63 Sermon Illustrations on Purpose Of Life

Peter Orasuk’s Personal Story: From Heroin to Christ

Does life have any real meaning or purpose? Why are we here? In my search for the answer to these questions, I turned to drugs. I won’t go into the things I did to support my drug habit. I am ashamed of them, even though all my sins are under the blood of Christ and that one Great Sacrifice at Calvary has made me perfect in the sight of God.

Hopeless Addict

I was married when I was twenty years old and brought my wife into my misery. To make things worse, we had a little girl. By that time I knew I was a hopeless addict. All I had to look forward to was to be found in an alley with an overdose.

One day a lady called to take our daughter to some children’s meetings. I asked her what she was. She said, “I am a Christian.” She told me that the Lord Jesus had died to take the punishment for her sins, and at the moment she trusted Him, she became one of Christ’s, and that meant a Christian.

Christians Visit Our Sad Home

Later two men visited us. I said, “You know, you and I like people stranded on a desert island. We have told ourselves that a big ship is going to come and take us off the island. That is what keeps us going from day to day – we have our big ship. This syringe is my big ship. It gets me from day to day. Your Jesus and your Salvation are your big ship, but really we are just in the same boat.”

“I want to read something to you,” one of the gentlemen replied, and he read, but I know it seemed that in the middle of a dark empty existence, there was just the inkling of a hope that softened and touched me the first time I heard it.

My Big Rebuttal

“I know the Jesus story. Anybody could write something like that,” I said. “But not 700 years before it happened,” he responded, “and besides, who told you it was talking about Jesus?” It just came to me that everything God said would happen, did happen, and I was afraid.

Tears in the Christian’s Eyes

One of the men kept coming back. I would tell him what a righteous drug addict I was and what he would say, “You know, it is a wonderful thing that God loves you and sent His Son to die for you.” He told me that Christ was the Savior and no matter how vile you were, “this Man receiveth sinners.” (Luke 15:2) But one day tears were in his eyes as he said, “Oh Peter, salvation is not only the joy of receiving Christ, it is being delivered from a real hell. Unless you get serious about this matter you are going to die in your sin and go to hell.”

At a Party Thinking About Hell

That night I went to a party. I used as much as I could in order to forget his words, but I could still hear and see him. I said to a man I knew, “Billy, I have to go. I can’t stay here. I am going to hell.” Billy said, “We are all going to hell.” “But,” I replied, “someone told me there was a way out, I have to find it.” Billy said, “You go. I’ll cover for you. But if you ever get it, let me know.”

Heroin Dealer/User off to a Bible Study

The next night I was invited to a Bible study. No matter what portion they were reading they would say, “Isn’t it wonderful that there is no limit to the mercy of God?” After the meeting a man asked me I was saved. “No,” I replied, “but I really want to be saved. I don’t want to go to hell.”

He started reading Bible verses, but I couldn’t understand how I could know my sins forgiven. Finally he said, “The Word of God tells you that the work that can take you to heaven has been perfectly done. If that is not enough, you will just have to go to hell.”

I thought, “I can never live knowing that I am going to hell with all the sins I will have to account for. I can’t live that way and I certainly can’t die that way.” I started to cry and said, “I don’t want to go to hell. Please help me.” “The Bible tells us that the very worst sinner is in heaven tonight because of the power of the blood of Christ,” he replied. “It’s too bad it isn’t enough for you.”

Saved and Forgiven

It just dawned on me that the God who told me that I was going to hell was also telling me that the worst sinner could be in heaven. At that moment I couldn’t think of one reason why it wasn’t enough. Not one. As low as I was, I realized that I could go to heaven because the power that was in the blood of Christ. I accepted by faith the truth that, “the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

I bowed my head and prayed. “It seems so obvious and yet so simple that the Lord Jesus did it all and because of Him I can go to heaven. Lord, is that it, is that salvation?” I looked down at the Bible and saw three words, “It is finished.” It seemed as if God was saying, “Peter that is it.” I cried, “Oh God, it is not fair! It is not fair that I should do all the sinning and He should do all the suffering.”

God saved me that night over twenty years ago. “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

Born - February 01, 1948

Born Again - December 28, 1976

Left for Heaven - October 09, 2005

Want to start an argument? Bring up religion or politics. Want to start a thoughtful discussion? Mention purpose!

New York Times columnist David Brooks, who was one of Chuck Colson’s favorites, has a new column that I think Chuck would have loved. Brooks, who is on a tour promoting his new book, “The Road to Character,” says that people he meets are searching for purpose.

“They feel a hunger to live meaningfully,” he writes, “but they don’t know the right questions to ask, the right vocabulary to use, the right place to look or even if there are ultimate answers at all. I find there is an amazing hunger to shift the conversation. People are ready to talk a little less about how to do things and to talk a little more about why ultimately they are doing them.”

A generation or two ago, Brooks says, there were lots of public authority figures talking about why — some of them good, others not so much. Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel were household names. Author Harry Emerson Fosdick and philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jean-Paul Sartre led very public discussions on the meaning of existence or the nature of evil. And Brooks forgot to mention Billy Graham! Back then there was an appetite for street-level philosophy — and maybe there still is.

Also, schools back then were more than job training programs. There was a coherence to the educational process that, as Neil Postman wrote about a few decades ago, has been replaced by the acquisition of skills. So education no longer pursues a purposeful vision, it pursues a career alone.

This is largely the result of knowledge becoming ever more specialized. “Intellectual prestige,” Brooks writes, “has drifted away from theologians, poets and philosophers, and toward neuroscientists, economists, evolutionary biologists and big data analysts. These scholars have a lot of knowledge to bring, but they’re not in the business of offering wisdom on the ultimate questions.”

Chuck Colson used to ask four “ultimate” or “worldview” questions, critical tools that we can use in searching for purpose. Question one: Where did I come from? Two: What’s wrong with the world? Three: Is there a solution? And Four: What is my purpose? As Vaclev Havel observed, it’s not that we aren’t finding answers to these questions. It’s that these questions are no longer being asked.

Of course, questions about purpose can only be answered in the One who purposed us. As Augustine said, “You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Our hearts certainly won’t find rest in money. Gallup did a survey of 132 countries and found those with lower per capita economic output actually had higher rankings for meaning. And generally lower suicide rates, too. Why, when so many of us in the West equate wealth with happiness? Well, it turns out those countries are more religious, giving people a sense of purpose. Even among wealthier countries where religion plays a more prominent role in people’s lives, we report higher levels of meaning.

Increasing numbers of Americans, of course, are going outside of organized religion, seeking to construct their own meaning. Yet those self-made answers rarely quiet our restless hearts. As Pascal said, “It is in vain, oh men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight has led to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that you discover the true and the good.”

The Christian worldview, based on biblical revelation, answers all four of Chuck’s questions, explains both our human dignity and our depravity, and points us to a fixed reference point by which we can orient our lives: God Himself. “Man’s chief end,” the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.”

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Copyright (c) 2015 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

When Life Is Cut Short

Read: John 17:1-5

I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. –John 17:4

My husband Bill died of cancer in 1982. He was only 48 and was still energetic in ministry. Many have asked, "Why was Bill taken at such a young age when he was accomplishing so much for the Lord?"

For years I've been unable to find a clear-cut answer to that question. But I have found some helpful perspectives as I've considered the life and death of Christ. Before He died in His thirties, Jesus prayed to His Father, "I have finished the work which You have given Me to do" (Jn. 17:4).

Philosopher William James said that the value of life is computed not by its duration but by its donation. Except for the obvious necessity of the cross, Jesus could have continued performing amazing deeds if He had lived longer. But such deeds wouldn't have enlarged His supreme donation–His life and death, which provided our great salvation. The work that He completed is still bearing fruit by His Spirit.

Paul Powell wrote, "It is important to remember that one's harvest is not always reaped in this life." God's work through our lives will continue bearing fruit long after we're gone.

That is a comforting and challenging thought. No matter what our life's duration, we have an opportunity to make a lasting donation. –JEY

Our life of service to the Lord

Bears fruit long after we are gone;

So even if our life's cut short,

Our work for Christ will carry on. –Sper

You don't need a long life to live a good life.

Kyle Simpson, 27, was raised Christian. He has a tattoo on the inside of his wrist that says “Salvation from the cross” in Latin.

“It’s a little troublesome now when people ask me. I tell them and they go, ‘Oh, you’re a Christian,’ and I try to skirt the issue now. They go, ‘What does that mean?’ and it’s like, “It’s Latin for ‘I made a mistake when I was 18.’

“When I first got the tattoo I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this will be great because when I’m having troubles in my faith I will be able to look at it, and I can’t run away from it.’ And that is exactly what is happening.

“I don’t [believe in God] but I really want to. That’s the problem with questions like these is you don’t have anything that clearly states, ‘Yes, this is fact,’ so I’m constantly struggling. But looking right at the facts — evolution and science — they’re saying, no there is none. But what about love? What about the ideas of forgiveness? I like to believe they are true and they are meaningful.

“I think having a God would create a meaning for our lives, like we’re working toward a purpose — and it’s all worthwhile because at the end of the day we will maybe move on to another life where everything is beautiful. I love that idea.”

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"More Young People Are Moving Away From Religion, But Why?" from the special series "Losing Our Religion."

Going into Sunday’s Super Bowl matchup against the New England Patriots, Sherman Smith shared how victory on the football field without Jesus Christ would be, for him, a “serious waste of time.”

“I’ll never forget when I got drafted in [1976], my father told me, ‘Son, remember this, playing professional football is how you make your living but it’s not your life because it’s gonna end. You’re gonna stop playing one day and life will continue.’ I never forgot that,” the running backs coach for the Seattle Seahawks said.

Today, Smith will tell you he’s living a coach’s dream on a team that won last year’s Super Bowl against the Denver Broncos. But he said he’s thankful life isn’t all about winning and losing football games.

“If this were just about winning a football game, this is a serious waste of time,” Sherman told Baptist Press during Super Bowl Media Day (Jan. 27) at the US Airways Center in Phoenix.

“But it’s bigger than that,” he said. “Absolutely, no doubt. This is about [His] glory. This is about [His] Kingdom. This is what it’s all about.”

And on the Seahawks, Smith is not alone in being vocal about his faith. Fellow Seahawks Russell Wilson, Russell Okung, Clint Gresham and fellow coach Rocky Seto all spoke about their faith in Christ on Media Day.

But for Sherman, life wasn’t always about honoring the Lord on and off the football field. Sherman shared his testimony last year in a video, “The Making of a Champion,” which also featured the testimonies of Wilson, Okung, Gresham, Chris Maragos, who now plays for the Philadelphia Eagles, and Seto.

In the video that has attracted more than 600,000 views on Youtube, Smith recalled the emptiness he once felt while playing in the NFL -- and even during his college years at Miami University of Ohio.

“I was in college and had a very successful career there,” he said. “We went 33-1-1. I was the starting quarterback. People were telling me I was going to get drafted in the NFL in all that stuff. And I just remember walking around campus and just saying, ‘Man, there’s got to be more to it than this’ -- a feeling of emptiness. I loved the winning but still there was something missing in my life.”

The former second-round draft pick, who went on to play eight seasons for the Seahawks as a running back, said his life began to change when he tried to console middle linebacker Ken Hutcherson, whose career had ended unexpectedly to a knee injury.

“ ... I walked in that locker room to comfort him and be a friend to him and he comforted me,” Smith recalled.

“He said to me ... ‘Sherm ... I’m excited to see what God has planned for my life.’ That’s what he told me, ‘I’m a Christian and nothing happens in my life that’s not filtered through God’s hands first.’ And I knew I didn’t have that confidence. I knew if that were me, my world would have fallen apart.”

Smith wanted to know more and soon put his trust in Jesus Christ.

Whether the Seattle Seahawks win or lose on Sunday, Smith said he is confident opportunities will come to share with others how Christ has changed his life.

Smith still remembers the pain of a gut-wrenching Super Bowl defeat when he was a running backs coach for the Tennessee Titans. In 2000, the Titans came up about a yard short of tying the game and going into overtime against the Rams. They lost the game 23-16. Smith recalled numerous opportunities to share how he coped with the loss.

“In Tennessee, people wanted to hear about how’d you deal with it, and winning [the Super Bowl with Seattle] people want to hear the same question,” said Smith, who has coached with the Seattle Seahawks since 2010.

“So I found really a balance between the two -- the winning and the losing and having opportunities by God.”

In The Making of a Champion video Sherman shared, “The world we live in today, we get so many people telling you how you should live, what it means to be successful, what you should strive after. And I just think you have to have a desire to want to know why you are here. ... A lot of this other stuff is not as promising as everyone says but God’s Word is solid. The foundation is solid. The promises are solid. The future is solid.”

Shawn Hendricks in managing editor of Baptist Press.

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"I work in a factory, and feel I am just going through the motions every day.” - Hardy R.

Don't feel alone. People -- especially those who produce goods rather than provide services -- continue to ask themselves, “How can I find fulfillment in my work?”

The answer is rarely found in the quantity of the production or even in the quality of the end result. In the final analysis we're all in the people business. Ten, fifteen or twenty years from now you won't remember much about organizational charts, production quotas or physical facilities. What you will recall are the heartwarming, personal comments of your associates.

During a leadership seminar in Illinois, I asked several participants to share the most rewarding experiences of their careers.

One man told what it meant to speak at the funeral of a valued employee. Another shared the story of a former drug addict he had helped to become a productive manager. A woman unfolded a well-worn note from a fellow worker she carried in her purse - and she read it to the group. The note said, “If you ever get discouraged, remember that you have made a real difference in one person's life -- mine!”

Do you see the pattern? What matters most are the relationships.

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Neil Eskelin in Neil Eskelin's Daily Jump Start(tm), Copyright (c) 2003

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According to a story in Business Insider, one woman who gave up on her passion is now all the happier for it. Maggie Perkins taught middle and high school in both Florida and Georgia, but now works at Costco, of all places. She attributed the change from lunch boxes to big boxes, after years working in the educational world, to being unable to pay her bills and, more importantly, to sleep at night because of the stress from her job.

Her story is only one of many to describe the broad disillusionment common in education today being expressed by parents, students, taxpayers, and teachers. It also is a reminder that dream jobs can become nightmares if we become alienated from our labor. The God-given joy of meaningful work is often, in our late-modern cultural moment, sapped by overwork, overregulation, and mission drift.

On the one hand, it’s a mistake to think that landing one particular job, and nothing else, will bring us meaning and purpose in life. On the other hand, we talk often as if work is a necessary evil, a way to pay bills until we can escape to a life of leisure. So, ours is a culture that values rampant workaholism, striving for the next promotion, bonus, and higher salary to finally deliver an ever-elusive peace so that we can do nothing more than relax, enjoy ourselves, and avoid responsibilities. It’s a society confused.

Two virtues are in tension here. First, because humans are made in the image of God, the work of our hands is meaningful, a way of fulfilling our God-ordained purpose. Second, work done well is worth doing, even if it is not enjoyable work. Those of us fortunate enough to land a job we love know how satisfying work can be. At the same time, not everyone is blessed with employment they enjoy.

In Mike Rowe’s TV series, Dirty Jobs, the audience gets a tour of work that’s not glamorous. Yet, these are jobs that need to be done, that enable people to provide for their families, and that often provide a genuine sense of satisfaction to those who do them. As it turns out, the whole “fill the earth and subdue it” part of the creation mandate takes various forms, from one person to the next and from one cultural setting to the next.

In fact, for most of history and in a good portion of the world today, dream jobs are nothing more than just that, dreams. Most of humanity has lived life simply doing what their parents did, and with not nearly enough of a social safety net to be picky or entitled. Thus, until quite recently, meaningful work almost always entailed some form of manual labor. Most of life involved manual labor, in fact.

It’s in this context that we can best understand the Bible’s call, from nearly every other verse in Proverbs to the reminders throughout the New Testament, that we should work hard no matter the task at hand because it is glorifying to God. At the same time, Ecclesiastes is full of warnings against living for our jobs, especially since so much of our work after the fall can rightly be called “toil.” And, of course, one of the Ten Commandments, is to rest one day out of seven.

Christopher Watkin insists that God’s design of the Sabbath reveals

that work is not all there is for God, and we know from Exodus 20 that he doesn’t want it to be all there is for us either. After the work of creation, God stops and rests, then blesses the seventh day, and makes it holy. The climax of work is not a promotion, a raise, or recognition, but rest. This is a challenging dynamic both for the workaholic and for the loafer, who (as we have now come to expect) have both captured only part of a more complex biblical reality — a reality that they have dismembered and distorted by making one part of it into their whole truth. In today’s always-on, 24-7 world that never sleeps and rarely jumps off the hamster wheel of productivity long enough to dash to the shops and spend its accumulated wealth, following in God’s footsteps by resting one day in seven is about as political as any time management strategy can get.

To try to find ultimate meaning from our work is to make an idol of something finite. Simply put, work makes a lousy god. However, work was part of God’s original, good creation. Work is a contingent good, to be sure. It is worthwhile but not worth everything. Still, because of God’s good and gracious way of making us, the work of our hands can glorify Him and bless those around us. In that, we can find genuine contentment.

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Copyright (c) 2023 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.