What’s the purpose of your life? Is it to make money, build a business, find a partner, hold down a job, pass time, watch movies, or to sit around thinking there is no purpose to life at all? Not really.
The purpose of life is to understand God!
When you understand God, life makes sense. It’s an awe-inspiring experience filled with meaning and worth, value and purpose.
Life grows dark and empty when thought is looking in all the wrong places for meaning and purpose. Like standing in a dark cave to see the light, one needs to head for the entrance of the cave and get himself out into the sunlight. Then the darkness is gone.
Material sense is darkness. Looking for meaning and purpose in a material sense of things is darkness. It’s a depressing place for thought to reside. It may feel empty and void of purpose.
The cure is to “head for the entrance,” to seek out God, which is the Light of Spirit. When thought is standing in the Light of Spirit, which is spiritual sense, the joy of Life appears, and purpose abounds.
You have a divine purpose. It’s to be everything God created you to be, which is loving and lovable, intelligent and creative, engaged and productive, active and fruitful with good works.
The more you understand God and how you fit in, the more you’ll understand your divine purpose and live it out.
Life has purpose, a grand purpose! It’s to know and live out your spiritual truth with God.
Seek out an understanding of God above all else, and you will prosper.
What an awsome reminder! Thank you very much, Evan
The Crown of Life
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/1d4i034do3c?s=e
Thank you Martine for sharing this article. The gentleman mentioned who was always looking down reminds me of so many folks these days looking down at their phones and almost worshipping them. It seems God’s purpose has been replaced in a materialistic world with so many
things that really do not matter. As I recall, with art history, paintings
depicted with hands pointing up, as if to say, I am thinking of things above, or Godlike thoughts. These thoughts really do give purpose and meaning to our lives with the Spirit of Mind’s Truth. Have a heavenly
day everyone.
‘The Divine Purpose’:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/19bn0n8qxsi?s=e
What an uplifting message. Thank you Evan.
Everyone, whether they know it or not, is looking for God. Whatever seems missing or wrong, is really a false sense or false belief that God can be and is missing from their life. It is sometimes called a God-shaped hole, that sense of lack or void that can only be filled by understanding the wonderful goodness of God — always present, always operating in our lives.
Evan mentioned that sometimes, “thought is looking in all the wrong places for meaning and purpose.” Made me think of an old song called Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places. It’s about romantic love but the meaning is the same. When we discover the right place to look, we’ll find that what we need has always been there.
Thank you for the articles Angie and Martine, look forward to savoring them later.
Good always bears repeating! Thank you all for your input as it so adds to the article that Evan provides. Insights into spiritual life.
Thank you, Evan. I always seems that the human life is so limited, so repetitive that there can be no purpose except for the human will. However, as you so succinctly point out in this post, that all Spiritual life is founded in God, Spirit, where our true purpose and joy and be discovered. This is a timely post, for which, I am extremely grateful.
This reminded me of Hymn 162;
“It matters not what be thy lot,
So Love doth guide;
For storm or shine, pure peace is thine,
Whate’er betide.
And of these stones, or tyrants’ thrones,
God able is
To raise up seed—in thought and deed—
To faithful His.
Aye, darkling sense, arise, go hence!
Our God is good.
False fears are foes—truth tatters those,
When understood.
Love looseth thee, and lifteth me,
Ayont hate’s thrall:
There Life is light, and wisdom might,
And God is All.
The centuries break, the earth-bound wake,
God’s glorified!
Who doth His will—His likeness still—
Is satisfied.”
Purpose is expressing Truth and Love.
When I was an almost-toddler facing death I experienced God telling me that life lives and that we all always live, and for now have to learn and live wherever we are, but that I had to go back to help those people who didn’t want me and were mean to me. I didn’t want to because it was too painful and scary, but I understood God saying that it didn’t matter what I wanted or what the haters wanted because life is about what God wants (not quite the right word but I felt it’s truth), and that I belong back there (where I am now) to show what love does and is. Abuse resulted in me learning how to walk later than most but I was determined to obey God and I eventually learned how to walk. And that God will never leave me alone and would always give me the ideas and the help I needed to teach love. The same is true for everyone and we each belong together for everyone’s good.
Each time those choices came up throughout my childhood and later adulthood, I chose to thank and obey God by loving and helping, and Love gave me what I needed to survive and succeed. I had the sense that we all have the general purpose to love and bless and through that we learn and heal, and we each individually have our unique assignments and contributions that are necessary for the whole.
When I was a young child I thought that what made the biggest help for people was improving the stories we tell ourselves and waking up out of bad beliefs. I felt like part of my life purpose was to help people stop believing scary stories and doing scary things by instead being grateful for all the love around us and doing what’s loving. I saw that scared people tried to scare others by hurting them or refused to help and be honest, so I chose to replace my fears with love and gratitude as a way to try to help others be less scared and mean and dishonest. So I disciplined myself to get over the fear of pain, blindness, abuse, darkness, falling, spiders and scorpions, snakes, electric shock or lightning, sickness, false accusation and bullying injustice, motion sickness and car crashes, social rejection, etc. I comforted other children and adults, I comforted scared animals, I taught swimming to overcome others’ fear of drowning, I taught appreciation and protection of hated and feared animals and I taught outdoor skills and love for environment. I taught reading and school skills and anti-bullying attitudes and skills. I taught ballet. I taught storytelling and overcoming fear of public speaking. I taught parenting and early childhood education and how to create and sustain quality childcare systems and social justice. I taught anti-racist social justice environmental justice activism effectiveness and movement building/healing. I taught how to care for people with differing abilities and options.
Whatever skills and knowledge I was teaching and whatever category of people (infant through post graduate through “end-of-life”/transition caregiving) and whatever environment, the assignment I felt from Gid and theme was always about truth, love, and gratitude replacing fear. And always my joy and peace and sense of belonging and fulfilling God’s purpose for my life had to do with helping people through loving and courageous honesty, doing my part for justice and healing at the individual level and the societal and global level.
And that is why Christian Science nursing and practice is so fulfilling and true to who and why we are. And what church is really all about— Replacing fear with humble love and courageous truth, exchanging irreverent ingratitude and lazy complicity in evil … with reverent gratitude and service, preventing and rejecting separatism and hierarchy through whole-heartedly accepting our unity and equality as God’s dearly beloved children who each belong together for our greater good healing our world through the Christ correcting beliefs with right action. We get to better understand a commune with God to the degree that we are loving and serving, and to that degree we are healed and healing, which in turn gives us more insight into and appreciation of God, and turns others to God with more fearless gratitude and love. It is never abstract or theoretical and we’re never pulled down by it. It is all about gratitude for God through glorifying God by being more and more loving. It all fits together harmoniously expanding our experience and expression of God as infinite Love/Life. And that meaning and purpose to our life inspires and empowers and heals.
Thank you Evan and all! When reading Evan’s post today and when reading other messages like it, one word often comes to mind. HOW? In other words, I’d love to understand God better but HOW exactly do I go about doing that?
In thinking about the answer to that question, I’ve thought of Mrs. Eddy. She spent years trying to understand God prior to her discovery of Christian Science, then she had her “initial discovery” of CS which led to her healing from a fall on the ice. And then according to Science and Health, what did she do to better understand God and Christian Science? I think it’s answered in this citation:
For three years after my discovery, I sought the solution of this problem of Mind-healing, searched the Scriptures and read little else, kept aloof from society, and devoted time and energies to discovering a positive rule.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 109:11–15)
More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that studying the Bible is a key to “understanding God” and my relationship to God. And while for years I’ve somewhat studied the Bible as a result of studying the CS Bible Lesson, and done additional Bible study periodically, I’ve come to the conclusion I need to do more “dedicated” Bible study. After all, Mrs. Eddy put this as the FIRST tenet of CS:
1. As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 497:3–4)
Last Friday I stumbled upon a podcast called “The Bible Speaks to You” and listened to episode 144 in which the creator of the podcast (James Early) and another person (Keith Ferrin) discuss ways to study the Bible. These men aren’t students of CS, but the message of the podcast is mostly non-denominational and towards the end of the podcast, Keith describes an interesting way of studying the Bible that I’ve now started to try. Below is a link to the podcast in case others are interested in listening (click on the > to listen to the podcast after clicking on this link). It starts a little slowly (as it seems is the case with most podcasts I listen to), but around the 10-15 minute mark it starts to get interesting and then gets more and more interesting until the end. It’s about an hour in length.
https://thebiblespeakstoyou.com/finding-your-identity-in-the-bible-with-keith-ferrin/
I’m not suggesting by this that everyone should close them off in a room and just study, study, study. I’ve thought back on my school days and realized that I learned by studying the material, but I also learned a tremendous amount by “taking the tests” because the tests made me really think about the material I’d studied in order to put it into practical use. So I think another way we understand God is by “demonstrating” what we’ve studied (e.g. being more kind, loving, honest, patient, etc.). Because through demonstration, we realize what we really understand versus what we just think we understand. Or, through demonstrating what we’ve studied, those truths become ingrained in us.
Thank your for sharing this Edith.
Such wonderful comments today, thank you everyone! Thank you RH for providing the podcast link and your comments! 🙂 The Bible provides us with daily inspiration/spiritual sense and direction from God, and your comments, RH, made me think of this article:
“The Bible and the power of the living Word”:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/8ke1eg9ics
p.s. Madelon Maupin (Bible studies undergrad and grad) did a Sentinel Watch a few months ago and she also has a website with some interesting Bible info:
https://bibleroads.com/about-madelon-maupin/
Thank you RH. I look forward to the podcast and appreciate your words very much.
Thank you all!!!!
Thank you for this important message.
WOW, Evan. That’s such a wonderful message! Thank you!
I tried posting this earlier in reply to RH, but got an “under review message”, so I’ll try posting it again…
Thanks Evan & everyone for your wonderful comments. And thank you RH for your thoughts regarding the Bible and for sharing the link to the podcast. It made me think of an article I read:
“The Bible and the power of the living Word”:
https://sentinel.christianscience.com/shared/view/8ke1eg9ics
Thank you J. This article really highlights the great guidance and truth available to us via the Bible!
A wonderful article how the Bible inspires our spiritual sense, very suitable to today`s SpiritView! Thank you very much “J” ! 🙂
ment the SpiritView up here! :=)
Well, my purpose of Life is to reflect and express God to his.glory and delight!!!
Thank you very much, dear Evan for your lovely and helpful SpiritView today again!
Thanks to all commentators for the Inspirations presented here, so helpful, too!
Yes Evan, and what you wrote up here, i.e. “The purpose of Life is to understand God” and to “seek out an understanding God above all else” is most desirable and benefitial! ♡
Oh i love the thought provoking and healing SpiritView very much! Thank you dear Evan!!!♡