Title of my message today is: Live Well

(Ecclesiastes 2:17) “So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

1. Life seems useless.

(Ecclesiastes 1:2-4 GN) “Life is useless, all useless. You spend your life working... but what do you have to show for it? ... The world just stays the same.”

2. Life seems tiresome.

(Ecclesiastes 1:4-8 GN) “The sun rises and goes down... the wind blows round and round and back again. Every river flows into the sea... [then] the water returns to where the river began and starts all over again. Everything leads to weariness…”

3. Life seems unfulfilling.

(Ecclesiastes 1:8-10 LB) “No matter how much we see, we're never satisfied; no matter how much we hear, we're not content. History merely repeats itself.”

4. Life seems uncontrollable.

(Ecclesiastes 1:15 GN) “You can't straighten out what is crooked; you can't count things that aren't there!”

How do you connect meaning to life?

1. Why am I alive?

(Jeremiah 20:18 TEV) “Why was I born? Was it only to have trouble and sorrow, to end my life in disgrace?”

Video – Everybody Loves Raymond Clip 1

(Proverbs 16:4 GW) “The Lord has made everything for his own purpose.”

2. Does my life matter?

(Isaiah 49:4 NLT) “My work all seems so useless! I have spent my strength for nothing and for no purpose at all.”

Survival level

Success level

Significance level

Which level are you living in?

(Psalm 139:16 LB) “You... scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your book!”

(1 John 5:12) “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”

3. What is my purpose?

(Psalm 89:47 NCV) “Why did you create us? For nothing?”

Video – Everybody Loves Raymond Clip 2

(Acts 17:26-28) “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’”

(Colossians 1:16 MSG) “For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible…everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.”

(Proverbs 9:6 MSG) “Leave your impoverished confusion and live! Walk up the street to a life with meaning.”

(2 Corinthians 4:16-18) “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Live life in view of eternity.

(Deuteronomy 30:19) “This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life…”