Presonal Life Mission Statement

What is my purpose for being on this earth? Your mission is unique to you yet blesses the universe. Here are some hints: What puts a sparkle in your eyes—your deep gladness? And what pulls at your heartstrings—some hunger of the world? Avoid being too general (to glorify God) or too specific (to play the piano). Yet put your flesh on your mission: to glorify God through the song of your life in a way that speaks to working years or retirement or even disability. Rework your mission and keep it short; repeat it as a prayer of your heart; put it on a card inside your closet or desk or in your wallet.
--Kent Ira Groff, The Soul of Tomorrow’s Church

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Flush from a mighty victory over Baal’s prophets at the contest on Mount Carmel, Elijah frantically flees Jezebel’s wrath, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (1 Kings 19).

So, the only person surprised when self-pity seizes Elijah’s soul and takes him down into the pit is Elijah. In this sad state of the soul, all his marvelous intuitive, spiritual strengths are turned against him, and he actually begins to believe the devil’s lie that God has abandoned him. Self-pity opens us to enormous self-deception, doesn’t it?

But the moment of our importunity is often God’s opportunity. The still, small voice ministers mercy even while posing the question: “What are you doing here?” What is he doing indeed! What Elijah desperately needs and longs for but cannot name in his muted and defeated condition is the healing of the purpose of his life. This healing of purpose happens only when we are pushed up against the reason for our existence. Only when God begins to ask the core questions of our lives can we hope to recover any sense of the Divine calling upon our lives.
--Gary Straub & Judy Turner, Your Calling as a Leader

Desire

What would it feel like to lay your head on your pillow at night and say, “You know what I did today? I teamed up with God to change the world”?
The desire to be a world-changer is planted in the heart of every human being, and that desire comes directly from the heart of God. We can suffocate that desire in selfishness, silence it with the chatter of competing demands, or bypass it on the fast track to personal achievement. But it’s still there. Whenever we wonder if the daily eight-to-five grind or our round-the-clock parenting tasks are all there is to life, that divine desire nudges us. Whenever we feel restless and unsatisfied, the desire whispers in our soul. Whenever we wonder what a life of real purpose would feel like, the desire calls us to something more.
--Bill Hybels, The Volunteer Revolution

Taks this seriously and listen more carefully to the deeper longings of your heart.

What is your purpose for being?

Here is something worth spending some time reflecting on:

1. What would you say is the specific purpose for which God caused you to be born?
2. What do you think God wants to accomplish through you?
3. What is your specific, divine assignment on this “scratch”?
4. Why do you think God placed you where you are?
--Wayne Cordeiro, Doing Church as a Team

The purpose of Church

This is a vision of church worth building. - Ed

Barbara Brown Taylor in her recent book, Speaking of Sin, gives this description of the church. “The church exists so that God has a community in which to save people from meaninglessness, by reminding them who they are and what they are for. The church exists so that God has a place to point people toward a purpose as big as their capabilities, and help them identify all the ways they flee from that high call. The church exists so that people have a community in which they may confess their sin — as well as a community that will support them to turn back again. The church exists so that people have a place where they may repent of their fear, their hardness of heart, their isolation and loss of vision and where — having repented — they may be restored to fullness of life.”