Quotes about Purpose

Thomas Watson (1620—1686), a Puritan preacher and author, said, "He has no design upon us, but to make us happy. . . . Who should be cheerful, if not the people of God?

Jim Elliot put it, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose." Why work for what has no lasting value? Why rejoice over what in the end will not matter?

The people who change lives are the ones who point us away from the world's short-term perspective to God's long-term perspective. Life on earth is a dot, a brief window of opportunity; life in Heaven (and ultimately on the New Earth) is a line going out from that dot for eternity. If we're smart, we'll live not for the dot, but for the line.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world." —C. S. Lewis

What we do with a little time, a little talent, and a little money tells God a lot.

Life on earth is a dot, a brief window of opportunity; life in Heaven (and ultimately on the New Earth) is a line going out from that dot for eternity. If we're smart, we'll live not for the dot, but for the line.

Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving.

Eternal life doesn't begin when we die; it has already begun. With eternity in view, nearly any honest activity—whether building a shed, driving a bus, pruning trees, changing diapers, or caring for a patient—can be an investment in God's kingdom.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next." —C. S. Lewis

To be truly happy—a man must have sources of gladness which are not dependent on anything in this world." —J. C. Ryle

Once we've been reconciled to God, we can do something more about our happiness by doing what happy people do. Happiness doesn't precede giving and serving; it accompanies and follows it.

God could have created us without loving us, but He would not have gone to the Cross without loving us.