Why are we here on earth? What's the purpose of all this? As I write this, Rick Warren's The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth are We Here For? is #29 of all the books Amazon.com sells. What do you think the purpose of life is? If someone were watching your life, what answer to this question would they learn?

Fortunately, the Bible gives us a very clear answer:

"It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the over-all purpose he is working out in everything and everyone."
Eph. 1:11-12

So there you go. Some guy that lived 2000 years ago left you some kind of cryptic message about what life is all about.

Patrick Glynn wrote a wonderful book God the Evidence in which as an atheist at Harvard began bumming around with some top scientists who came to the interesting conclusion that the earth began with some kind of big bang. What was strange, however, was that this bang - whatever it was - violated some very important laws of physics. Moreover, these scientists began to realize that the idea of Man was there in the first nanosecond of creation. Patrick had proof after proof after proof - and lists them all in this book. Now he's a Believer. The universe, he found, was not created by random chance, but by some Intelligence with a purpose behind it. The metaphor of the explosion really doesn't fit. An explosion doesn't leave order and symmetry such as whatever happened did.

So the universe was created for Man. It was created by something outside of the universe that had an agenda in mind. What was the purpose of Man? Why were we created?

Although it is difficult to see the reasoning of God the Creator, from our perspective he must have been lonely. The angels served God, but were not created in the image of God and had little in the way of choice. Man was created in the image of God and given the ability to choose whether to love God or not. He/She was created to glorify God and to praise him. There can be no love unless there is choice. God took an incredible risk in giving this choice.

So what is the purpose of life? John tells us in the word of Jesus in John 14.

The person who trusts me will not only do what I'm doing but even greater things, because I, on the way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I've been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I'll do it. That's how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I'll do.
John 14:12-13.

So there you have it. The purpose of life is to glorify God and to bring His Kingdom here on earth. The Great Commission was commissioning service for the disciples (and us) to get going on this.

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