The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren

Our lessons for the coming weeks will be coming from the book "The Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren.  We will be adjusting the content of the lessons to be more kid friendly, but the ultimate goal is to help the children find their true calling through focusing on God instead of themselves.  We started the lessons last Wednesday when we talked about putting God First.

It All Starts with God ....

(1) It's not about you.  The Bible says "It is God who directs the lives of His creatures;  everyone's life is in His power." --Job 12:10  You will not find your life's meaning by looking within yourself.

We displayed a strange invention that noone knew what it was for in the group and explained that just like we could not figure out the use for the invention without the manual, or knowing the inventor, we cannot figure out ourselves without knowing the inventor.

(2) Life is about letting God use you for His purposes, not your using Him for your own purposes.  The Bible says, "Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out in the open into a spacious, free life." --Rom 8:6

(3) Being successful and fulfilling your life's purpose are no at all the same issue.  We discussed that you can be as rich and powerful as Bill Gates, and if you do not have Christ in your heart, you have not fulfilled your purpose in life.  Jesus Christ once said, “Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to
finding yourself, your true self.” -- Matt 16:25

(4) Just like the easiest way to find out the purpose for an invention is to ask the inventor.  The easiest way to find our purpose is to ask the creator.  “God’s
wisdom . . . goes deep into the interior of his purposes. . . . It’s not the latest message, but more like the oldest—what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us.” -- 1 Corn 2:7

(5) God is not just the starting point of your life, he is the source of your life.  “It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we
first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.” - Eph 1:11