Short discussion (5 mins)
● What’s a personal goal you have for the next 12 months? OR
● What motivates you to get up each morning? What are the things in life that you feel enthusiastic about?
Our personal goals give insight into what we deem important, and the things that are important to us often relate back to our sense of purpose. What we think is our purpose in life, can be as many as there are people in the world. But we were all designed with a single purpose in mind – we'll explore this from Gen ch.1
Be aligned with what you were designed for (25 mins)
Have you ever wondered, what is the meaning of life? It’s probably the biggest existential question there is (among many!). If you were to ask around, here’s probably some of the common answers you’d get from people, perhaps even amongst yourselves:
● Make the world a better place
● It’s all about family and friends
● Enjoy yourself, enjoy life and all this world has to offer, take your pick
● Get a good education to get a good job to have a good life
● And for Christians, perhaps, to serve God somehow
The Bible tells us that God created all things, including human beings. That means He had a purpose in mind for human beings, and designed us and made us accordingly. When we align with what we were designed for, so many other things become clearer and simpler. When you understand God’s intent and make that your purpose, then you tap into a divine power and motivation for every part of your life, even in times of most difficult challenges.
Pray then read Genesis 1:26-31. From these verses
- Is there anything that particularly jumps out at you?
- What are some of the things that God tells man and woman in v.28 to do?
Notice in v.28 that what God tells them to do includes to “rule”, to “be fruitful and increase in number”, and to eat and enjoy what God gives for food. These relate back to some of the things we mentioned above that people commonly think are the purpose of human life.
But even before that, we see in vv.26-27, God’s intent for humanity. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness … So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
Short discussion (suggest 5 mins)
● What do you think it means for human beings to be made in the image of God?
Truthfully, that last question could be a very long conversation. There is so much revealed about God in the Bible that is amazing – He is amazing – that we can see glimpses of reflected in the best of humanity. But for this study, one thing to notice is that God is Three-in-One. In v.26, God refers to Himself as plural, and then in v.27 back to singular. This is one example of many throughout both Old Testament and New Testament where God reveals Himself to us as what we call the Trinity – Father, Son, Spirit – three distinct persons of the Godhead in perfect union with each other, eternally existing as One God.
This means that God in His very nature and being is relationship, community, love. This is why in 1 John ch.4 twice it says, “God is love” (v.8 and v.16). Not just that God loves, but that He is love. And human beings, made in the image of God, are also intended and designed for relationship, community, love. It’s so core to our being that we long for these things with other human beings. But even more fundamentally and primarily, the reason for our existence, the purpose of our being … We were made for relationship and intimacy with God.
However, human beings often do not pursue that as our primary purpose. We chase after so many other things instead, and end up feeling disappointed, unfulfilled, empty, angry … sometimes even angry at God. Even as Christians, we can have expectations of what life should look like after we invite Christ into our life. And those expectations don’t align with our primary purpose for which God designed and made us.
In his book Mansions of the Heart, Thomas Ashbrook outlines three common traps that Christians fall into, with consequent crises of faith that come with wrong expectation:
1. God will make my life better
2. God will make me a better person
3. God will make me useful
These traps are subtle and common, because often when we come to God, He does make our life better, He does make us better people, He does make us useful for His Kingdom purposes. God will often bless us with these things. But that still doesn’t make any of them the reason or purpose for our faith and salvation; why He made us, gave us life, and then eternal life as well. God does often do all of these things. But our primary purpose is actually to have and be in an intimate love relationship with Him. That’s what Jesus went to the Cross to restore – the possibility of relationship with God, no longer hindered and separated by sin. But then, do we accept it and enter into it?
Read Jesus’ prayer in John 17:1-26. Pay special attention to v.3 and vv.20-24 and notice that Jesus is praying for relationship, community, love … with Him, with God first; and then also with one another.
Discussion, Application, Prayer (20 mins)
● Before this study, what would you have said is the purpose of salvation and faith? That to be a Christian means ____ (fill in the blank)?
● Have you ever fallen into any of the three common traps Thomas Ashbrook referred to? Which one(s)? How were you affected when those expectations weren’t met?
● How would you rate or describe the intimacy of your love relationship with God?
1. Potter / clay
2. Shepherd / sheep
3. Master / servant
4. Father / son
5. Lover / bride
● Do the things you do help or hinder the closeness of your connection to God?
● What is the Holy Spirit saying to you to change/recalibrate in order to love Him more deeply? To spend time with Him, talk to Him, listen to Him, be in His presence?
● Pray for each other
