Jean Nidetch, a 214-pound homemaker desperate to lose weight, went to the New York City Department of Health where she was given a diet devised by Dr. Norman Jolliffe. Two months later, discouraged about the 50 plus pounds still to go, she invited six overweight friends home to share the diet and talk about how to stay on it. This was in 1963.

Today, some 50 years later, one million members attend 250,000 Weight Watchers meetings in 24 countries every week. Why was Nidetch able to help people take control of their lives? To answer that, she tells a story. When she was a teenager, she used to cross a park where she saw mothers gossiping while the toddlers sat on their swings, with no one to push them.

“I’d give them a push,” says Nidetch.

“And you know what happens when you push a kid on a swing? Pretty soon he’s pumping, doing it himself. That’s what my role in life is—I’m there to give others a push.”²

And isn’t that what Christianity and serving God is all about? We’re here to give others “a push” to help them get up when they have fallen down and to get on their own two feet. And who knows what might be the eventual effect?

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be a ‘good pusher’ to help those who need a helping hand when they are down or in need. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:2 (NLT).

2. The online source is no longer available but you can see Jean Nidetch’s story online at: http://tinyurl.com/ygpzn6z.

Another way for enriching your personal life is by investing your life in a worthwhile cause. Everybody needs something to live for that is bigger than him or herself—a noble or worthwhile cause into which he/she can put his/her best efforts.

A few years ago I was going through a particularly difficult time. Had it not been for both my work and an outside project, I’m sure I would have cracked under the strain. My work is helping people discover more meaningful personal and spiritual values and my outside project at that time was building my own home with my own hands—both worthwhile causes.

A creative use of one’s talents is also essential for giving meaning to life. God gave us all talents to use. When we aren’t using them, we feel unfulfilled.

One man I know was very successful in his work but he was feeling very unfulfilled in it. He felt his job was too small and that he wasn’t using his best talents. So he took the risk, quit his job and went back to college to train for the work he really wanted to do. He struggled for several years but today he has built a work that is helping many people, and this has greatly enhanced his purpose for living.

This is why I believe it is important to discover what your best talent is (or talents are), get the training you need to sharpen that talent, and find a place where you can use it—either in your job, in a hobby, in your church, or with a volunteer organization. God’s purpose for your life will definitely involve the use of your gifts and talents in ways to help others.

Faith, hope, and charity. The poet Goethe lists nine requisites for meaningful living. They are as follows: “Health enough to make work a pleasure. Wealth enough to support your needs. Strength enough to battle with difficulties and overcome them. Grace enough to confess your sins and forsake them. Patience enough to toil until some good is accomplished. Charity enough to see some good in your neighbor. Love enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others. Faith enough to make real the things of God. Hope enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.”

There is, I am sure, no greater way to increase your hope for the future and enrich your personal life than by learning to love others more fully, by developing a vital faith in God, and discovering and fulfilling your God-given life purpose. Why not tell God right now that you want to do that and confirm your decision by becoming more involved as a volunteer in community service, a mission organization, and/or in your church or chapel. If you are not involved in a local church, ask God to help you find the church that is right for you.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to increase my hope and trust in you and thereby renew my strength and, as I serve you with meaningful purpose, help me to soar on wings as eagles, run and not be weary, and walk and not faint. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Isaiah 40:31 (NIV).

It is purpose—not wealth or success—that makes life worthwhile. Purpose makes even drudgery acceptable and is an immunization against many sicknesses. How then can we find more meaning and purpose to life? The following tips can help:

Getting out of yourself. Another grandmother I know had a large family to bring up and was widowed reasonably early in life. She had her share of heartaches but never allowed these to get her down. She lived a full and active life and had a wonderful gift for passing on cheer to those around her. Her secret was helping other people. She was an active member of her church and had a deep conviction that one of the basic purposes of the church was to help people less fortunate than herself. One way she did this was through years of hospital visitation to pass on a word of comfort to the sick.

No matter how busy we are or how many problems we have, we can all find little ways to bring cheer to those around us—like bringing home a rose for your wife, a special treat for the children, a favor for a neighbor. Visit someone who is shut-in. Write a note, use your telephone, or send an email to tell a friend you appreciate him or her. Words of encouragement and acts of kindness do wonders for both the giver and the receiver.

A vital part of finding happiness and contentment is found in discovering something more important than yourself to believe in, by helping others, and by directing your thoughts and actions towards them. Egotists are seldom happy.

Love and friendship are also essential for giving life meaning and purpose. Without wholesome relationships, which give us a sense of belonging, we live as islands alone in a very large universe.

So take time for friends. They are a priceless asset in life. “Do you want to make friends?” asks Dale Carnegie, who gives the following advice. “Be friendly. Forget yourself. You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.”

And remember, as another has said, “The person all wrapped up in himself makes a very small package.”

To be concluded …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to live life beyond myself, love people, and therein serve you by serving others. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Ecclesiastes 9:10 (NIV).

Several years ago one grandmother I know sold off the old family home, pulled up her roots, left many of her friends and activities behind, and moved to a retirement village in another town. She had been healthy and energetic all her life, but in the last year after her move she aged considerably and developed a terminal illness.

At age 65 another friend of mine retired from being a full-time minister of a large church and set up a full-time counseling center and wrote his first book. His book became a bestseller and he has since written ten more. At age 80 he had slowed down but was still counseling and writing.

What made the difference between these two people? Like many elderly people who retire or move to another place, the first person suffered deeply from the loss of friends, her home of many years, and the activities she was used to. She became lonely and life for her seemed to lose its meaning. She had no real purpose to carry her through this time of major change and readjustment.

The second person, however, had something to live for long before his retirement. He just continued it after “retirement.”

Loneliness, emptiness, boredom, and lack of purpose are all a very real part of modern man’s dilemma. They are indicative of our failure to find meaning for living and they show up in the alarming abuse of alcohol and other drugs, and in the high depression and suicide rate.

In America, for example, the most affluent country on earth, some 40,000 people take their own lives each year, while it is estimated that ten times that number attempt to. That means in our country one person out of every 6,000 commits suicide each year. And there are countless others who, while living in the midst of abundance, to quote Henry D. Thoreau, live lives of “quiet desperation.”

The tragedy in life, however, is not death, but rather, as Albert Schweitzer once said, “what dies inside a man [or woman] while he/she lives.” A person dies inside when he has no meaningful purpose outside of himself for which to live.

To be continued …

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to discover my God-given life purpose and then, with your help, employ all of my powers for the achievement of this purpose. And please grant that what I contribute will help make the world in which I live a better place for others to live. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. The Apostle Paul in Philippians 1:21-22 (NIV).

Haim Potok, a Jewish rabbi, scholar and writer, was born into an orthodox Jewish family in 1929. He grew up in New York City and started writing fiction when he was only sixteen years old.²

Repeatedly his Polish immigrant parents would keep telling him, “Haim, be a brain surgeon. You will make a lot of money and you will save a lot of people from dying.”

Time and again they would give him the same advice, “Haim, be a brain surgeon. You will make a lot of money and you will save a lot of people from dying.”

However, Heim wanted to be a writer and after repeated advice from both his mother and father telling him what he should do with his life, he shouted back at his mother, “I don’t want to stop people from dying. I want to teach them how to live.”³

Speaking personally I spent many years gaining an education that taught me many things—but never how to live. I had to learn that in the “College of Hardknocks!”

True, making a living is very important but learning how to live is much more important. And that’s what God’s Word, the Bible, is all about. As God said to Joshua some 4,000 years ago if you follow all of my laws, “Then you will be prosperous and successful.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to get my priorities straight so that I will always live in harmony with your Word and become prosperous and successful as you define these qualities. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Joshua 1:7-8 (NIV).

2. SparkNotes, http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/chosen/context.html

3. From a sermon by Tod Bolsinger, San Clemente Presbyterian Church, San Clemente, California.

You may have read about the boy who loved to go house to house handing out gospel tracts every Sunday afternoon with his pastor father. On one rainy, cold Sunday his father didn’t want to go out on visitation so the son, with his dad’s permission, went out alone.

At the last house the son was visiting he rang the bell many times but nobody came to the door. When he turned to leave, he felt constrained to go back and try one more time. This time he knocked very hard on the door … waited patiently … and in a while an elderly lady answered. He gave her his last tract and told her that God loved her.

As the story goes, the following Sunday at the lad’s church when the pastor gave his people the opportunity to share any blessings they had received the previous week, an elderly lady in the back stood to share how, on the previous wet, cold Sunday, she was at wits end. Her husband had passed away and she had no friends or family in the area and was about to end her life. She shared how she had ignored the persistent ringing of her doorbell but when she heard a loud knocking, she decided to see who was there. She was surprised to find a young lad who told her that God loved her and handed her a piece of literature. “I read the literature,” she said, “and prayed the prayer to ask Jesus to be my Savior. And as your church address was on the literature, I decided to come here to church today.”

We never know just how God will use us if we are but persistent! This story reminds me how, when I was a teenager growing up in my small hometown church, each year we would have a week of “revival” (evangelistic outreach meetings), but not a single adult would ever go house to house to give people an invitation to attend. One year one of the pastor’s teenage sons and I were the only ones who would do this visitation. Another year I went out alone.

So now today, many years later, I’m still going house to house … but via the web and email … to thousands of homes, families, and individuals worldwide every day. As a teen I could never have imagined in all my wildest dreams where I would be and what I would be doing today.

And if you and I keep on serving God day by day, we will never know the results until we get to Heaven for only eternity will reveal what our faithful service to the Lord will reveal.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be faithful in my service to you no matter how small or large my tasks may be, and grant that my efforts (with your help) will affect other lives not only for time, but also for eternity. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. 2 Corinthians 4:1 (TLB)(NLT).

“University psychologists recently conducted a research project on gratitude and thanksgiving. They divided participants into three groups. People in the first group practiced daily exercises like writing in a gratitude journal. They reported higher levels of alertness, determination, optimism, energy, and less depression and stress than the control group. Unsurprisingly, they were also a lot happier than the participants who were told to keep an account of all the bad things that happened each day.

“One of the psychologists concluded that though a practice of gratitude is a key to most religions, its benefits extend to the general population, regardless of faith or no faith. He suggested that anyone can increase his sense of well-being just from counting his blessings.”²

As William Shakespeare said so eloquently: “Let never day nor night unhallowed pass / But still remember what the Lord hath done.” To those words I would add a very hearty “amen”!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a thankful heart and may words of thanksgiving be always in my heart and never far from my lips, and help me always to live in an attitude of gratitude. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Philippians 4:6-7 (NIV).

2. Chuck Colson in Breakpoint, May 17, 2005. http://www.pfm.org/

Author Marabel Morgan told how for three long months prior to the birth of her second daughter she was flat on her back in the hospital with no visitors allowed. She was bored out of her mind and longed to have something constructive to do but was too drugged to even read, let alone write. Eventually her baby was born and she returned home. Her life now was filled with things to do, taking care, not only of the new baby, but another daughter as well, her husband, household chores, and innumerable other responsibilities—not the time to write a book. But she did!

She said, “Once you set your goal, then picture it done. Without this finished picture in your mind, you’ll give up halfway. With it, there’s no limit to what you might accomplish.”

Somebody else said, “Faith is visualizing what God wants you to do.” Good point. Once we see what that is, it is so much easier to start doing it!

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me a vision of what you are doing in the world today, the world in which I live, and help me to see how I can be a part of that. Let your vision for me be my vision for you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 29:18.

You are probably familiar with the article by Robert Fulghum titled, “All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” It’s a classic and contains priceless advice.

“Most of what I really need to know about life, I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but here in the sandbox at nursery school.

“These are the things I learned: Share everything. Play fair. Don’t hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don’t take things that aren’t yours. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush! Live a balanced life. Learn and think, draw and paint, sing and dance, play and work a little every day.

“When you get out into the world, watch for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. Be aware of wonder.

“Remember the little seed in the plastic cup. The roots go down and the plant goes up, and nobody really knows why, but we are all like that.

“Goldfish, hamsters, white mice, and even the little seed in the plastic cup—they all die. So do we.

“And then remember the book about Dick and Jane, and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule, love and basic sanitation, ecology, politics and sane living.

“Think of what a better world it would be if all of us—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon, and then lay down with our blankets for a nap. Or if we had a basic policy in our nation, and other nations, always to put things back where we found them, and cleaned up our own messes.

“And it’s still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out into the world, it’s best to hold hands and stick together.”

Personally speaking, I had a dear friend whom I met very early in life. We went through grade school and technical college together. We’d been through national service together, too, and even though we’d lived thousands of miles apart, we never lost contact with each other. Not so long ago my friend fell on hard times, became discouraged, withdrew into himself and took his life. A tragic waste. I wish he had reached out to me in his hour of despair. How sad it is when, in our hour of need, as adults, we forget to hold hands and reach out for the help and support we need—so we can, as Jesus taught, “bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be a loving and kind burden-bearer, and above all to be Christ-like in all that I say and do for others. And when I need help, give me the courage to reach out and admit that I have a problem and need help. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 6:2.

Zig Zigler, well-known motivational speaker, tells the story about a thief who was robbed. The incident took place back in 1887 in a small neighborhood grocery store when a middle-aged gentleman, Emanuel Nenger, gave the assistant a $20 note to pay for the turnip greens he was purchasing. When the assistant placed the note in the cash drawer she noticed that some of the ink from the $20 came off on her hands, which were wet from wrapping the turnip greens.

She’d known Mr. Nenger for years and was shocked. She pondered, “Is this man giving me a counterfeit $20 note?” She dismissed the thought immediately and gave him his change. But $20 was a lot of money in those days so she notified the police who, after procuring a search warrant, went to Emanuel Nenger’s home where they found in his attic the tools he was using to reproduce the counterfeit $20 notes. They found an artist’s easel, paint brushes, and paints which Nenger was using to meticulously paint the counterfeit money. He was a master artist.

The police also found three portraits that Nenger had painted—paintings that sold at public auction for a little over $16,000! The irony was that it took him almost as much time to paint a $20 note as it did to paint those portraits that sold for more than $5,000 each.

The man who robbed Emanuel Nenger was Emmanuel Nenger. We do the same whenever we cheat or break the law—including God’s laws—for illegitimate gain. And while most of us wouldn’t rob another person of his or her material possessions, it is very easy to rob a person’s reputation through idle gossip.

We also rob and cheat ourselves when we don’t give our tithes² to God for his work, and to others in need—whether it is of our time, talents, money, other resources, or love.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, help me never to rob myself, or steal from any person in any way. And especially help me never to rob from you. Help me, too, to be a giver and not a taker. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Numbers 32:23.

2. See Malachi 3:8-10.