The Purpose Driven Life summary

Clichéd as it is, just about all of us have stared up at the night sky and pondered the meaning of life. And for good reason – the meaning of life is one of the toughest questions faced by mankind. Why, after all, are we here?

The Christian answer to this question is well-known: we were created by God, to serve him. But what exactly does this mean for you and me?

Well, let’s make one thing clear first: God was not obliged to create you. Instead, he happily chose you! The simple fact of your existence is God’s delight. You were not created by accident. You were created deliberately, purposefully. This applies to every aspect of your life: all your talents and experiences that make you who you are, as well as the people and things that matter to you. You see, God shaped every one of us for our unique ministry to him. And this brings us to one of the five purposes in every Christian’s life: to find out about this ministry in God’s big plan and to embrace it.

This is something to remember the next time you feel insignificant in the world. When you feel as though you’re surrounded by chaos, it often helps to look for God to help make sense of things. This is what Russian novelist Andrei Bitov discovered.

For years, he’d been living in despair. Identifying as an atheist, he saw life as completely meaningless. There was no other way to look at it. Or was there? On an ordinary day when Bitov was riding the metro, a phrase popped into his head: “Without God, life makes no sense.”

Bitov describes how suddenly everything became clear. Walking out of the metro and into the light, he was astonished. His misery melted away and he made the decision to dedicate himself to God.

Bitov is among many who serve God each day by worshipping him and the things he has created. Yet, not everybody worships with integrity. Worshipping God isn’t as simple as following a formula. “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.” (Matthew 15:8) In other words, you must be sincere and let your innermost desire to serve God shine through.

Turns out there are more ways to worship than sing hymns: scripture reading, confession, reflecting on a sermon or even admiring a beautiful landscape are all ways of worshipping. Find out in the next blinks how you can get the most meaning out of these experiences.