What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose by Misty Edwards
Authors: Misty Edwards
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Right now you are in the “womb of eternity,” and you are being fashioned for a day that is yet to come. The pressure, the pain, the pleasure, and the blessings are all part of the Creator’s plan to form and fashion you into the image of love equally yoked to Himself in wholehearted abandonment in love. But it must be love defined by Jesus, not by humanism. He is looking for love on His terms. What is that definition? What pleases Him? Our life is found in answering this one question.
4
LIVING FOR LOVE?
T HE MEANING OF life is found in the eyes of the One who initiated our lives, and only He has the standard to measure us by. What pleases Jesus? The answer to this question shapes our primary motivation. He not only told us what He was looking for, but He also demonstrated it by the way He lived and died. His entire life is an answer to the search for meaning. By examining His life, we discover the anchor for our existence, purpose, and destiny. We then make it our life aim to find what is pleasing to Jesus, live accordingly, and bring others into that same locked gaze, persuading all men to set their hearts to please Him.
It is not a secret what Jesus is looking for. From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, over and over again, He has made His desires known. Anyone who wants to please Him can. We can know what pleases Him. Take the Scripture, “the transcript of His soul,” and eat it, feast upon it, and live by every word.
In my search for meaning and purpose I began to devour the words of Jesus and longed to imitate Him in His lifestyle, to walk out every word He had spoken. He not only showed us how to be human by demonstrating perfect humanity, but He also taught us how our own heart fully comes alive. The Scripture is like an instruction manual for humanity. The more I read, the more I began to get caught up in something bigger and Someone greater than me. I am not saying I was caught up in ecstatic experience or euphoria, not at all. Little by little as my view of God changed, my view of the world changed, and inevitably my view of myself changed. As I began to know and understand Jesus, making Him my primary life occupation, my entire life was turned upside down.
L OVE ?
I was on this treasure hunt for meaning, and I was discovering the personality of Jesus. I became gripped with His words that summed up all I had previously read and known. He taught that all the law and prophets are summed up in love (Matt. 22:37–40; Rom. 13:8–9). There it is! He summed up the entire purpose of Creation in love. When I first started to see that not only the golden thread woven through Scripture is love but also that love is the lens from which all of life is seen, I was thrown off. I would read through the Gospels, writing down everything that He told me “to do,” and then commit to do it. I wanted to be a doer and not just a feeler. Life to me was pragmatic as well as romantic. How could all of life come down to love? It seemed so emotional and not very practical.
Let me stop here and say what love is not. As I am writing, I wish I had another word other than love. In our society love is often a cheap word that typically means a strong like or fondness of someone or something. We use the word love to describe our most intimate relationships as well as to describe our favorite hamburger place. To some the word love means passivity or an acceptance of sin. Others think love is the absence of absolutes in the name of tolerance. To some it is even a representation of their lust.
The kind of love I am talking about has nothing to do with these things. I am talking about the burning desire that pulsated in the heart of the uncreated, causing Him to create an earth filled with a garden and then create mankind out of the dust of that garden and put mankind right next to Him with affection and desire. I am talking about God’s story and the dream of His heart. We cannot jump into the meaning of life
4
LIVING FOR LOVE?
T HE MEANING OF life is found in the eyes of the One who initiated our lives, and only He has the standard to measure us by. What pleases Jesus? The answer to this question shapes our primary motivation. He not only told us what He was looking for, but He also demonstrated it by the way He lived and died. His entire life is an answer to the search for meaning. By examining His life, we discover the anchor for our existence, purpose, and destiny. We then make it our life aim to find what is pleasing to Jesus, live accordingly, and bring others into that same locked gaze, persuading all men to set their hearts to please Him.
It is not a secret what Jesus is looking for. From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, over and over again, He has made His desires known. Anyone who wants to please Him can. We can know what pleases Him. Take the Scripture, “the transcript of His soul,” and eat it, feast upon it, and live by every word.
In my search for meaning and purpose I began to devour the words of Jesus and longed to imitate Him in His lifestyle, to walk out every word He had spoken. He not only showed us how to be human by demonstrating perfect humanity, but He also taught us how our own heart fully comes alive. The Scripture is like an instruction manual for humanity. The more I read, the more I began to get caught up in something bigger and Someone greater than me. I am not saying I was caught up in ecstatic experience or euphoria, not at all. Little by little as my view of God changed, my view of the world changed, and inevitably my view of myself changed. As I began to know and understand Jesus, making Him my primary life occupation, my entire life was turned upside down.
L OVE ?
I was on this treasure hunt for meaning, and I was discovering the personality of Jesus. I became gripped with His words that summed up all I had previously read and known. He taught that all the law and prophets are summed up in love (Matt. 22:37–40; Rom. 13:8–9). There it is! He summed up the entire purpose of Creation in love. When I first started to see that not only the golden thread woven through Scripture is love but also that love is the lens from which all of life is seen, I was thrown off. I would read through the Gospels, writing down everything that He told me “to do,” and then commit to do it. I wanted to be a doer and not just a feeler. Life to me was pragmatic as well as romantic. How could all of life come down to love? It seemed so emotional and not very practical.
Let me stop here and say what love is not. As I am writing, I wish I had another word other than love. In our society love is often a cheap word that typically means a strong like or fondness of someone or something. We use the word love to describe our most intimate relationships as well as to describe our favorite hamburger place. To some the word love means passivity or an acceptance of sin. Others think love is the absence of absolutes in the name of tolerance. To some it is even a representation of their lust.
The kind of love I am talking about has nothing to do with these things. I am talking about the burning desire that pulsated in the heart of the uncreated, causing Him to create an earth filled with a garden and then create mankind out of the dust of that garden and put mankind right next to Him with affection and desire. I am talking about God’s story and the dream of His heart. We cannot jump into the meaning of life
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