Quotes about Purpose

Our purpose is to get what we want, but God's purpose is to give us what we really need.

I want all of our talk to be redemptively constructive, from the most mundane details to the huge life decisions.

We enter relationships for personal pleasure, self-actualization, and fun. We want low personal cost and high self-defined returns. But God wants high personal cost and high God-defined returns.

The gospel gap in many of our lives doesn't stay empty either. If we do not live with a gospel-shaped, Christ-confident, and change-committed Christianity, that hole will get filled with other things. These things may seem plausible and even biblical, but they will be missing the identity-provision-process core that is meant to fill every believer.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

When I see my identity in Christ, God's presence and provision, and what he is doing in the process, I am willing and able to do things I wouldn't do otherwise.

Who is God using in your life this way?

Understand that conflict is one way God works in our lives

Because it is grounded in the Trinity, our unity also allows us to celebrate our diversity in the body of Christ. There is one God, but three persons. God uses our diversity to accomplish his purpose—our growth in grace. Diversity is not an obstacle, but a very significant means to this end.

Genesis 2 is not speaking primarily to Adam's experience of being lonely as much as it is revealing his nature as the person God created him to be. Because God created a communal being—someone designed for relationships—creation is incomplete without a suitable companion.

So God is not addressing Adam's workload, but rather the fact that he is a social being who lacks a suitable companion.

Each of us is tempted to make relationships the end rather than the means