Many of us who desire to share our faith online or offline, wonder if we ‘know enough,’  to qualify for the work–if such content should be left to scholars or seminary teachers, serious apologists or producers of symposia.  The reality is that people want to hear it from all of us, the everyday Mormons, the casual but informed lay person, the unabashed follower of Christ, the non-vanilla (that’s each of us), individual interdependently but not at all blindly striving in the trenches of a spiritual war–with a few battle wounds forgotten– to live the life Christ has invited us to live.

And be assured, regardless of your age, your accumulated wisdom, if you have been a faithful striving participant in the work, you know enough to share. You can articulate, among many other principles, the very purpose of life, your own responses to its challenges and access to the atonement and redeeming principles. Like the air we breathe, we take it for granted that we’ve got at our disposal a revealed set of truths regarding the pre-mortal, mortal, and post-mortal realities. That is more than one in seven say of those polled recently,  say they know–this was a poll of presently “unchurched,” self-identifying Christians in America, of whom there are millions outside of this study. 

About 14% of this self-professed Christian group among the un-churched larger group  feel they have any defined or clear meaning or purpose in their lives, according to a new Barna study survey-interviewing over 2,000 of them.  The question is: “How will we help them?”  In many instances, we can find them online as we share our knowledge of the purpose of life–and make our entries accessible and findable.

There are many  who consider themselves spiritual but non-religious. We work with them, interact with them online, and many of them, feeling ‘hurt’ by some experience within their past congregations, have distanced themselves.  While we cannot take accountability for others’ choices to be offended, we can invite others to return to fellowship and introduce to them the purpose of life in its fulness–and the gospel of Jesus Christ restored to the earth, as we as Mormons know it.

Other findings of the Barna research team regarding these self-identified Christians who’ve departed from conventional  church going, include the following:

• Two-thirds (68%) hold a biblical view of God – that is, He is the all-knowing, all-powerful creator of the universe and He still rules that universe today.
• Only one-third (35%) agree to any extent that the Bible is totally accurate in all the principles it teaches.
• Only one in seven (15%) claim that their religious faith is very important in their life.
• One out of five (22%) contends that the ultimate purpose of life is to love God with all their heart, mind, strength and soul.
• A mere one in seven (14%) claims to have a clear sense of the meaning and purpose of their life.
• And minorities of the group, ranging from one-quarter to one-third, support the notions of salvation by grace alone, Jesus Christ living a holy and sinless life on earth, and Satan existing today. (This is a stunningly pathetic portrait of the knowledge of Jesus Christ as Redeemer, perfectly sinless Son of God.)

I don’t know about you, but I am ‘not okay’ with this.

Lest you think it’s really not so and people must know they have a purpose. Check this out, written by a sincere inquirer and writer:

How to Find My Purpose in Life

Find Your Purpose in Life
Find my purpose in life??? A friend of mine asked me once, “Do you know why you are here?” Feeling kind of stupid because I really didn’t know, I replied, “No” and waited for a profound response. “To be of service.” Okay, so I did not want to admit that I never really gave my purpose in life too much thought. I was too busy worrying about bills, children, and my husband to think about why I’m here. Sounds kind of selfish, but years later, her words made sense to me. After I quit my job and returned to college at age 40, I still did not know what I wanted to do with my life, but my friend’s words made me realize my true calling would have to be something I loved, something I had a passion for that would also allow me “to be of service to others.” But how do I find my passion, my purpose? The answer came to me during my last semester in graduate school.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy
Instructions
Things You’ll Need:
A computer or paper and magazines
Step
1

To find purpose in life, open your mind and be willing to discover an image or images that represents your passion. Look for pictures on the computer or in magazines. Google images is a good place to start on the computer. Soon you’ll be on your way to finding your purpose in life.
Step
2

To find your purpose in life, think about your life especially the years before you were eighteen. Think about your deeply held convictions about life. Choose pictures that evoke an emotional response. They just need to be images that involve a certain “sting” for you. It’s not nessecary that you know why they create an emotional response from you.
Step
3
Copy the images onto a word document or on a free web page. Google pages offers free web pages, and images are easy to post. If you don’t have a computer, cut your images out and glue them to a large cardboard. Your purpose in life will soon be revealed to you.
Step
4

Look for underlining repetitive themes in the images you choose. They will lead you to your purpose in live. Write about them on your web page, on a word document, or on a piece of paper. Search for a moment or moments during your childhood that connect to your theme. Eventually an image should appear for you that represents your passion or calling in life.

When Albert Einstein was a little boy, his father gave him a compass. He was fascinated by the compass. The compass was his image that represented his discovery of the theory of relativity after he became an adult.
Step
5
Keep writing about your image or images. Take your time. For some people, their image will appear right away. Others may take a little longer.
Step
6
After you discover your image, make changes in your life that will put you on the road to achieving your passion. You will find that your purpose in life will lead you to be of service to others.

Theres obviously truth here–knowing our purpose ‘will’ lead to service. What might we add to this tapestry for those seeking to know the ‘rest of the story?’

People are seeking.
People are knocking.

What will we do online? We can create a virtual door for them to open. Adopt a website on which you can share your convictions, your artistic talents, your family photos and activities, your modus operandi for making decisions. People hunger to know, as Reynolds Price says in A Palpable God, that there is a just God who knows them and an ultimate storyline that makes sense.

Would you like to be involved in making a difference. Let us know your ideas, and we will share ours with you as well. Please contact us with your feedback and meaningful insights and comments: email@moregoodfoundation dot org.