Purpose. What's Yours - And How Do You Know?

My son Adam has a friend I'll call Ben. The two of them met online in a web-based training program for professional animators. Ben lives in Alaska; he is a very quiet guy; and he and his family have absolutely no connection of any kind with church or the Christian faith.

Now, since making connections in the animation industry is tough from Alaska, Adam invited Ben to come live with our family in Missouri. We invited Ben to church often; we invited him to join us in prayer; Adam invited him to the Bible study he was involved in; we had our natural family conversations about faith around him; when my wife was in the last days of her battle with cancer, we included him in our prayer times and times of devotional singing. In short, I know Ben saw a lot of the whole range of experience that we would call the Christian life.

Okay, so I'm confident the Holy Spirit was at work the whole time; I won't deny Him that. But as far as I could tell, our witness didn't have an impact on Ben's resistance.

I don't know for sure if it would have made a difference, but there is something that came to me later, after he had returned to Alaska (why does it so often seem to happen that way?). I know that Ben would at least have to have put in some thought if I had asked him one question: BEN, WHAT'S YOUR PURPOSE?

Visionary Gabe Lyons beautifully articulates purpose as Christians understand it in his book The Next Christians: "The next Christians believe that Christ's death and resurrection were not only meant to save people from something. He wanted to save Christians to something. God longs to restore his image in them, and let them loose, freeing them to pursue his original dreams for the entire world. Here, now, today, tomorrow."

Yes! As the one thing in all creation that God made in His own image, humans were made to work alongside Him in caring for everything else He had made; and in a fallen universe, God still calls us to work alongside Him -- to help Him restore everything to Himself again -- starting with other humans.

But if you don't believe in God -- if you're convinced, for example, that we're all here by way of a process of random mutations and other happenstances -- how do you discover your purpose? How can you even intuit that you have one? And if you do discover something you believe to be your purpose, where'd it come from? No, really -- where'd it come from?

The thing is, faith or no faith, people want to know their purpose; they search for it daily. Google it for yourself: just type in "What is my purpose in life?" What you'll find is that folks from Focus on the Family to Forbes to Psychology Today -- and on and on -- have advice for you. More often than not, if the adviser does not have God to point to, then he or she will try to persuade you that your purpose comes from within you.

But in a worldview without God -- in a universe where you and I might be random results of random occurrences -- that explanation doesn't satisfy. "What's your purpose?" becomes a question without an answer. In a worldview with God ... well, it's really not a mystery.

Your turn. What's your purpose? What would you have to share with a guy like Ben?

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