Quotes about Purpose

Through the wise, skillful words of this author, God was telling me that effective ministry could never be measured by the size of an audience, by the number of books I'd written, by the acclaim of the crowds, but only by the lives being changed as the Spirit of God rested upon me.

If I throw out a boathook from the boat and catch hold of the shore and pull, do I pull the shore to me, or do I pull myself to the shore? Prayer is not pulling God to my will, but the aligning of my will to the will of God.1

Life is a gift, however long it lasts. It's God's to give and take away as He sees fit. We go through life thinking we're entitled to our ninety, but we're not entitled to anything. All we can do is trust that He knows what He's doing. That He has a plan for all of us, and that no pain He allows in our life will go unused.

If there is no God, we know there is no ultimate meaning or purpose to life: that all existence—including, of course, our own—is the result of random chance.

Belief in God means more than believing God exists; it also means believing God cares about us. After all, if God exists but doesn't care about us, what difference does it make to us whether God exists? For all intents and purposes, there is no difference between atheism and the existence of a God who doesn't care about us.

Any atheist who believes good and evil really exist, or life has a purpose beyond one he or she has made up, or that free will exists, or, for that matter, that science alone will explain how the universe came about, or how life arose from non-life, or how intelligence arose from non-intelligence, has suspended reason in favor of faith.

Many people seem to want this epitaph: "I led as painless a life as possible." But the purpose of life is not to avoid pain. That is the purpose of an animal's life—but animals cannot know happiness.

God rested from all his work which he created to do/make. The last word, this last 'to do' is for us, we are the partners in the completion of creation, it's not done yet.

The essential message of Judaism and Christianity is that life is not an end in itself. Life is to be a means—to goodness, to sanctity, and to God. The belief in life as an end in itself is a form of idolatry.

The human being is here to redeem the world.

There is work for us to do to be God's partner as it were and to continue. There is something for every one of you to do as a partner with God in this world. He has rested and as it were now, we take over. Later, God does not intervene quite as much as obviously as God did with the Exodus of Egypt.

A simple test to ascertain how much you enjoy and derive meaning from your work is to ask yourself whether you would continue doing it if you won the lottery.