Everyone wants to know why they are here. The world's answer is to find your own purpose, to make your own meaning, to look inside yourself and decide what your life is about. The Bible gives a very different answer. Your purpose was not invented by you. It was given to you by the God who made you, and you will not find rest until you live for it. Let us see what the Scriptures say.
You Were Created for God's Glory
We begin where the Bible begins, with the fact that we are made things. God said of His people, "I have created him for my glory" (Isaiah 43:7). The hosts of heaven sing to Him, "for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11). We exist for God; He does not exist for us. That single truth overturns the whole modern way of thinking, which makes self the center and God, if He is allowed at all, a means to our happiness. We were made for Him.
The Whole Duty of Man
Solomon had the means to try every pleasure and pursuit under the sun, and he did. He called it all vanity, a chasing after wind. And at the end of his search he set down the conclusion of the whole matter: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). There it is, plainly. The purpose of a human life is not found in pleasure, achievement, or possessions, all of which leave us empty. It is found in fearing God and keeping His commandments.
To Know and Love God
At the heart of our purpose is a relationship, not a task. When asked for the greatest commandment, Jesus said, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment" (Matthew 22:37-38). And He defined eternal life itself as knowing God: "this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). We were made to know God and to love Him, and no lesser thing will ever fill the place He was meant to hold.
Created Unto Good Works
This purpose is worked out not in grand gestures but in a life of faithful service. We are "created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10). And it reaches into the smallest acts of an ordinary day, for Paul wrote, "whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31). A person does not need a great platform to live out his purpose. He needs only to do the next thing, however small, to the glory of God.
You Are Not Your Own
For the Christian there is a further truth. We have been bought, and we belong to the One who bought us. "ye are not your own... For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The world hears this as bondage, but it is the opposite. To belong to God and live for Him is to be set free from the exhausting work of being our own god, inventing our own meaning, and carrying a weight we were never built to bear.
Live for What Lasts
Two facts press the question home. Life is short, "It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away" (James 4:14). And the soul is worth more than the whole world, for Jesus asked, "what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26). The man who spends his brief life chasing things that do not last, and neglects the God he was made for, has gained nothing in the end. So stop trying to invent a purpose, and receive the one God gave you. Glorify Him, serve Him, keep His commandments, and you will have found at last what you were looking for.