Did I catch you off guard? What does the purpose of life have to do with a crying baby and a to do list? Everything.

One of the great things about Christianity is that we don’t have to guess at the purpose of life, or find our purpose, or carve out our purpose. God gives us our purpose through scripture. There have been many attempts to summarize what scripture teaches us about the purpose of our lives, but any understanding of God’s purpose for our lives will necessarily include the idea that we are made for a relationship with God and each other. What is God’s purpose for us?: Relationship.

Relationship is as central a theme in scripture as any other. Here are some highlights that show how central relationship is to God’s purposes in history and in our lives.

• The Trinity. God Himself is in eternal relationship within the Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit have loved each other perfectly from eternity past and will continue to do so into eternity future. Before there was anything, there was a perfect relationship.
• Creation. Jonathan Edwards, in his “Dissertation On The End For Which God Created The World,” shows that God created the world, as well as you and I, FOR Himself (Ch 2, sec. 1). Why are we? We are FOR God. Our entire being- the existence of the world-  finds its chief end in relating to him.
• I will be your God, and you will be my people. We find this phrase stated or referenced many times in scripture (Gen 17, Ez 34, 36, Jer 7 and 30). Especially poignant are Exodus 6 and Revelation 21. Basically right at the beginning of God establishing a covenant with his people, and right at the very end of history (as well as through eternity) God’s stated purpose is a two-way relationship between Himself and His people. This brings Him glory.
• John 17. Jesus’ prayer emphasizes at least two things: 1) The Father and the Son are one (are in perfect relationship), and 2) Jesus desires that the Church would be one just as the Father and Son are one. JUST AS. Jesus sets a very high bar for unity and loving relationship within His Church. Not “sorta like,” or “roughly analogous,” but “just as.” Jesus’ vision for the Church is one of perfect relationship.

Scripture makes relationship with God and with each other central to our purpose in this life and the next.

As I was walking in small circles with Canaan, feeling the pressure of the other things that I had purposed for these hours, it would have been very easy to allow that pressure to drive me into worry, anger, impatience and the like. I know, because that has happened before. I needed this teaching that God’s biggest priority for these 120 minutes was relationship with Canaan. Even though I had other things planned, even some really good things, these were ultimately my priorities. If the Lord called me to invest in being with Canaan, then to do so means holding and walking with Canaan had more eternal significance than all of my other plans combined.

While I was an intern at CCEF New England, Alaistair Groves and I were having lunch one day and he was telling me about his morning in which nothing at all went the way he wanted it to go. I tried to empathize with what I imagined was a frustrating few hours, but he said something to the effect of: “If that’s how the Lord wanted me to use my morning, then that’s how I’ll use my morning.” May we all be so wise.

Let me offer three things that can be helpful as you seek to prioritize relationship in a moment of pressure:

1. Pray. We need our hearts to value things the way God values them. Which means with need our hearts to be transformed. This is a miracle that only the Holy Spirit can do. So we need to pray for that transformation to happen.
2. Visualize. If relationship truly is the highest priority that God has for us in any given moment, then all the other priorities that we would have for a moment are less valuable than relationship. It’s like we are trading $100 for $1000. It’s a no-brainer. I think often what I try to do is end up with $1100. Let’s be content with the trade up. To visualize this, sometimes I picture a scale with “my purposes” on one side which is lighter than “God’s purposes” on the other side.
3. Verbalize. As I was walking around with Canaan, I kept saying to myself: “The most important thing I can do right now is be with you.” I had to keep saying it, because I didn’t really feel the truth of that statement. But I knew it was true. So I said it over and over as an act of faith. Eventually my feelings caught up with the truth.