Day Forty: Purpose Driven Life

November 5, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: Acts 13-14

Weekly Memory Verse: Ezekiel 3:10-11

Good Afternoon Brothers and Sisters,

Proverbs 19:21 (NASB95)
²¹ Many plans are in a man’s heart, But the counsel of the Lord will stand.

Proverbs 4:26 (NASB95)
²⁶ Watch the path of your feet And all your ways will be established.

Psalm 33:11 (NASB95)
¹¹ The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation. ^[1]

This is the final chapter in the purpose driven life.  It comes with homework for all of us.  Rick encourages each person to write out a “life purpose statement”.  It will take time and reflection, but will be beneficial to all of us to carry out this one exercise. 

I am going to encourage each of you to take the book, look at the last chapter and to start the exercise.  We live in busy lives, we are busy with work related items, paying the bills, fixing our possessions, keeping up with the neighbors, spending time on our hobbies, going to church, etc.  Just when we think we have time to take a breath, something else comes up to demand our attention.  It has been said that when Satan can’t defeat you, he can get you to be too busy to be effective for God. 

The Life Purpose statement is well defined in Chapter 40, it will require several hours of thought and several re-writes before you finally get it right.  As time progresses, it may change and require editing.  The point is to clarify and make a concerted effort to understand what God’s will is for your life.  I can’t see any way of duplicating the points of this chapter without copying the entire chapter.  Therefore this is going to be a short study.  Get the book, read and work through the chapter.  I am going to be doing the same thing.  I hope to have my life purpose statement written by this time next week, it may take longer with my wife’s surgery coming up. 

In closing, I want to thank all of you for bearing with me through the forty days, and pray that it has made as much of an impact on you life as it has on mine.  I will return to the Bible study as we previously left off.  There may be a few minor changes, I will let you know as we progress.  I am also investigating other methods of emailing the study, as I figure it out, you may be receiving a few duplicate emails, please bear with the change in email methods.

Father, give each one of us the desire to carry out this exercise, inspire us, and enable us to define each of our life purposes according to Your guidance.

In Him,