It’s Not About Me.

It sounds so simple.

But it has proven extremely difficult for me to remember and to apply to my everyday life.

It has been challenging to live as if the purpose of my life is so much greater than my own personal fulfillment, my peace of mind or even my happiness—to live as if the purpose of my life is even greater than my family, my career, or my wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to find why you were placed on this planet, you have to begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose.

The search for the purpose of life has not just been a challenge for me, but many, many others for thousands of years. Maybe the problem is that we usually begin at the wrong starting point—ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like: What do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, my dreams for my future?

But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life’s purpose. The Bible says, “It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone’s life is in his power.” Job 12:10

We cannot discover our life’s purpose by starting with a focus on ourselves. We have to begin with God, our Creator. We exist only because God wills that we exist. We were made by God and for God—and until we understand that, our life will never make sense. It is only in God that we discover our origin, our identity, our meaning, our purpose, our significance, and our destiny. Any other path leads to a dead end.

We were made for God, not vice versa, and life is about letting God use you for his purposes, not your using him for your purpose.
Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life

If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.
Laurence J. Peter

It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
Henry David Thoreau

The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead. He is called out… The old life is left behind, and completely surrendered. The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity… out of the realm of the finite…into the realm of infinite possibilities.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death;I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

God waits patiently for me to wake up, grow up, come to the awareness that great works take time—that nothing truly worthwhile can be rushed… How difficult it is not to interfere, to try to take over, to go it alone. But God cannot succeed without me. God needs my whole-hearted cooperation in this work.
Jean Royer

If you are what you should be, you will set the whole world ablaze!
Saint Catherine of Siena

In order to find oneself, you must first lose yourself in the service of others.
Ghandi

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following Your Will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing…
Thomas Merton

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.
C.S. Lewis

God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.
Oswald Chambers

If ever we are going to be made into wine, we will have to be crushed; you cannot drink grapes. Grapes become wine only when they have been squeezed. I wonder what kind of finger and thumb God has been using to squeeze you, and you have been like a marble and escaped?
Oswald Chambers

To awaken a new longing for holiness: this is the great pastoral challenge that we have before us, if we want to be faithful to God’s plan and also to respond to the yearnings and hopes of the peoples of America and of all peoples on earth…
Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe

God wants to reach out to others through your hands. He wants to speak to others through your lips, and God wants others to look into your eyes and see Him… give God permission.
John Cardinal O’Connor

The greatest mistake is in not being aware that others are Christ.
There are very many people who will not discover it until their last day.
Archbishop Van Thuân

The reason we have a life is so that we may lay it down for others.
Dr.Janet Haggerty