What is your ONE purpose in life?

This week I finished listening to Beth Moore’s four-part series entitled, Complicated. She did a great job of addressing how everything in our lives is complicated. Nothing is simple, is it? The conclusion of the series was Simplicity=One, the One being Jesus Christ, of course.

At one point she asked her audience the following question: As people are leaving your funeral, what is the one sentence you want to have said about you?”

My answer came to mind immediately: 

Because Laurie lived, heaven is bigger and the church is stronger.

I can’t get it out of my mind. The answer rose up within me so vehemently and urgently, I know God has built the desire within me. My heart is His work. My sentence is His heart. God too wants heaven bigger (2 Peter 3:9). He too wants the church stronger (Ephesians 3:10, Colossians 2:6-6).

So perhaps this is a shared purpose for any of us who are a member of God’s family. Where we differ is how God directs each of us to carry those two purposes out. 

Having one sentence is very clarifying when life demands that I make decisions on the spot every day at lightning speed. This one sentence..

• Helps me maintain relationships that keep an opening for people to come to know Jesus Christ.
• Keeps me writing, reading, learning, teaching and speaking about Jesus even when it requires sacrifice and discipline.
• Keeps me putting in the time to help people handle life’s complications biblically, in a way that maintains their purity of heart and strengthens their relationship with God.
• Keeps me focused on treating God’s image-bearers (all people) with kindness and care. Everyone.
• Keeps me signing up to be a table leader for women’s Bible Study in my church.
• Keeps me choosing a streamlined lifestyle so I have room for building and strengthening the kingdom of God.
• Keeps me aware of the souls of people no matter how different the two of us may be.
• Keeps me responsible with my finances so I have room to respond to His calling.
• Keeps me checking my heart to make sure it’s clean so God’s power can flow through my human efforts and produce results that are God-sized.

This one sentence even decorates my house.

Yes. I want people to feel welcome in my home, so I work especially hard at making the initial entrance area of my home well-arranged and comfortable. When looking for a home this year I also checked to see if there was ample room for dinner guests before the house was even considered as an option for our family. I have this one sentence in my mind all the time…every minute of every day.

What each of us sees as our life’s purpose becomes the lens through which we run our lives, raise our families, prioritize our time, handle people, select our career and spend our money.

I am still arranging my new office but this one corner near my desk is what I see when I spend time in Bible reading and prayer in a chair directly across from it. And when seeing it this week, I have been praying that God makes my one sentence a reality: Because Laurie lived, heaven is bigger and the church is stronger.

I am just an ordinary lady. Not famous. Not particularly gifted. But what is true of me is true of every Christ follower. We are ambassadors for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are the light of the world (Matthew 5:14-16). Our lives matter.

Are you praying globe-wide prayers for your role in God’s story? Please do so, fellow-ambassador.

Picture Explanation: My office. May good things launch from this space. Kingdom things. Things that make heaven bigger and the church stronger.

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