Can We Discover God's Purpose for Our Lives?

Can We Discover God’s Purpose for Our Lives?

by Richard Brown, (last revised on 6 January 2008)

Why are we here?

What is the meaning of life?

What is God's purpose for life?

Does life really have a purpose?

If so, then how can we discover the purpose of our own lives?

These are questions that every thoughtful person asks at some point. If there is a purpose for life, then by definition there must be some desirable end result which our lives are intended to attain. But where does the intention come from? If human life is intended to attain a goal, then that intention must come from something prior to human life itself. We can talk of purpose only in the context of a rational plan. If human life exists to fulfill a purpose, then that purpose must have existed prior to the existence of human life. Virtually everything that exists owes its existence to something that preceded it. Ultimately there must be something which is self-existent and is the source of all else that exists. We call that something “God”. Since purpose exists only where there is planning and intention, existence of a purpose for life entails a rational creator. [1]

This raises a second question: How can we discover God’s purpose for human life? We can learn something about God by observing his creation and observing human life itself, but we cannot discover the divine plan in this way, partly because we cannot see the intended end result of human life. It is reasonable to assume that if God wants us to know the purpose of life, then God would have revealed it to us. In fact, there are many books which claim to be revelations from God or other beings. Unfortunately, few of them explain the purpose of human life or why God created the earth and mankind. In fact, there is only one such book: the Bible. Its revelation of God's purpose is outlined in the following pages:

God's General Purpose for Our Lives as Revealed in the Bible

Finding God's Special Purpose for One's Life

The points of the summaries are illustrated with relevant verses, and these have been presented in a variety of translations, according to their clarity on the topic. These translations are cited by their customary abbreviations, as follows:

[1] Current scientific inquiry shows that the universe gives every evidence of having been created with an extraordinary fine-tuning. The obvious implication, for those willing to accept it, is that it was designed and created by an intelligent creator. In quantum theory it is found that at a certain level, physical phenomena respond to observation, either by eluding it or by refusing to take on specific properties until they are observed. Thus the physical laws of creation already assume the existence of conscious observation, and the events of creation itself are said to require an observer in order for them to take place. So for those willing to accept it, all this implies that consciousness is a basic constituent of creation and that a cosmic observer, God, is responsible for creation, for the awesome world in which we live, and for the conscious human beings that inhabit it. But if God created the world and humankind, then he must have had a purpose for creating them.