-- from an email from a new believer... <
.... Often I hear that we have to live our lives for God. What does that mean??? I
also heard that I have to pray in order to find out the purpose of life. I
do not understand how to do that. Before I pray for the answer, don't I need
to seek and search for it in my own way first?
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The beginning of an answer
You want to think of God through a relationship with him.
Not a mechanical list of things to do.
I would not say "live for God" but rather "let God live through you".
Two of my favorite passages on this are :
Micah 6
8 He has showed you, O man [person], what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Matthew 22
36"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 37Jesus replied: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[2] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[3] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments."
"The purpose of life" is a great question. I looked through the scripture and found that if we seek God's purpose, as found in the above passages, our life is full and rich. The expression of Love toward God and to your neighbor is the purpose of life. It is the sharing of our lives as a gift to others as we continue to seek God.
Deuteronomy 4
29 But if from there you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.
Proverbs 8
17 I love those who love me, and those who seek me find me.
Matthew 7
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.
9"Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
Acts 17
24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. 26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'
The first gift God gave us is marriage. A covenant or promise to be faithful to one another and grow together.
While God does not grow, as he is perfect now, we do grow in "grace and the knowledge of him".
This is called sanctification or being "set apart" for relationship with God.
Sanctify
I have put some things together :
Attitude
Some notes on prayer
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