The Purpose & Process of Life

The purpose and process of life can be summarized in 3 steps :

1. connect to Jesus and then to others
2. living out by good behavior and good works
   
3. telling others about the how and why - getting them to connect to Jesus.

Life purpose begins with knowing the creator Jesus and then to establish a intimate relationship with Him. Created being can only understand his purpose by asking his Creator - Why am I created? We are created to enjoy His love, glory and companionship. When we experienced His love for us, we can then begin to relate and to love others. As we connect with others, and taste the good and bad, we learn more about His love for us.

Relying on the inner strength that comes from Christ in us, we are able to live out and show forth the strength through good behavior and good works. Our performances bring glory to God. But our performances must be motivated from the inside by His love. We perform because we are of excellent character. We do not perform to gain glory, or money, or influence for ourselves. We want to gain influence through and for Christ. We are the channels and the stewards where God could show forth His glory.

Our excellent performance will draw people to ask us for the 'secrets' of our success. We are to tell and to share our 'secrets' - Paul called it the "Mystery" - which is the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Our telling comes after our acts of love and performance and not before. Someone says, "No one cares about what you know until he knows how much you care about him". We must tell, but first show forth your action of love and success.

The order, connect first to God and then to others, and then living out and then telling how, is important. We don't tell before we work. We don't work until we know Jesus. We don't work ourselves but with and through Jesus.

Connecting to our creator Jesus is the purpose of life and then life is about living out and sharing the Jesus within.

As an example, the Fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom. All true knowledge and wisdom begins with the understanding of God existence and His ordered patterns of life. Science is not possible without a Creator and a Creator of order. Without a believe in order, there is no science. Knowledge without having an absolute anchor and moral standard will leads to failure, destruction and death in the long term. The secrets of success and a fulfilled and healthy life begins with knowing God and His character. The main cause of the financial crisis is essentially a belief without God and only in Self and greed.

Wolf Cutlure vs Lamb Culture

Recently, in Chinese Businesses in PRC, there is this promotion and adoption of the "Wolves Culture" of doing business. The wolves culture promote wolf-like principles like

1. aggressiveness, ruthless and self-seeking - achieving the ends at all costs ; the ends justify the means; never satisfy - always go for more.
   
2. alertness to opportunities and grab them
3. great team work.
   

In contrast to the Wolf Culture, there is the Lamb Culture which is biblical based, or at least, good moral based, and has love as the center, stressing integrity, humility, sacrifice, dedication and social responsibility. The lamb culture is very much like what is presented in Dev Seidman's "How" and Gary Hamel's "The Future of Management".

The 1st principle is like a new version of an old Chinese book titled "Thick Black Study" teaching people to be thick-skinned and back-hearted to get thing done their way.

Except for 1st principle of ruthlessness, the other 2 principles of alertness-agility and team-work are quite biblical and are covered in Kingdom Laws & Principles.

Some more information on the Lamb Culture Forum can be found here.

Fleshy Work & Spiritual Work

God put His Kingdom Principles and Laws to work in His created universe. Key character traits like honesty, diligence, humility, and integrity make for success. Business people, whether believers or not, when they follow the God established laws will reap the benefits. Such accomplishments are not, work of the flesh, but spiritual work - they are the outcomes of respecting, trusting and following God's Laws.

However, if business people violate God's laws, and use dishonesty to grow their business, then those short-term successes are work of the flesh. It is the motivation and principles that we exert bodily in the fresh to follow that determine the spiritualness of our effort - spiritual or fleshy work.

Don't let anyone deceive you into not working. Spiritual work takes a lot of effort in the body flesh and muscles and our mind too.

See Let Go & Let God - Spiritual or Just Plain Lazy?

KP#21 Watch and Ride the Trend

It is common knowledge that change is the permanent and unavoidable thing of life. Living means growing and changing. However, coping with the changes bring stress and hardship.

The secret of successful and victorious living lies in the following 4 strategies:

1. Watch & Ride the Trend
   Being watchful of the changes, the trends, and then plan to riding on it to success.
2. Seizing the Opportunity in the Crisis.
   Very often though, the changes just happen suddenly; at least to those that have not be watching or to those with lack of knowledge. There is little to plan to cope with the changes. The ability to seize this opportunity, or more precisely, crisis, depends very much one readiness, agility, and responsiveness.
3. Innovate and Create the Trend and Following.
4. Going Back is a Good Option. When there is uncertainty and lack of directions and the present situations is not at all comfortable, going back to the original mission and calling that make the corporate successful in the 1st place could be a good option. We don't always have to do 'new' things.

We will cover the 1st strategy - watch and ride the trend.
Jesus uses the Budding Fig Tree Mat 24:32-36, the Evening Sky Mat 16:2-3 to tell us that

• changes can be predicted.
• be watchful wise and know the trend

We must be always on the watch so that we don't be fooled by our present and past success thinking that things will always stay the same. We should not be fooled by things that happen on the surface and go deeper and further. Luke 18-9-14 tells the story of Pharisee and the Republican - who is the one that is saved? self-righteousness or true repentance.

Here is the mind map ....

Next:  Seize the Opportunity