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Commentary
COMMENTARY: What’s your life purpose? Adam Hamilton, Apr 16, 2009
Adam Hamilton
By Adam Hamilton Special Contributor
Editor’s note: This is the third in a four-part series excerpted from the book, Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity (Abingdon Press, February 2009).
What is your life about? Why do you exist? Do you exist simply to consume as much as you can and get as much pleasure as you can while you are here on this earth, or do you have a higher purpose?
How do you understand your life purpose—your vision or mission or calling? Are you spending your money in ways that are consistent with it?
We were created to care for God’s creation. We were created to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We were created to care for our families and those in need. We were created to glorify God, to seek justice and to do mercy.
To be a Christian is to follow Jesus Christ and to seek to do His will in our lives. It is to say, “Here I am, all of me! I’m yours. Put me to work, help me to serve, use me to accomplish your work.”
If this is our life purpose, then our money and possessions should be devoted to helping us fulfill this calling. We are blessed to be a blessing.
Money should never be an end in itself. Rather, it should be a means for accomplishing an end—specifically, for accomplishing our life purpose. The problem is in how we view or value money.
In and of itself, money can be either good or bad depending on how it is used. Money is a merely a tool to be used to accomplish the greater purposes God has for our lives.
Each of us is called to be a blessing to others. We have a life purpose that is greater than our own self-interests, and how we spend our God-given resources reflects our understanding and commitment to this life purpose or mission.
Making a new start to achieve financial peace and accomplish God’s greater purposes for our lives requires one of two things: Either we must make more money, or we must spend less money so that we can have money for things that are most important to us. These are our only two options.
Most of us cannot control whether or not we are going to make more money; increasing our income simply may not be a possibility. But we all can choose to spend less and simplify our lives.
Years ago, I was having lunch with a church member. He was the vice president of his company—well respected and quite successful. He lived in a large house—nice, but not too extravagant. He drove nice cars.
On that particular day at lunch he was excited. He said, “I bought a new car this week.” I said, “Really? What did you buy?” He said, “I’ll show you after lunch.”
We went out to the parking lot after lunch, and I expected to see a new BMW. To my surprise he pointed to a seven-year-old Honda Civic. I said, “Tell me about this car.”
He said, “It is a cream puff: one-owner, low-miles, always garaged car. I paid cash for it, and the insurance and the taxes were nothing. It is fun to drive.”
I said, “You surprise me. What’s up here?”
He replied: “I just realized that I could do other things with the money I was spending on a car—things that were more important to me. Since my life mission and purpose is taking a new turn, I felt like I could use that money to support that.”
As he drove off that day, do you think I admired him less, or more?
Which do you find more admirable—someone who is living at the edge of his or her means and thus cannot do the things that really matter, or someone who lives below his or her means and has a meaningful life of purpose? Do you admire the one who lives extravagantly, or the one who gives extravagantly?
In order to give extravagantly and experience the joy that comes from living for something beyond ourselves, we must simplify our lives.
The Rev. Hamilton is pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kan.
Adam Hamilton
