forty days of purpose...again

I'm late on this whole Purpose Driven Life thing. Last time I attempted to read this book it didn't align with what God was trying to teach me at the time. Well here I am again, my nose back in this book, and maybe for the full forty days this time! I won’t lead you down the path that God took me down to get me to start reading it again, but I’ll just leave you with the fact that God even uses sin to get me where He wants me. Anywho, back to my forty-day musings…

Day Three… …What Drives Your Life?…

Let me just read you a quote from day three…

Without a clear purpose you have no foundation on which you base your decisions, allocate your time, and use your resources. You will tend to make choices based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at the moment. People who don’t know their purpose try to do too much – and that causes stress, fatigue, and conflict.

So…what drives my life? What do I base my decisions on, allocate my time to, and use my resources for? At this point in time I base my decisions on the thing will make me happy or on the fact that it is “the right thing to do.” Why do I get up and go to work? Why do I do my homework? Because at this point in my life I feel that it’s the right thing to do, that it will make me happier down the road a ways. Besides, everybody knows that you’ve got to have a job and you need to get a college degree. It’s just what you do.

Adding even more simplicity than that let me take it down a level to every day things. Why do I eat cereal for breakfast or pizza for lunch? Why do I buy Levi’s when I could just as easily go to Goodwill? Quite simply, these things make me happier. I would rather eat Cap’n Crunch than grits any day of the week, and pizza sounds much better than steamed broccoli (I’m showing my unhealthy tastes here). In short, all these decisions are made with my fulfillment in mind. Simply happiness. That’s all I want. Happiness when I eat. Happiness when I sleep. Happiness when I work and when I play. Happiness when I wear my Levi’s.

We all know the answer to this riddle…God should be the driving force behind our lives, the purpose, not ourselves and our own happiness. But really, in all honesty, when you make a decision, what do you base it on? Think about it. This is what drives you.