Why am I here?  What am I supposed to do with my life? Why do I exist? What is the purpose of my life? Why can’t I answer the first four questions?

One of life’s biggest mysteries is understanding why we are here and where we came from. A reason why life can tend to drive us all crazy is because we don’t have the answers to everything; we’re only human. There are some big questions that are just too big to answer on our own, which is why we need a little help.

Last school year I wrote an article stating the key to discovering happiness was to first find purpose. Finding purpose meant searching within yourself to find something that brought meaning to your life. In this way I thought one could make his or her own purpose.

You cannot make your own purpose because you didn’t make yourself. A purpose has already been given to you, it’s your job to figure out what it is.

Was I ever wrong.

Purpose is much more significant than what I had previously made it out to be. The term “purpose” means the reason why one has been created, which means we need to think bigger. You cannot make your own purpose because you didn’t make yourself. A purpose has already been given to you, it’s your job to figure out what it is. If the purpose of your life has already been given to you, then it only seems natural to be curious as to who gave it to you.

God has assigned a specific purpose to your life because He made you, just as He made everyone and everything else.

If you were handed a newly invented gadget, but were not told anything about it, would you know what it does? Would you know its purpose? No.

The only person who would know its purpose is its creator.

“The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator of it,” says famous pastor and author Rick Warren.

If you believe in creation, if you believe that we aren’t here by just random chance, then you need to turn to your Creator to understand your purpose. You need to sit down and have a chat with the Lord.

Warren says “You won’t discover your life’s meaning by looking within yourself.” Instead, we have to look beyond ourselves. We have to turn to God, because only He can see the big picture of the world. Only He has the answers to everything.

You didn’t make you, God made you. Thus, you can’t choose why you were created. And what a relief this is! No longer do we have to stress about what career we are supposed to choose. No longer do we have to struggle trying to find something we can never find on our own in the first place. No longer do we have to base meaning on the things we accomplish. No longer do we have to constantly ask what we should do to live the good life.

It’s not about what you should do with your life. That’s pretty selfish thinking especially since your life is a gift that has been given to you. It’s about what God wants you to do with the life He so unselfishly granted you. He created you with a specific purpose in mind. It’s not like God does things or creates us by accident. He made you for a purpose. Actually, He made you for His purposes.

That’s a pretty humbling thought.

Another way to put this: God is more interested in who you are than what you do. And the person He wants you to be is the person He created you to be. The person God created you to be is a person that loves and wants to know God. According to Warren, that is the first purpose of your life, to love and to know God.

The second purpose of your life or reason for living is to belong to the family of God. When you have faith in God and take Jesus Christ as your savior, you become a brother or sister to the heavenly family to which God is your Father. Warren explains that God wants you to be a part of His family, you just have to choose.

The third purpose of your life, according to Warren, is to “become like Christ.” In other words, the third reason for why you are here on this Earth is to grow spiritually and to develop character in accordance to Jesus, the model of human perfection.

The fourth reason for your existence is to serve God. You serve Him by serving others, which means not holding the truth of God as a secret to yourself. It means helping others to the light and treating others with the love that God treats you with. Serving others can be done in any context and in any occupation.

For Warren the final purpose God has for you is to make your “unique contribution.” God created you to accomplish a mission only you can accomplish in the way only you can accomplish it in. This means using your spiritual gifts to make this world a better place. How do you know what your mission is? Well your mission doesn’t start with you, it starts with Him. He created you based on the contribution only you can make. God will guide you to it, which means you are going to have to put a lot of trust in Him.

The only way we can have a conversation about purpose is if God is at the center of it. Purpose is not about doing what’s right or doing what makes you happy. Purpose is about doing what’s best, and what’s best is doing what God made you to do.

And God made you to live a life of purpose.

-Colin Rieke