Understanding Purpose

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Let's be assured of this right from the start: God wants us to succeed. The Creator God of heaven and earth desires our success. We are destined to succeed. But He wants us to understand what success truly is and have His perspective of it.

Success goes beyond the material and physical and engages the spiritual. We must understand life and its purpose in order to understand success in life.

Man is a living soul created by a personal living God in His very image (Genesis 2:7). What this means is that we are made for God. We are made for a relationship with Him in this life and to live forever with Him in the glory of Heaven when our mission here is over.

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The soul is man's life. It is man's real self, his total self. God made us so that He Himself could live in the soul. He knows us as individuals and loves us individually. He wants to have a personal relationship with each of us so He could control our souls in a relationship of faith and love and obedience. This is what gives meaning and purpose to our lives on earth. We see then why a life without God is said to be an "empty" life. Empty indeed!

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Jesus asked this question about the soul: "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Mark 8:36). The answer is, "Nothing." He asked another question: "Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Mark 8:37).

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No one can buy back his soul. Only the blood of Jesus Himself shed for the forgiveness of our sins can cleanse and restore the soul. The sacrifice death of Jesus on the cross is proof of the inestimable eternal value of God places on the soul. Jesus Christ died for us to bring every soul back to God. That's how much each of us is worth.

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Yes, God wants His children to succeed. He created us to live totally successful lives with mastery over our environment:

Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

But true success can only happen as long as our souls prosper. God has this to say about success:

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. 3 John 2 KJV

God does not consider money, wealth (possessions), power (position), or fame to be wrong in and of themselves. It is the wrong relationship to them that wounds His heart. It is when these things usurp His place in our lives, when they become the reason and purpose of our lives that they constitute a problem, and His purpose for creating us is destroyed.

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It is when we make the selfish pursuit of these things more important than the pursuit of our Maker that we are lost as true human beings. It is when we choose to find ultimate significance and identity in them rather than in Christ that life loses its meaning.

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And a man cannot find significance in any lasting way apart from Christ (John 15:5). It is ultimately worthless when we think life is just all about money, wealth, power and fame. We have will satisfy (Ecclesiastes 3:11). All earthly goals and ambitions when pursued as ends in themselves lead to dissatisfaction and frustration. Contentment and joy are found only in God.

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