The meaning and purpose of life isn’t all that easy to figure out. To answer the question involves answering other questions... What does it mean to have meaning and purpose? How do you determine what that is? Do you determine your own meaning? Can you combine what you think is your own purpose with the purpose that someone else might have for you? There are lots of questions and no easy answers. Well, actually, there is an easy answer.
The Bible reveals our purpose, the reason we are here… it is for God's glory. In other words, our purpose is to praise God, to worship Him, to proclaim His greatness, and to accomplish His will. This is what glorifies Him. Therefore, in this we find that God has given us a reason for our existence, a meaning for our existence.
We were created by Him, according to His desire, and our lives are to be lived for Him so that we might accomplish what He has for us to do. When we trust the one who has made us, who works all things after the counsel of His will (Ephesians 1:11), then we are able to live a life of purpose. How the particulars of that purpose are expressed is up to the individual.
Is there purpose in trials? What if our lives are difficult and things seem to go more wrong than right? Are our failures and hardships for the glory of God, too? Yes, they are. We often thank God and praise His name when things go well, but we frequently turn our backs on Him and complain when things are difficult.
Sometimes our appreciation and trust in God becomes conditioned on how well things are going for us. Ultimately, this is self-centered immaturity. Even though things can go wrong in our lives, the ultimate reason we are here is to glorify God, even through our difficulties. We do this by praising Him and trusting Him through difficult times.
Within this attempt to glorify God in all things… we can then determine the particular meaning of our life that God has for us specifically. In Christianity, we are free to pursue God in all areas of our lives. For example, we are free to glorify God by being a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, a housewife, a father, a mother, a minister, an accountant, whatever you want to do.
If the ultimate goal in life is to bring glory to God, then we can do that by being the best at what we do in the various callings of life. So, as the Bible says, “… whatever you do, do all to the glory of God," 1 Corinthians 10:31.
