What Drives your Life ?
Reflections on Chapter 3: The Purpose Driven Life.
Point to ponder: Living on purpose is the path to peace.
Verse to remember: You God give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in You. (Isaiah 26:3)
Question to consider: What would my family and friends say is the driving force of my life? What do I want it to be?
Nobody can judge your life accurately. Only you know if you have peace at times when it is only you facing the reality of you. Are you comfortable in your own skin?
I am struck with the similarity between the point to ponder and the verse to remember.
Living a purposeful life is the path to peace- but having peace is a gift of God.
Peace is not something you can attain. It’s a by-product of a meaningful life.
Reflections on My Family of Origin
This is my third or fourth draft of this post. I have trimmed the fat more and more at each rewrite. I hope I have communicated enough to be honest and transparent.
As a boy, well: Life was simple, ordinary, and you guessed it — routine.
My dad worked as an accountant. My Mum was a stay at home Mum. She raised four boys. She had no daughters, a disappointment to her. She would have loved a girl. I was the eldest.
One of my favourite memories as a young boy was the time of year when Mum entered cake competitions at the local show. It was a treat to lick the beaters. Mum baked an Orange bar cake, boiled fruit cake, Kentish cake- with an occasional sponge. She won prizes for all her cakes, with the exception of sponges. Somehow, her sponges were not light and fluffy enough, she used to say. The only thing Mum asked us to mind was not leaving doors open so the cakes didn’t dry out.
My major task as a child was to do my school work. I also studied for Speech and Drama and Eisteddfod performances. I played tennis on Saturdays and went to Sunday School on Sundays. My interests included reading and writing, playing with my toys, and bike riding. When I received pocket money, I began to collect stamps. That was life.
Enter the Teenage Years.
I was a budding entrepreneur, although at that time I did not even know the word.
Here in Australia, you were able to return your used milk bottles and soft drink bottles to the shop for a modest monetary return. Well that’s what I did, particularly on holidays when we went to the beach. People were a little lazy, leaving their bottles in the park or on the beach. I collected them. I returned them to the shop. I scored income.
The other thing I did to earn money was I rolled newspapers for the local butcher shop and fish and chip shop. Yes, the newspapers were recycled back then, long before it became trendy.
I also had my first job at selling, going from door-to-door selling Mum’s garden tomatoes, earning 2 cents for every kilogram I sold.
I saved hard and spent little.
I was also religious.
I took Sunday school and church a little too seriously, Mum and Dad thought. I made a commitment to Jesus Christ when I was 12.
At fifteen I became a Sunday school teacher. At seventeen and eighteen, I was a leader in a Coffee Shop Outreach at the local beach. I was eager to introduce people to the God who loved me, and had paid the penalty of my sin through the Lord Jesus Christ so that He could have a relationship with me.
I learnt the beginning skills of leadership.
I was captain of my local tennis team for a couple of seasons, and I enjoyed working with kids.
Though I did not know it at the time, this prepared me to go into teaching as my profession.
Because I was empathetic to children with disabilities, I decided to train in that speciality. I worked with kids my entire vocational life because of the skills I had learnt as a teenager.
So what do those close to me, think of my life, my priorities and my focus in living?
In this respect, I know that Rick Warren is a 110% right. In the end it really doesn’t matter what other people think.
You weren’t put on earth to be remembered — you were put here to prepare for eternity.
I absolutely resonate with his final thoughts.
“One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity. Fortunately, God wants us to pass the test, and so he has given us the questions in advance.”
As a trained teacher, with qualifications in Education and in Psychology, the hardest examinations I ever had to sit were the exams where you were allowed to take the text book into the examination room. Given the time restraints, you really needed to know your subject.
Applying this to the understanding of the Bible, there is so much confusion about what the Bible teaches. I trust I will not be gullible as I consider this man’s wisdom. However, I also want to be teachable. I trust I am willing to learn from someone who knows God and His Word much better than I.
I will consider the book. I ask you to consider my posts. But do remember you are the pilot of your own life, and no-one can live it but you.
What do I want my life to be?
I think Rick Warren has already given me some clues- life is from God, and we return to God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose, he says.
I certainly want to be all that I was created for, and I know that is easier said than done. I want to be attentive and willing to learn as I consider these chapters.
Another Book I Recommend.
In this context let me recommend another book that has highlighted for me important life skills, and that book is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.
You are the creation of God, and one day your spirit will return to Him who gave it.
This much I do know. I lost a good friend this week, and wrote about it here.
These chapters are not theory for me.
The gift of life is exactly that, a gift. We do not know when we will transition into eternity..
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