Smith had to decide whether to do the drugs with Nichols. Smith chose not to, and she hasn't touched drugs since. The first edition of this novel was published in January 1st , and was written by Rick Warren. The book was published in multiple languages including English language, consists of pages and is available in Paperback format. The main characters of this christian, non fiction story are ,. Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator.
We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you or not. We use this information to create a better experience for all users. Please review the types of cookies we use below. These cookies allow you to explore OverDrive services and use our core features. Without these cookies, we can't provide services to you. The book offers readers a day personal spiritual journey and presents what Warren says are God's five purposes for human life on Earth.
This greatly inspired Warren when he had "little confidence" in his writing ability:. The book is intended to be read as a daily inspiration, with each of the 40 short chapters read on consecutive days. Rick Warren described his book as an "anti-self-help book.
In later versions of the book, 2 additional chapters were added about the 2 biggest reasons why Christians don't live purpose driven lives, envy and "people pleasing. A May survey of American pastors and ministers conducted by George Barna asked Christian leaders to identify what books were the most influential on their lives and ministries. The Purpose Driven Life was the most frequent response. Biblical scholar Robert M. Price criticized Warren for applying eisegesis , which includes quoting various translations of the Bible and selectively choosing whichever paraphrase or translation supports his theses.
He read it while in rehab, even to other patients, earning him the nickname "Preacher Mike". The book occupies an important place in the film Captive released in Smith reported to news outlets that during this time she read chapter 32 of The Purpose Driven Life to Nichols, which she credited as influencing his decision to release her from captivity. Smith had to decide whether to do the drugs with Nichols. There's nothing quite like it.
I am excited because I know all the great things that are going to happen to you. They happened to me, and I have never been the same since I discovered the purpose of my life. Your life is worth taking the time to think about it. Make it a daily appointment on your schedule. If you will commit to this, let's sign a covenant together.
There is something significant about signing your name to a commitment. If you get a partner to read through this with you, have him or her sign it, too.
Let's get started together! A life devoted to things is a dead life, a stump; a God-shaped life is a flourishing tree. Proverbs Msg Blessed are those who trust in the Lord They are like trees planted along a riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green, and they go right on producing delicious fruit. Colossians Msg Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.
Bertrand Russell, atheist It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God.
You were born by his purpose and for his purpose. The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That's because we typically begin at the wrong starting point-ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life's purpose.
You've probably tried that already. You didn't create yourself, so there is no way you can tell yourself what you were created for!
If I handed you an invention you had never seen before, you wouldn't know its purpose, and the invention itself wouldn't be able to tell you either. Only the creator or the owner's manual could reveal its purpose. I once got lost in the mountains. When I stopped to ask for directions to the campsite, I was told, "You can't get there from here. You must start from the other side of the mountain! You must begin with God, your Creator.
You exist only because God wills that you exist. You were made by God and for God-and until you understand that, life will never make sense. Every other path leads to a dead end. Many people try to use God for their own self-actualization, but that is a reversal of nature and is doomed to failure. You were made for God, not vice versa, and life is about letting God use you for his purposes, not your using him for your own purpose.
The Bible says, "Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. All of them could be classified as "self-help" books because they approach the subject from a self-centered viewpoint.
Self-help books, even Christian ones, usually offer the same predictable steps to finding your life's purpose: Consider your dreams. Clarify your values. Set some goals. Figure out what you are good at. Aim high. Go for it! Be disciplined. Believe you can achieve your goals. Involve others. Never give up. Of course, these recommendations often lead to great success. You can usually succeed in reaching a goal if you put your mind to it.
But being successful and fulfilling your life's purpose are not at all the same issue! You could reach all your personal goals, becoming a raving success by the world's standard, and still miss the purposes for which God created you. You need more than self-help advice.
The Bible says, "Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. It is not about finding the right career, achieving your dreams, or planning your life. It is not about how to cram more activities into an overloaded schedule. Actually, it will teach you how to do less in life-by focusing on what matters most.
It is about becoming what God created you to be. How, then, do you discover the purpose you were created for? You have only two options. Your first option is speculation. This is what most people choose. They conjecture, they guess, they theorize. When people say, "I've always thought life is. Philosophy is an important subject and has its uses, but when it comes to determining the purpose of life, even the wisest philosophers are just guessing.
Hugh Moorhead, a philosophy professor at Northeastern Illinois University, once wrote to of the best-known philosophers, scientists, writers, and intellectuals in the world, asking them, "What is the meaning of life?
Some offered their best guesses, some admitted that they just made up a purpose for life, and others were honest enough to say they were clueless. In fact, a number of famous intellectuals asked Professor Moorhead to write back and tell them if he discovered the purpose of life!
Fortunately, there is an alternative to speculation about the meaning and purpose of life. It's revelation. We can turn to what God has revealed about life in his Word. The easiest way to discover the purpose of an invention is to ask the creator of it. The same is true for discovering your life's purpose: Ask God. God has not left us in the dark to wonder and guess. He has clearly revealed his five purposes for our lives through the Bible. It explains what no self-help or philosophy book could know.
The Bible says, "God's wisdom It's not the latest message, but more like the oldest-what God determined as the way to bring out his best in us. To discover your purpose in life you must turn to God's Word, not the world's wisdom. You must build your life on eternal truths, not pop psychology, success-motivation, or inspirational stories. The Bible says, "It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone.
You discover your identity and purpose through a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you don't have such a relationship, I will later explain how to begin one. God was thinking of you long before you ever thought about him. His purpose for your life predates your conception. He planned it before you existed, without your input! You may choose your career, your spouse, your hobbies, and many other parts of your life, but you don't get to choose your purpose.
The purpose of your life fits into a much larger, cosmic purpose that God has designed for eternity. That's what this book is about. Andrei Bitov, a Russian novelist, grew up under an atheistic Communist regime. But God got his attention one dreary day. He recalls, "In my twenty-seventh year, while riding the metro in Leningrad now St. Petersburg I was overcome with a despair so great that life seemed to stop at once, preempting the future entirely, let alone any meaning.
Suddenly, all by itself, a phrase appeared: Without God life makes no sense. Repeating it in astonishment, I rode the phrase up like a moving staircase, got out of the metro and walked into God's light. Congratulations, you're about to walk into the light.
Verse to Remember: "Everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. You were in my care even before you were born. Isaiah a CEV God doesn't play dice.
Albert Einstein You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.
Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you! He deliberately chose your race, the color of your skin, your hair, and every other feature. He custom-made your body just the way he wanted it.
He also determined the natural talents you would possess and the uniqueness of your personality. He planned the days of your life in advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. The Bible says, "You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe.
Every day was recorded in your Book! Your race and nationality are no accident. God left no detail to chance. He planned it all for his purpose. The Bible says, "From one man he made every nation, It's all for a purpose. Most amazing, God decided how you would be born. Regardless of the circumstances of your birth or who your parents are, God had a plan in creating you. It doesn't matter whether your parents were good, bad, or indifferent.
God knew that those two individuals possessed exactly the right genetic makeup to create the custom "you" he had in mind. They had the DNA God wanted to make you. While there are illegitimate parents, there are no illegitimate children. Many children are unplanned by their parents, but they are not unplanned by God.
God's purpose took into account human error, and even sin. God never does anything accidentally, and he never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything he creates. Every plant and every animal was planned by God, and every person was designed with a purpose in mind. God's motive for creating you was his love. The Bible says, "Long before he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love.
In fact, that's why he created it! God designed this planet's environment just so we could live in it. We are the focus of his love and the most valuable of all his creation.
The Bible says, "God decided to give us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the things he made. God is not haphazard; he planned it all with great precision.
The more physicists, biologists, and other scientists learn about the universe, the better we understand how it is uniquely suited for our existence, custom-made with the exact specifications that make human life possible. Michael Denton, senior research fellow in human molecular genetics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, has concluded, "All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition He did not create it to be empty but formed it to be inhabited.
Why did he bother to go to all the trouble of creating a universe for us? Because he is a God of love.
This kind of love is difficult to fathom, but it's fundamentally reliable. You were created as a special object of God's love! God made you so he could love you.
This is a truth to build your life on. The Bible tells us, "God is love. He is love! Love is the essence of God's character. There is perfect love in the fellowship of the Trinity, so God didn't need to create you. He wasn't lonely. But he wanted to make you in order to express his love. God says, "I have carried you since you were born; I have taken care of you from your birth. Even when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you.
I made you and will take care of you. You could stop reading this book, because life would have no purpose or meaning or significance. There would be no right or wrong, and no hope beyond your brief years here on earth.
But there is a God who made you for a reason, and your life has profound meaning! We discover that meaning and purpose only when we make God the reference point of our lives. The Message paraphrase of Romans says, "The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us.
You're part of an intricate plan. You're a precious and perfect unique design, Called God's special woman or man. You look like you look for a reason. Our God made no mistake. He knit you together within the womb, You're just what he wanted to make.
The parents you had were the ones he chose, And no matter how you may feel, They were custom-designed with God's plan in mind, And they bear the Master's seal. No, that trauma you faced was not easy. And God wept that it hurt you so; But it was allowed to shape your heart So that into his likeness you'd grow.
You are who you are, beloved, Because there is a God! Verse to Remember: "I am your Creator. What areas of my personality, background, and physical appearance am I struggling to accept? I observed that the basic motive for success is the driving force of envy and jealousy!
Ecclesiastes LB The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder-a waif, a nothing, a no man. Thomas Carlyle Everyone's life is driven by something. Most dictionaries define the verb drive as "to guide, to control, or to direct. What is the driving force in your life? Right now you may be driven by a problem, a pressure, or a deadline. You may be driven by a painful memory, a haunting fear, or an unconscious belief. There are hundreds of circumstances, values, and emotions that can drive your life.
Here are five of the most common ones: Many people are driven by guilt. They spend their entire lives running from regrets and hiding their shame. Guilt-driven people are manipulated by memories. They allow their past to control their future. They often unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success.
We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it. God's purpose is not limited by your past. He turned a murderer named Moses into a leader and a coward named Gideon into a courageous hero, and he can do amazing things with the rest of your life, too. God specializes in giving people a fresh start.
The Bible says, "What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record. They hold on to hurts and never get over them. Instead of releasing their pain through forgiveness, they rehearse it over and over in their minds. Some resentment-driven people "clam up" and internalize their anger, while others "blow up" and explode it onto others. Both responses are unhealthy and unhelpful.
Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past.
Listen: Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment. Your past is past! Nothing will change it.
You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go. The Bible says, "To worry yourself to death with resentment would be a foolish, senseless thing to do. Their fears may be a result of a traumatic experience, unrealistic expectations, growing up in a high-control home, or even genetic predisposition. Regardless of the cause, fear-driven people often miss great opportunities because they're afraid to venture out.
Instead they play it safe, avoiding risks and trying to maintain the status quo. Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be.
You must move against it with the weapons of faith and love. The Bible says, "Well formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life fear of death, fear of judgment-is one not yet fully formed in love.
Their desire to acquire becomes the whole goal of their lives. This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue.
Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions.
It's also a myth that if I get more, I will be more important. Self-worth and net worth are not the same. Your value is not determined by your valuables, and God says the most valuable things in life are not things! The most common myth about money is that having more will make me more secure. It won't. Wealth can be lost instantly through a variety of uncontrollable factors. Real security can only be found in that which can never be taken from you-your relationship with God.
Many people are driven by the need for approval. They allow the expectations of parents or spouses or children or teachers or friends to control their lives. Many adults are still trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents. Others are driven by peer pressure, always worried by what others might think. Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone.
Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God's purposes for your life. Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters. This forty-day journey will show you how to live a purpose driven life-a life guided, controlled, and directed by God's purposes. Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason.
Without a purpose, life is trivial, petty, and pointless. Nothing matters more than knowing God's purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them. We were made to have meaning. This is why people try dubious methods, like astrology or psychics, to discover it.
When life has meaning, you can bear almost anything; without it, nothing is bearable. A young man in his twenties wrote, "I feel like a failure because I'm struggling to become something, and I don't even know what it is. All I know how to do is to get by. Someday, if I discover my purpose, I'll feel I'm beginning to live. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.
In the Bible, many different people expressed this hopelessness. Isaiah complained, "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in pain and for nothing. Leave me alone. My life makes no sense. Hope is as essential to your life as air and water. You need hope to cope. Bernie Siegel found he could predict which of his cancer patients would go into remission by asking, "Do you want to live to be one hundred?
Hope comes from having a purpose. If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose. God says, "I know what I am planning for you I will give you hope and a good future.
It defines what you do and what you don't do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential and which aren't. You simply ask, "Does this activity help me fulfill one of God's purposes for my life?
You will tend to make choices based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at that moment. It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God's will. If you can't get it all done, it means you're trying to do more than God intended for you to do or, possibly, that you're watching too much television. Purpose-driven living leads to a simpler lifestyle and a saner schedule.
The Bible says, "A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life. It concentrates your effort and energy on what's important. You become effective by being selective. It's human nature to get distracted by minor issues. We play Trivial Pursuit with our lives. Henry David Thoreau observed that people live lives of "quiet desperation," but today a better description is aimless distraction.
Many people are like gyroscopes, spinning around at a frantic pace but never going anywhere. Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, churches, or other externals-hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart.
You think, Maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn't solve your real problem-a lack of focus and purpose. The Bible says, "Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants.
Diffused light has little power or impact, but you can concentrate its energy by focusing it. With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be focused to set grass or paper on fire. When light is focused even more as a laser beam, it can cut through steel. There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose. The men and women who have made the greatest difference in history were the most focused.
For instance, the apostle Paul almost single-handedly spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His secret was a focused life. He said, "I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most.
Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what's the point? Paul said, "Let's keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. Purpose always produces passion. Nothing energizes like a clear purpose. On the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack a purpose. Just getting out of bed becomes a major chore.
It is usually meaningless work, not overwork, that wears us down, saps our strength, and robs our joy. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth.
They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says. What people fail to realize is that all achievements are eventually surpassed, records are broken, reputations fade, and tributes are forgotten.
In college, James Dobson's goal was to become the school's tennis champion. He felt proud when his trophy was prominently placed in the school's trophy cabinet. Years later, someone mailed him that trophy. They had found it in a trashcan when the school was remodeled. Jim said, "Given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed by someone else! A wiser use of time is to build an eternal legacy.
You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity. One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity. The Bible says, "Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God Yes, each of us will have to give a personal account to God.
The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, 'clam the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them for the purposes God made you for? The first question will determine where you spend eternity.
The second question will determine what you do in eternity. By the end of this book you will be ready to answer both questions.
What do I want it to be? Ecclesiastes N LT Surely God would not have created such a being as man to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. Abraham Lincoln This life is not all there is. Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death-in eternity-than you will here. Earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity.
It is the practice workout before the actual game; the warm-up lap before the race begins. This life is preparation for the next. At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity. Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne said, "but a small parenthesis in eternity. The Bible says, "God has This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity.
Even though we know everyone eventually dies, death always seems unnatural and unfair. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire!
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