The Purpose of Christmas

I first posted this during Christmas last year. It still has as much relevance today.

God bless you and yours as we commemorate Jesus - the reason for the season.

Purpose /ˈpəːpəs/ noun (Oxford Dictionary)

•     the reason for which something is done, or created, or for which something exists

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." John 10:10

Purpose is the reason why you exist.

I would say that makes discovering what your purpose is pretty important.

Fortunately, the Oxford dictionary definition above also gives us the key to discovering purpose.

Purpose is the reason for which something is created.

Your purpose is the reason why you were created.

Everything is created for a purpose.

Christmas is here, with lots of excitement surrounding the exchanging of gifts. High on many people’s gift lists (especially the young people) are electronic gadgets of one kind or another. I know my daughter would be thrilled to open her presents on Christmas morning and discover anything Apple!

If you’re still catching up with technology like me, you can sometimes find these gadgets slightly mystifying. I have an iPod touch that I basically only use to listen to my audio Bible and my favourite music. However, I’ve been reliably informed that I can download all sorts of ‘apps’ and get my iPod to do all kinds of amazing things. “There’s an app for just about anything you can think of”. (Having a teenager in the house helps if you want to keep up with rapidly changing technology!)

Nevertheless, there are some aspects of the iPod touch that even my techno savvy teen doesn’t know. That’s when I have to turn to the glossy little brochure with pictures that show me what my gadget can do, or the accompanying booklet, the Product information Guide, that’s crammed with information printed in the tiniest font. For more complete instructions and important safety information, I’m advised to visit the online manuals at Apple Support – the User Guide and Important Product Information Guide.

You are more complex than anything that even a creative genius like Steve Jobs could ever imagine.

You are a unique creation. There is no one else in the world like you. No one else has your unique blend of gifts, talents, skills, abilities, interests, goals, passions, dreams, values, personality, achievements, education, or experiences. You are one of a kind.

Your Creator has also supplied you with a User’s Guide, an Important Product Information Manual, containing all the information you need to ensure you make full use of all the capabilities He fashioned you with.

You see, Christmas is not about Santa Claus, Christmas trees, or pretty flashing lights. It’s not about shopping sprees, piles of gifts, or unlimited alcohol, chocolates and sweets.  It’s not even about a cute little baby born in a manger 2000 years ago.

Christmas is about purpose.

Christmas is about the reason you were created.

Christmas is about God reconnecting you to your purpose.

Jesus’ birth in that manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago was just the first step in God’s plan of enabling you to enter into the fullness of all that He created you to be.

This Christmas, open up the User’s Guide – the Bible – and find out what your Creator has to say about you. The Gospel of John is a good place to start.

Wishing you all a purpose-full Christmas!

Life Areas

Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and that your body may keep well, even as I know your soul keeps well and prospers (3 John 2)

We are in a series of posts exploring the truth about who you are.

The most recent posts dealt with the truth that you are a multi-dimensional being – body, soul and spirit.

This truth gives rise to your different life areas.

Your life is made up of several components.

These are basically:

Spiritual	-        your relationship with God
Social	-        your relationships with other people
Intellectual	-        your mind
Physical	-        your body
Emotional	-        your emotions

To be more practical, life areas are usually broken up further into life components that you can actually identify in your everyday life.

Partner/ Romance/Significant Other	Career
Family	Finances
Friends	Physical Environment/Home
Health & Well-being	Spiritual Well-being
Personal Growth/Learning	Fun/Recreation/Leisure
Community	Contribution

A basic understanding of the different life areas is fundamental to living on purpose.

Once you recognize your life areas, you gain an awareness of your life priorities. You can then start to set significant life goals and create a balanced, meaningful, and fulfilling life.

In the next post I will give you tools to help you along the road to understanding your life areas.

Life in all its Fullness

The thief’s purpose is to steal and kill and destroy. 

My purpose is to give life in all its fullness. 

(John 10:10, New Living Translation)

In my previous post I told you about a woman whose face was world famous yet she didn't know it. Her image appeared on magazine covers all over the world yet she lived in poverty, eking out an existence at the foothills of a desolate mountain. Her image was world famous yet she remained completely unknown.

The fundamental key to living on purpose is to know the truth about who you are.

What you do not know can, and does, harm you.

It harms you in the sense that, like the woman, you may be alive, but you are merely eking out an existence, living far below the fullness of all that is available to you.

And I’m not just talking about having enough money.

Money helps, we all know that. But if life was simply about being financially secure, then we would not witness such a high degree of divorce, depression, suicide, and addiction in the lives of the rich and famous.

You can be a success at work yet be miserable at home because your marriage is falling apart.

You may finally move into the big house in the posh neighbourhood with the fancy car, yet lay awake in bed every night, your mind racing, your heart pounding, longing for a good night's sleep.

Riches lose their lustre when you have a child who has gone astray. And wealth is a vain comfort when your family is plagued by a chronic illness eating away at your health, your finances, your time, your peace.

Maybe for you, life is good – except when it seems like an endless treadmill of waking up, eating, going to work, eating, sitting in front of the TV, going to bed. And then you have to do it all over again the next day... and the next...

Or for you, life is good – so long as you don’t turn off the TV or radio or iPod or cell phone or Internet or whatever background noise keeps you going from the moment you wake up to the moment you drop into bed at night. Anything to keep away the silence. Anything to keep you from thinking. Anything to keep you from feeling that nagging emptiness that tells you there has to be more to life than this?

When you tap into the truth of who you are, you tap into the power of living on purpose.

Learn more about developing empowering belief systems in the next post.

Will The Real Me Please Stand Up!

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for.

The Message, Ephesians 1:11

crying on the inside?

I am the product of a multicultural upbringing.

My father was Malawian, but was born, grew up and lived in Zambia. My mother is South African. My parents were diplomats, and by the time I was 10 years old, I had lived in 6 different countries on 3 different continents.

When we finally returned ‘home’, I attended an international school where most of the students and all of the teachers were expatriates who traced their origins to other countries, and I was part of the indigenous minority. Outside of school my peers laughed at my stumbling pronunciation of the native tongue, and grown-ups criticized me for not following the customs of the land.

I spent more of my early adult years out of my home country than in it, pursuing further education and training opportunities.

Now, in midlife, I find myself back in the country of which I am a passport holder.

Unsurprisingly, for the larger part of my life I struggled with not quite knowing who I was, and not quite fitting in, no matter where I was.

I could be at ‘home’ in my home country, surrounded by people who outwardly were very similar in appearance to me, but our ways of thinking, our language, and our experiences couldn’t have been more different.

I could be amongst people with whom I shared more in common, in terms of the way I thought, the way I spoke, and the way I viewed life, but from whom I was inescapably separated by external differences in the colour of our skin and the texture of our hair.

However, I have since discovered that I was not unique in this sense of detachment and confusion of identity.

In the company of others like myself, who were brought up wandering around the Diaspora, I discovered a similar sense of confusion, and found a semblance of belonging.

Even amongst those who appeared to have had a more ‘stable’ upbringing, I discovered this uncertainty of self, this yearning to belong.

Everyone has doubts at some point about who they are. We all want to be accepted. We all want to be okay.

We go to great lengths to identify with our peers, our group, our culture.

It’s what draws young people to gangs; fuels fashion trends; forms facebook groups. It’s why every group comes up with its own uniform.

Even those who opt out of mainstream culture tend to do so in groups – Hippies, monks, Goths.

It’s at the heart of every teenage rebellion and each midlife crisis.

Who am I? Where do I belong?

My aha! moment came when I finally realised that my life was not a random series of events.

I learned that ‘[God] saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in [His] book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.’ (The Bible, New Living Translation, Psalm 139:16).

My birth date, my birth place, my family, my nationality – none of it was an accident. Nothing was a mistake. Everything had a purpose. No experience would go to waste. God could use everything as part of His plan. ‘He knows us far better than we know ourselves... That’s why we can be sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.’ (The Message, Romans 8:27, 28).

I finally realised that I was okay. It was okay that I had grown up experiencing a diversity of cultures in a myriad of countries. It was okay that I hadn’t grown up immersed in the languages and traditions of my homeland.

I was not a misfit.

I was an original.

A carefully crafted creation of God.

Happy New Year Everybody!!!

"For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to give you hope and a future. 

Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. 

You will seek Me and find Me when you seek Me with all your heart."

The Bible, Jeremiah 29:11-13

Wishing you all God's best for 2012!

May you connect with God's perfect purposes for your life and have a truly blessed year.

The Purpose of Christmas

Purpose /ˈpəːpəs/ noun (Oxford Dictionary)

•     the reason for which something is done, or created, or for which something exists

freefoto.com

Purpose is the reason why you exist.

I would say that makes discovering what your purpose is pretty important.

Fortunately, the Oxford dictionary definition above also gives us the key to discovering purpose.

Purpose is the reason for which something is created.

Your purpose is the reason why you were created.

Everything is created for a purpose.

Christmas is here, with lots of excitement surrounding the exchanging of gifts. High on many people’s gift lists (especially the young people) are electronic gadgets of one kind or another. I know my daughter would be thrilled to open her presents on Christmas morning and discover anything Apple!

If you’re still catching up with technology like me, you can sometimes find these gadgets slightly mystifying. I have an iPod touch that I basically only use to listen to my audio Bible and my favourite music. However, I’ve been reliably informed that I can download all sorts of ‘apps’ and get my iPod to do all kinds of amazing things. “There’s an app for just about anything you can think of”. (Having a teenager in the house helps if you want to keep up with rapidly changing technology!)

Nevertheless, there are some aspects of the iPod touch that even my techno savvy teen doesn’t know. That’s when I have to turn to the glossy little brochure with pictures that show me what my gadget can do, or the accompanying booklet, the Product information Guide, that’s crammed with information printed in the tiniest font. For more complete instructions and important safety information, I’m advised to visit the online manuals at Apple Support – the User Guide and Important Product Information Guide.

You are more complex than anything that even a creative genius like Steve Jobs could ever imagine.

You are a unique creation. There is no one else in the world like you. No one else has your unique blend of gifts, talents, skills, abilities, interests, goals, passions, dreams, values, personality, achievements, education, or experiences. You are one of a kind.

Your Creator has also supplied you with a User’s Guide, an Important Product Information Manual, containing all the information you need to ensure you make full use of all the capabilities He fashioned you with.

You see, Christmas is not about Santa Claus, Christmas trees, or pretty flashing lights. It’s not about shopping sprees, piles of gifts, or unlimited alcohol, chocolates and sweets.  It’s not even about a cute little baby born in a manger 2000 years ago.

Christmas is about purpose.

Christmas is about the reason you were created.

Christmas is about God reconnecting you to your purpose.

Jesus’ birth in that manger in Bethlehem 2000 years ago was just the first step in God’s plan of enabling you to enter into the fullness of all that He created you to be.

This Christmas, open up the User’s Guide – the Bible – and find out what your Creator has to say about you. The Gospel of John is a good place to start.

Wishing you all a purpose-full Christmas!