(1) PHILIPPIANS 1. 12-26   GOD’S PURPOSE FOR OUR LIVES

I. PAUL AND HIS ‘LIFE-PURPOSE’   1.12-26

Searching Scripture: Examining Paul’s purpose for living. From prison, in his letter to Philippian Christians, Paul reveals his life-purpose.

• Search this passage to discover every way Paul reveals and expresses his great life purpose.  Talk about this together. What indications are there that his purpose directed his whole life?
• Was his life-purpose purely personal and self-orientated?  Whom did it impact?  Around whom did it centre?
• How was Paul’s life-purpose decided?   How did he ‘discover’ it?
• Paul is shut up in prison: how was his life affected there in prison by his life-purpose?  (for good or bad?) How did it affect his thoughts about the future?
• Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be ‘purpose-driven’ in life?

II. OURSELVES AND ‘LIFE-PURPOSE’

Searching ourselves: Examining our lives to ask if we have a directing sense of purpose.

• How essential to life is it to have a sense of purpose and to be ‘driven’ by it? Do most people possess this? Are people today ‘driven’ by good purposes?  Or are they ‘drifting’?
• By what sort of things (good and bad) are people ‘driven’ today?
• What about Christians? Are the Christians you know ‘drifting’ or, in the best sense of the word, ‘purpose-driven’?
• Life is such a big and mysterious thing. How are we to discover what we are here on earth for? Where are we to look? Is it just up to each of us to decide? Or is there a bigger purpose for living into which my life should it?  Who can guide us and tell us?
• What about you, as a Christian?  How have you decided what things will be the controlling and directing purposes of your living? How would you express the sort of things you are living for? Do they ‘connect’ in any way with those of the Apostle Paul?

Be honest:

Are you ‘drifting’ or ‘purpose-driven’?