What Is Your Purpose?
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.’ (Proverbs 19:21); ‘The purposes of a person’s heart are deep waters, but one who has insight draws them out.’ (Proverbs 20:5); ‘To this <purpose> you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.’ (1 Peter 2:21)
Just like the premise of movies and old shopping malls, many people struggle with the question, ‘What is my purpose?’. In the movie, ‘I, Robot’, the robot ‘Sonny’ asks this while wandering across the dry Lake Michigan’s bed, providing that he was now ‘equal’ to humans in asking this age-old question. For the fictional ‘Sonny’ and old malls, they had at one time a primary purpose, but after that purpose was realized and completed, it is more of ‘what now?’. For many of us, we have trouble finding what our initial purpose is, especially the person who is not Christian. As stated in Proverbs 20:5, we often go through life and while we may accomplish much, we also fail to realize what our true purpose is. We live disappointed, disillusioned, and depressed because we do not live with ‘purpose’, or a meaning behind what we do.
The answer is not necessarily finding a purpose in what we do, but first finding the Lord who can define our purpose. Our plans, if made without God’s counsel, may succeed greatly (or fail miserably) but without God are meaningless. Someone’s purpose may be to ‘better mankind’, but if that has no backing from God, it is irrelevant. God’s purpose will overcome what purpose and planning we can devise. I’m certain Pharaoh Rameses’ purpose did not match God’s purpose for his life; had it, Pharoah may have saved Egypt from the plagues and the destruction of his army from the collapsing waters of the Red Sea.
Peter found God’s purpose in following His example, living under His precepts and teachings, sharing His Gospel and making disciplines, is what the Christian should be our primary purpose and drive our ‘secular’ purpose. Giving to the poor and assisting them can be a secular purpose, but serving the poor to the glory of God is better. We may suffer greatly in achieving our purpose; a soldier’s calling to fight for their nation or a missionary’s calling to go to a foreign land can be challenging and life-threatening; when this is done for the Glory of God, this is not a meaningless or futile act but one that has eternal meaning as it is done for His Kingdom, not our own gratification.
When one asks, ‘What is my purpose?’, the only correct answer can come from our Creator, who gave each of us (even the heathens) a purpose to serve out to complete what is needed until He calls upon Jesus to gather His church and complete in Revelation what He started in Genesis. If you haven’t found your purpose, you may simply need to ask Him.
