You were made on purpose for a purpose. Do you know what it is? God offers you everything you need to become the person he designed you to be, so there’s no reason to wander through life. This fall, learn how Jesus makes it possible for you to live with purpose in your day-to-day life.
Below, you’ll find excerpts from the first week of the Living with Purpose workbook, a free resource from The Crossing to help you apply our Fall 2026 sermon series to your life. Use the devotional thoughts, reflection questions, and guided prayer to help you live into the purpose God has for you.
If you like this content and want to continue using it to cultivate a life of purpose, download a PDF of the full workbook or pick up a free copy at The Crossing’s front desk.
I can say few things with certainty, but of this I am sure: I will die. You will die. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But one day I will be laid in a pine box, buried in the dirt, and shortly thereafter forgotten by the living world. Some of us dread death. Some avoid it. Some welcome it. But those who wish to live with purpose take a different path. I urge you to follow.
You must contemplate your death.
The wiseman of Ecclesiastes took this path 3,000 years ago. He wrote, “The day of death [is] better than the day of birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone. The living should take this to heart.” (Eccl. 7:1b-2)
Joy is found on the day of a child’s birth, but not wisdom. Why? Because a birthday is a protean moment. A beginning. A juncture from which fractalizes infinite possibility. No one knows what that baby will become. You cannot measure how one spends one’s life at birth. There is only one time for that measurement: at the end.
The wiseman attends funerals because funerals put him toe-to-toe with life’s one equalizer: death. It’s only on your death day that you know whether you lived with wisdom or folly, virtue or wickedness. Whether you brought life to your loved ones or left behind wreckage and despair. Thus, a wiseman builds his life not for tomorrow but for his last day. That will be the measure of a life well lived or poorly wasted.
If you want to live with purpose, you do well to live life backward.
As a follower of Jesus, you may be itching to shout, “But death is not the end!” True enough. But it is an end. And an important one! There are things that can be said or left unsaid, done or left undone, which cannot be reversed after death. There is forgiveness, yes, but there are no do-overs on life.
Those who reject Jesus in this life will not be with him in eternity, but those who receive him will. Neither end is the result of human labor. The only question is whether we’ll accept the gift Christ offers—his death for our sins and resurrection for our life—or reject it.
For those who do receive his love, a deeper question remains. What will we do with the gift he gave us? Jesus tells numerous parables to illustrate the point. The most famous is the story of a king who leaves his servants with money to invest. Some receive the gift and grow it tenfold. But others bury it for fear of losing all. When the king returns, he praises those who grew the gift and scolds those who hid it away.
In other words, Jesus will measure our lives. Not to determine our salvation—he secures that by his blood—but to determine our heavenly rewards. Paul says every life will be tested by fire. What was made of gold will last but what was made of straw will burn (1 Cor. 3:10-15). He warns that some people will enter the resurrection “as one escaping through the flames.” You may be saved, but you’ll be singed.
My point is that living with purpose requires contemplation of death and life after death. The good news is that the one who leaves this world having seen the vapor of control, possessions, and accomplishments for what they are is precisely the one who is prepared to live for a purpose beyond this world.
Who is that purpose? Merely reflect on your death and on your life after death, and you’ll see the truth. There is only one who can bear the responsibility of giving your life a purpose that does not slip through your hands like vapor. The eternal king. Jesus.
In prayer, thank Jesus for the gift of salvation. Thank him that his forgiveness and mercy know no bounds. Relinquish your shame and guilt to him, then ask him for the strength to live for your resurrected life in the age to come rather than for the things of this life.