function. My particular addiction is that I have become used to having people rescue me instead of dealing with my own responsibilities myself. I haven’t found a Rescued Anonymous group, but I have found some friends who can share this struggle with me and help me face it. That’s what a recovery group is, anyway—a group of people with whom you can be real and who can help you face into your problem in an ongoing way.

Sometimes a friend or two can do the same thing.

Matthew 6:19-30 Jesus talks about the important things in life.

Ecclesiastes 1-3:15 The meaninglessness of life without God’s perspective.