What’s Your Life Purpose?

You shall not make gods of silver to be with me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold. . . If you make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stones, for if you wield your tool on it you profane it. Exodus 20:23-25

What’s the point of our lives? Why do we go to work every day, doing what we do? Do we labor Monday through Friday so that we can live it up on the weekends? Do we work for our family? Whatever we’re doing, we do it for a reason and that reason is the guiding force of our lives. We may not think of it in religious terms, but whoever or whatever directs our lives is the thing we worship. That person or thing is our god.

Sadly, in my addiction, the drug became my god. I’d have said at the time that as a Christian, I believed my life was supposed to be pointed at God. If you’d have been able to see inside my life though, you’d have observed that when I woke up in the morning and when I went to bed at night, I was thinking of my pills. In the end, I put those pills before everything else – family, career, and faith – sacrificing everything on the altar of my addiction.

We don’t often think of our life purpose, and if we do, we don’t necessarily think of it in spiritual terms. Today’s passage though addresses our life purpose in this language. In the narrative, God instructed his people to follow him above all. They were to have no other gods before him, and they were to craft no idols of silver or gold. When they made a sacrificial altar, it was to be made from simple rocks. God knew that if they made an altar of gold, then the altar itself would become valuable. Enemies may try to take it and God’s people would go to war over it. If they built a golden altar, then that altar would direct their behavior, becoming their god.

I’ve never made a literal idol in the Biblical sense. Still, I’ve had my false gods. It’s my nature to do what I want, following my own appetite. In my addiction though, I came to realize that my way eventually ends in misery. When I make a god of my own pursuits, I supplant the one true God, which is a recipe for disaster. Daily now, I make a conscious effort to point my life at God, seeking his will over mine. I don’t do it perfectly. I still have my struggles. My life though, is far better off for daily abandoning my false gods to seek the will of the one true God.