Chapter 3 – Part 2: What Drives Your Life
Hope and Action – Knowing your purpose gives meaning to your life.
If we allow the negative influences of the past to drive our lives, we’ll be like the proverbial hamster running fast but going nowhere, never growing, never changing emotionally. It is only when we find our purpose and commit to it that we can leave the past where it belongs, in the past. This is not to say that we forget it, but that we keep it in it’s place.
Henry David Thoreau wrote, “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.”
If we let the past direct our lives that statement will become truth. But, if we seek to find our purpose and live out our purpose then our lives have meaning. It is being involved and dedicated to something greater than ourselves.
What gives our lives purpose, real purpose?
It is, as Rick Warren says in this chapter,
“Without God life has no purpose and without purpose life has no meaning. Without meaning life has no significance or hope.”
We all hope for something, a hope to stay clean and sober, a better relationship with family, a job, whatever it is we all hope for something. Hope helps us cope with life’s trials. Having hope also gives us a sense of purpose, mission.
Hope and a sense of purpose are linked together. True hope, real hope must be followed by action. As a Christian I hope for a better world and after my life is completed heaven. But, hope without action is just like a dream we have while sleeping, it is fleeting. Think of how many times you wake from a dream only to be unable to remember it. Hope without action is the same thing. Real hope requires action. I write this motivational/devotional, help found the Lynch Program under OSOT-America to help veterans, lead a bible study and do other things because I have a hope that I am helping bring the Gospel to others. I try to set a good example all because I hope I’m doing what my Lord and Savior is leading me to do. When my kids were home Susie and I had a hope that they would be strong, successful adults and because of that hope we worked hard to love them, train them, discipline them, insure that they had a quality education and more, so that our hope could become reality.
What is your hope and what are you doing to bring it to reality?
Author
Sgt. Allen Lynch
Allen Lynch is a former United States Army soldier and a recipient of the United States military’s highest decoration, the Medal of Honor, for his actions in the Vietnam War.Find Your Purpose
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