LOOKING FOR YOUR PURPOSE?


By Akin Ojumu

Modern-day preachers talk a lot about purpose. More than enough volume of saliva has been spilled to turn the Sahara Desert into the Atlantic Ocean in the number of messages that have been preached to teach Church folks that their lives won’t amount to much until they find their purpose in life.

Here’s what I think about this obsession of contemporary preachers with life’s purpose.

First, it’s evidence of horror vacui, i.e., horror of the vacuum, which is simply the fact that nature abhors vacuum or there’s no vacuum in nature. Preachers fixate on purpose and they make the subject of finding it the central theme of their messages because they’ve abandoned the Gospel and, thus, have nothing else to preach.

Since, there’s no vacuum in nature, they have to fill the void created by their abandonment of the Gospel. Among the several substitutes for the Gospel is the pursuit of purpose. Teaching people they have a special purpose and showing them the seven steps on how to discover it, is an appealing message that’s bound to draw the crowd and keep them coming. 

Sadly, such a message is nothing but ear-scratching, people-pleasing, seeker-friendly ponderous platitudes carefully packaged and presented as authentic Gospel.

Secondly, the compulsive preoccupation of preachers with life’s purpose is attributable to the narcissistic personality disorder that’s pervasive among Church folks. This disorder of the mind, according to the Mayo Clinic, occurs when people “have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration.”

Ever since the fall, humanity has been bedeviled with an inflated sense of self-importance. In fact, humanity fell because Adam and Eve bought into Satan’s lie that God malevolently placed a limit on their potential. They believed Satan when he told them that they are more, and deserved more, than what God has allowed them to become. With their egos, thus, bloated, they chose to cross God’s redline, and as a consequence, humanity incurred God’s wrath.

It’s this same mindset, which was in Adam and Eve, that’s now propelling the purpose-driven mania in our Churches today. Believers, everywhere, are being taught that they are special and unique, the best thing since sliced bread. Some preachers even go much further to teach that Christians are equals with God Himself.

A good example of false teachers who hold to this blasphemous belief is Kenneth Copeland. As a guest on TBN several years, Copeland and his host, the now deceased Paul Crouch, denounced their critics for getting offended because they teach equality with God. In defiance, and with Copeland nodding in agreement, Crouch bragged, “I am a little god.” 

Similarly, Kenneth Copeland himself is on record for making the following blasphemous remarks:

“When I read in the Bible where He says, ‘I AM,’ I just smile and say, ‘Yes, I AM, too!’”

So, listen up now, if you’ve ever been lied to about your purpose in life. To all those who have been deceived about why God made them, lend me your ears. God made man for one sole purpose in this life. This singular purpose of man can be found in the Word of God.

Ecclesiastes 12:13
“When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man.”

The ultimate purpose of man is to glorify God. The reason you and I were created and placed on God’s earth is to obey God. To live in submission to Christ, surrendered to His purposes, and sacrificing ourselves for the sake of His glory is man’s all.

1 Corinthians 10:31
“So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

All of creation was made for God’s pleasure. The reason we exist at all is that God may be honored and glorified.

Revelations 4:11
“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

“Since God created man in His image, man’s purpose cannot be fulfilled apart from Him. King Solomon tried living for his own pleasure, yet at the end of his life he concluded that the only worthwhile life is one of honor and obedience to God.” (Got Question).

Our life’s purpose is not in our secular pursuits, no matter how noble. They are not in our charitable deeds, regardless of how laudable. Our purpose is not in some spiritual endeavor, notwithstanding how venerable. Man’s purpose is in total obedience to God. And it’s when our obedience is complete, that we really fulfill purpose.

And this is one of the many flaws in a book like The Purpose-Driven Life, which is the encyclopedia for most purpose-manic preachers. Written by Rick Warren and published in 2002, The Purpose-Driven Life is a bestselling book on discovering life’s purpose. As of 2020, it has sold more than 50 million copies in more than 85 languages.

Christians and non-Christians alike consider The Purpose-Driven Life the most influential book on their lives. Such is its global reception that “in 2005, after reading the book, the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, invited Warren to develop in the country the P.E.A.C.E. Plan, a humanitarian development program for churches” (Source: Wikipedia).

Now, while it’s true that The Purpose-Driven Life encourages its readers to make living for God’s pleasure the first purpose of their lives, the book falls short in that it fails to make giving God glory the very purpose of life itself. By promoting the notion that giving glory to God is a means to an end and not an end in itself, The Purpose-Driven Life is yet another one in a long life of man-centered books.

To give glory to God is the essence of life and the reason we were made. Serving God is the summum bonum of man.

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