Living The Life You Were Meant To Live

Living the Live You Were Meant to Live

Proverbs 16:14 “The Lord has made everything for His own Purpose.”

Introduction

January 11th Garfield Comic strip – Jim Davis

The Garfield comic strip portrays a common Philosophy of Life.

Garfield’s owner, “I gotta do something with my life.”

Garfield – “Why start now?”

“I don’t know what to do.”

Garfield – “Do what I do.”

“I guess I’ll raise my standards”

Garfield – “I’ve lowered my standards.”

“I’ll be tougher on myself!”

Garfield – “Now I’m easier on myself.”

“I’ll take on the world.”

Garfield – “I got out of bed this morning.”

“Who am I kidding?

Garfield – “How do I do it?”

(This comic can be put on power point – 1-11-04 www.garfield.com)

A common questions asked by most people –

I. Why Was I Born?

Many people like Garfield and his master see life as a struggle and hardship. A great task is accomplished for the day by just getting out of bed.

Many feel like the man who gets up in the morning puts on his robe and goes out in the cold – gets the newspaper – looks in the obituary page – if his name isn’t there he goes back to bed.

The Prophet Jeremiah asks – Jeremiah 20:18, “Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my dais in shame?”

As a boy growing up in the small town of gypsum I often wondered why I was having such a hard life. So many people were much better off then we were. We had no indoor plumbing – out bathroom was an outhouse, we had to pump water out of a cistern, when during dry weather carry water from a neighbor’s house, we took a bath once a week in a tub with a few kettles of hot water. Other people in town had indoor bathrooms, hot water and nice cars.

My greatest fun in those days was playing guns. We would cut out a gun from wood and then cut thin round strips of rubber from car tire inner tubes. We would take a wooden clothes pin and wrap the pin on the end of the gun handle with the cut rubber. We would then put a knot in the rubber and put one end in the clothes pen and stretch it over the end of the gun and you have a ready weapon. Open the pin and your shot zings off toward your target. What we had was a former model of today paint gun warfare.

For many years I grew up on a small world – Gypsum – population 600 with infrequent travels to Salina, 25,000, McPherson 10,000 population and Abilene for Rodeos population 5,000. When we took a trip to visit my mother’s parents in Kansas City I was over whelmed by the size of the city. On one trip to Dodge City to see my mother grandparents and my great grandparents I was thrilled to visit Boot Hill. My entire world for many years was confined to the state of Kansas.

In your growing up years you all have asked, “What on earth am I here for?” Why am I here? “What is life all about anyway?

In chapter one of the Purpose Driven Life book Pastor Rick Warren tells about Dr. Hugh Moorhead. He is Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the Northeastern University. He wrote to 250 well-known philosophers, scientists, writers and intellectuals of the world and asked them, “What is the purpose of life?” He then published all their responses in a book.

His book was not that helpful. These professional people offered their best guesses. Some admitted they made up their own purpose in life. Some admitted they didn’t have any idea as to what the purpose of life was and if Dr. Moorhead found out to let them know.

Carl Jung, a psychiatrist once said, “I don’t know the meaning, the purpose of life, but it looks as if something were meant by it.” Many leaders throughout the world believe that life on earth has no purpose.

A life without purpose is a meaningless life. Solomon with all his wealth, a multi billionaire wrote: “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure, my heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 2:10-11.

Only in God’s Word and in the person of Jesus do we find meaning to life.

Proverbs 16:4a “The Lord has made everything for His own Purpose.