Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? What is my calling? Why did God create me? These are all questions that are essentially trying to discover one thing: purpose.
There are huge benefits to discovering and ultimately living out your purpose. Some of them are:
Most people understand the importance of discovering their purpose; there are, however, some who resist.
For example, I was in a small group discussion where I began talking about about the role of purpose in our lives. One man got up and walked away from the group to get food from the kitchen. He said he didn't want to talk about the topic because it was too hard.
There's a strong connection between his attitude about life purpose and the way this person lives. Most discussions with him tended to be somewhat shallow, even discussions about God. He would say the Christian life was very simple: just love God and be thankful for the things from him. Full stop. He'd divert the conversation to cars, vacations, real estate. Similarly, his wife focused on gossip, making comparative statements about other people, and buying expensive items for the home. While not caring about purpose isn't the only reason for this behavior, it's a big contributing factor.
But this guy was right about one thing: it is hard to discover your purpose. It's hard for everyone. It's so difficult, an entire industry has emerged to help people find their purpose. I know from personal experience: I've spent a long time trying to discover what it could be, reading books, taking classes, etc. And yet, sometimes when I lose focus on the truth, I sometimes wonder and doubt what my purpose is.
But I do that much less now after an important realization.
We've been asking the wrong question. As noted above, asking "What is my purpose?" is really hard. But it's not the wrong question because it's hard; it's hard because it's the wrong question.
In fact, our purpose has been staring right at us. What is hard is accepting what that purpose is.
Two verses from Ephesians point out what Scripture says many times over:
"In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will" (Ephesians 1:11)
For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
Both verses point to a predefined plan for our lives: "predestined according to the plan" and "prepared in advance for us to do."
But what hints do we have about this purpose, this plan? Here are a couple:
First, this plan is likely to conform to "the purpose of his will." The focus shouldn't be God's will for my life but on how my life fits into his overall plan for the world. God and his will is the focal point.
Secondly, we have been created in Christ Jesus "to do good works." This is spelled out pretty clearly. Why am I on this planet? Why did God make me? To do good.
It may seem like knowing that our purpose is (a) to conform to God's will and (b) to do good works, is way too broad. We want much more specificity and singularity.
Jesus' purpose was very singular, and as a result, so is ours: his will and the good works he did was to bring people to know the truth of the Gospel and become disciples, as a result, ushering in his Kingdom.
That is our purpose. It's that simple. And it's that hard. It's hard for several reasons, two of which are as follows:
The first resistance comes from the perceived cost of living out this purpose. This level of sacrifice goes against our desires, our dreams, our comforts. I talk about this in my e-book (which you can get at the bottom of this post)
The second pushback takes the form of the following: To have the exact same purpose as everyone else seems boring and simplistic. We're all so different and we can't imagine having the same purpose with the person sitting across from me on the bus. How can it be that simple?
My response to both of these types of resistance is this: While our purpose is the same, the way we fulfill our purpose will be unique.
In other words, it's a waste of time to answer the "What?" question. That's already been answered by Jesus. "Follow me . . . and make disciples." It's far more productive to ask "How?" Because in this question, we see many possibilities.
The "how" will be unique to you. It depends on your gifts, your failings, your circumstances, your passions, your burdens.
For those who want uniqueness and creativity in your life, you aren't constrained by having the same purpose as every other Christ follower. In fact, it takes far more creativity and expresses far more uniqueness when you have the same goal, but a different, specific way to achieve it.
In fact, I believe our uniqueness is a gift from God to serve his purpose. Why? Because he wants to save all of the world. Given that the world is filled with unique people, he will need us to live in our uniqueness to reach them.
To find out more about how to live an unconventional life for the gospel in ways that will bring out more joy, uniqueness, adventure, connectedness, and spiritual maturity, download my free e-book The Unexpected Life .
A graduate of both Yale and Princeton, Tim Fong works with high tech start-up companies, with a focus on Big Data. He lives with his wife and two children in San Francisco. They attend GrX, an Evangelical Covenant church.
* Photo courtesy of Steven DePolo (Flickr Creative Commons)
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