Purpose Driven

I have also started working my way through "A Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren. While employed as a youth minister I enjoyed "Purpose Driven Youth Ministry" by his colleague Doug Fields. With the great popularity of "A Purpose Driven Life" I've gone into it with some great hopes, but also some trepidation. Whatever the case may be it seems that it is something for me to read because so many others are, so that at the very least I can be up to speed on what it is all about. Consequently in the coming days I'm sure I'll have a number of posts in relation to some of the stuff I come across in the book.

To start with I am a bit hesitant with the whole premise of the book. It seems to suggest, and Warren definitely leans that way in the introduction, that if you simply apply yourself well enough over the next 40 days you will have a better life, a better faith. I don't think it's that easy. Of course Warren then goes on in the first chapter to suggest this is not a self-help book. I don't know, it sure sounds like it is to me. If the idea is that you apply yourself for the next 40 days you will find purpose, what we are looking for, then it sounds like a self-help book to me.

Yet to be fair Warren's primary premise of chapter one is a good one, that it all begins with God. Our focus is to be on God, not on ourselves. It is a helpful reminder. I do wonder if Warren doesn't go too far with that suggestion though. I would think especially for somebody who comes from a more evangelical perspective that he would be more okay with looking inside oneself. I would suggest that it's not all bad to look at yourself as well because God is in there as well. Folks like Warren will often use language like, "Invite Jesus into your heart." That would suggest to me that Jesus resides there, so it's not all so bad to take a look inside. I think it is a good thing to look inside and see what God is up to in your life... at least that's my opinion.