Quotes About Purpose

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives. —ALBERT SCHWEITZER

The most dangerous man on earth is the man who has reckoned with his own death. All men die; few men ever really live. Sure, you can create a safe life for yourself . . . and end your days in a rest home babbling on about some forgotten misfortune. I'd rather go down swinging. Besides, the less we are trying to "save ourselves," the more effective a warrior we will be.

The years have simply reconciled us to the fact that we are all here for the transformation.

As Buechner says, we are in constant danger of being not actors in the drama of our lives but reactors, "to go where the world takes us, to drift with whatever current happens to be running the strongest.

And certainly we see that God wants not merely an adventure, but an adventure to share. He didn't have to make us, but he wanted to. Though he knows the name of every star and his kingdom spans galaxies, God delights in being a part of our lives. Do you know why he often doesn't answer prayer right away? Because he wants to talk to us, and sometimes that's the only way to get us to stay and talk to him. His heart is for relationship, for shared adventure to the core.

You have only one life to live.It would be best to live your own.

The glory of God is man fully alive. (Saint Irenaeus)

God wants to live this life together with you, to share in your days and decisions, your desires and disappointments. He wants intimacy with you in the midst of the madness and the mundane, the meetings and the memos, the laundry and the lists, the carpools and conversations and projects and pain. He wants to pour his love into your heart and he longs to have you pour yours into his.

I am looking for my heart.

The whole, vast world was incomplete without me. Creation reached its finishing touch in me.

The greatest human tragedy is to give up the search. Nothing is of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything.

What have we to offer, really, other than who we are and what God has been pouring into our lives? It was not by accident that you were born; it was not by chance that you have the desires you do. The Victorious Trinity has planned on your being here now, "for such a time as this" (Esther 4:14). We need you.

How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. (What's Wrong with the World)

One of the great wonders of Christianity is that you were born into your times, to set your times aright.

The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."2

You clean and organize; you demand perfection—did you ever wonder why?

And so the great battle begins in earnest: the battle for your heart, the battle to find a life worth living, the battle not to lose heart as you find a life worth living.

John Eldredge

Jesus, I give my heart to your kingdom; I am made for your kingdom and nothing else will do.

The most essential gift you have to give is yourself.

What man is a man who does not make the world better?

Jesus lived the way he did in this world, for this world, because his hope was set beyond this world; that is the secret of his life. "Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God" (Hebrews 12:2 THE MESSAGE).

God rarely forces a man to do something against his will, because God would far and above prefer that he didn't have to, that the man wills to do the will of God. "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve" (Josh. 24:15 NIV). What God is after is a man so yielded to him, so completely surrendered, that his heart is easily moved by the Spirit of God to the purposes of God. That kind of heart makes for a good king.

Friend, Christ has bestowed on you an identity. The best thing you can do is ask him to reveal it to you.