The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?

Chapter One

Getting the Most from This Book

This is more than a book; it is a guide to a 40-day spiritual journey that will enable you to discover the answer to life's most important question: What on earth am I here for? By the end of this journey you will know God's purpose for your life and will understand the big picture-how all the pieces of your life fit together. Having this perspective will reduce your stress, simplify your decisions, increase your satisfaction, and, most important, prepare you for eternity.

Your Next 40 Days

Today the average life span is 25,550 days. That's how long you will live if you are typical. Don't you think it would be a wise use of time to set aside 40 of those days to figure out what God wants you to do with the rest of them?

The Bible is clear that God considers 40 days a spiritually significant time period. Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purposes, he took 40 days:

• Noah's life was transformed by 40 days of rain.

• Moses was transformed by 40 days on Mount Sinai.

• The spies were transformed by 40 days in the Promised Land.

• David was transformed by Goliath's 40-day challenge.

• Elijah was transformed when God gave him 40 days of
strength from a single meal.

• The entire city of Nineveh was transformed when God gave
the people 40 days to change.

• Jesus was empowered by 40 days in the wilderness.

• The disciples were transformed by 40 days with Jesus after
his resurrection.

The next 40 days will transform your life.

This book is divided into 40 brief chapters. I strongly urge you to read only one chapter a day, so you will have time to think about the implications for your life. The Bible says, "Let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will know what God wants you to do."

One reason most books don't transform us is that we are so eager to read the next chapter, we don't pause and take the time to seriously consider what we have just read. We rush to the next truth without reflecting on what we have learned.

Don't just read this book. Interact with it. Underline it. Write your own thoughts in the margins. Make it your book. Personalize it! The books that have helped me most are the ones that I reacted to, not just read.

Four Features to Help You

At the end of each chapter is a section called "Thinking about My Purpose." There you will find:

• A Point to Ponder. This is a nugget of truth that summarizes
a principle of purpose-driven living that you can reflect on
throughout your day. Paul told Timothy, "Reflect on what I
am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this."

• A Verse to Remember. This is a Bible verse that teaches a
truth from that chapter. If you really want to improve your
life, memorizing Scripture may be the most important habit
you can begin. You can either copy these verses onto small
cards to carry with you, or purchase a Purpose-Driven Life
Scripture and Affirmation Pack.

• A Question to Consider. These questions will help you
think about the implications of what you have read and how
it applies to you personally. Let me encourage you to write
your answers in the margin of this book or in a notebook, or
obtain a copy of The Purpose-Driven Life Journal, a
companion book designed for this purpose. Writing down
your thoughts is the best way to clarify them.

In appendix 1 you will find:

• Discussion Questions. I strongly urge you to get one or more friends to join you in reading this book during the next 40 days. A journey is always better when it is shared. With a partner or a small reading group you can discuss what you read and bounce ideas off each other. This will help you grow stronger and deeper spiritually. Real spiritual growth isnever an isolated, individualistic pursuit. Maturity is produced through relationships and community.

The best way to explain God's purpose for your life is to allow the Scripture to speak for itself, so in this book the Bible is quoted extensively, using over a thousand different verses from fifteen English translations and paraphrases. I have varied the versions used for several important reasons, which I explain in appendix 3.

I Have Been Praying for You

As I wrote this book, I often prayed that you would experience the incredible sense of hope, energy, and joy that comes from discovering what God put you on this planet to do. There's nothing quite like it. I am excited because I know all the great things that are going to happen to you. They happened to me, and I have never been the same since I discovered the purpose of my life.

Because I know the benefits, I want to challenge you to stick with this spiritual journey for the next 40 days, not missing a single daily reading. Your life is worth taking the time to think about it. Make it a daily appointment on your schedule. If you will commit to this, let's sign a covenant together. There is something significant about signing your name to a commitment. If you get a partner to read through this with you, have him or her sign it, too. Let's get started together!

My Covenant

With God's help, I commit the next 40 days of my
life to discovering God's purpose for my life.

___________________________________________________________
Your name

___________________________________________________________
Partner's name

___________________________________________________________
Rick Warren

"Two are better off than one, because together they
can work more effectively. If one of them falls down,
the other can help him up . Two people can resist
an attack that would defeat one person alone.
A rope made of three cords is hard to break."

Ecclesiastes 4:9 (TEV)

WHAT ON EARTH
AM I HERE FOR?

A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump;
a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree.

Proverbs 11:28 (Msg)

Blessed are those who trust in the Lord
They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with
roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees
are not bothered by the heat or worried by long
months of drought. Their leaves stay green,
and they go right on producing delicious fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8 (NLT)

viewpoint. Self-help books, even Christian ones, usually offer the same predictable steps to finding your life's purpose: Consider your dreams. Clarify your values. Set some goals. Figure out what you are good at. Aim high. Go for it! Be disciplined. Believe you can achieve your goals. Involve others. Never give up.

Of course, these recommendations often lead to great success. You can usually succeed in reaching a goal if you put your mind to it. But being successful and fulfilling your life's purpose are not at all the same issue! You could reach all your personal goals, becoming a raving success by the world's standard, and still miss the purposes for which God created you. You need more than self-help advice. The Bible says, "Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self."

This is not a self-help book. It is not about finding the right career, achieving your dreams, or planning your life. It is not about how to cram more activities into an overloaded schedule. Actually, it will teach you how to do less in life-by focusing on what matters most. It is about becoming what God created you to be.

How, then, do you discover the purpose you were created for? You have only two options. Your first option is speculation. This is what most people choose. They conjecture, they guess, they theorize. When people say, "I've always thought life is .," they mean, "This is the best guess I can come up with."

For thousands of years, brilliant philosophers have discussed and speculated about the meaning of life. Philosophy is an important subject and has its uses, but when it comes to determining the purpose of life, even the wisest philosophers are just guessing.

Dr. Hugh Moorhead, a philosophy professor at Northeastern Illinois University, once wrote to 250 of the best-known philosophers, scientists, writers, and intellectuals in the world, asking them, "What is the meaning of life?" He then published their responses in a book. Some offered their best guesses, some admitted that they just made up a purpose for life, and others were honest enough to say they were clueless. In fact, a number of famous intellectuals asked Professor Moorhead to write back and tell them if he discovered the purpose of life!

Fortunately, there is an alternative to speculation about the meaning and purpose of life. It's revelation. We can turn to what God has revealed about life in his Word. The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator of it. The same is true for discovering your life's purpose: Ask God.

God has not left us in the dark to wonder and guess. He has clearly revealed his five purposes for our lives through the Bible. It is our Owner's Manual, explaining why we are alive, how life works, what to avoid, and what to expect in the future. It explains what no self-help or philosophy book could know. The Bible says, "God's wisdom . goes deep into the interior of his purposes It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest-what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us."

God is not just the starting point of your life; he is the source of it. To discover your purpose in life you must turn to God's Word, not the world's wisdom. You must build your life on eternal truths, not pop psychology, success-motivation, or inspirational stories. The Bible says, "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 overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone." This verse gives us three insights into your purpose.

1. You discover your identity and purpose through a
relationship with Jesus Christ. If you don't have such a
relationship, I will later explain how to begin one.

2. God was thinking of you long before you ever thought
about him. His purpose for your life predates your
conception. He planned it before you
existed, without your input! You may
choose your career, your spouse, your
hobbies, and many other parts of
your life, but you don't get to choose
your purpose.

3. The purpose of your life fits into a much
larger, cosmic purpose that God has designed for
eternity. That's what this book is about.

Andrei Bitov, a Russian novelist, grew up under an atheistic Communist regime. But God got his attention one dreary day. He recalls, "In my twenty-seventh year, while riding the metro in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) I was overcome with a despair so great that life seemed to stop at once, preempting the future entirely, let alone any meaning. Suddenly, all by itself, a phrase appeared: Without God life makes no sense. Repeating it in astonishment, I rode the phrase up like a moving staircase, got out of the metro and walked into God's light."

You may have felt in the dark about your purpose in life. Congratulations, you're about to walk into the light.

Day One

Thinking about My Purpose

Point to Ponder: It's not about me.

Verse to Remember:"Everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him." Colossians 1:16b (Msg)

Question to Consider: In spite of all the advertising around me, how can I remind myself that life is really about living for God, not myself?

Chapter Two

I am your Creator. You were in my care
even before you were born.

Isaiah 44:2a (CEV)

God doesn't play dice.

Albert Einstein

You are not an accident.

Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.

Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you! The Bible says, "The Lord will fulfill his purpose for me."

God prescribed every single detail of your body. He deliberately chose your race, the color of your skin, your hair, and every other feature. He custom-made your body just the way he wanted it. He also determined the natural talents you would possess and the uniqueness of your personality. The Bible says, "You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something."

Because God made you for a reason, he also decided when you would be born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. The Bible says, "You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book!"

God also planned where you'd be born and where you'd live for his purpose. Your race and nationality are no accident. God left no detail to chance. He planned it all for his purpose. The Bible says, "From one man he made every nation, . and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live." Nothing in your life is arbitrary. It's all for a purpose.

Continues.

Continues.