Finding life purpose
A friend on Facebook is wondering what her purpose is and asked for suggestions. After my awesomely silly answer involving cetaceans, I started thinking seriously. How do you discover purpose in life? It is something I’ve spent a lot of time on over the years. Back in the days of my naive idealism is taught teenagers how to Get A Vision for their lives. Since then, I have discovered I’m a lot happier not having a vision for my life and a lot of other people feel the same way. But purpose is different. I want purpose. I want to feel that what I spend my days doing what Actually Matters. Probably you do too. So for the benefit of the public I present, helpful or not:
Jeff’s Quick and Dirty Very Christian Guide to Discovering Purpose in life
God’s mission. God is on a mission to redeem his creation – short version: John 3:16 – and God invites us to join him in that mission – short version: Matthew 28:18-20. If God made you and God made you to relationship with him and God is on a mission, a big clue (the big clue!) to what best suits you in life will be found in the mission of God.
STEP ONE: Devote yourself to understanding and living for the mission of God.
God’s process in you. The Apostle Paul wrote that God began a good purpose in the Philippians and God would be faithful to complete it. Jesus said that a fully trained disciple would be like their master. A life lived in God and following Jesus is a process of transformation. It is the journey towards becoming fully human, for that is what God saved us to be.
STEP TWO: Embrace God’s process in you with all its joy and pain and glory and hard work and transformation.
Your personality, gifts and interests. God’s mission is very big, and you are very small. Who you are as an individual will have a lot to do with where you specifically fit in God’s mission. An artist won’t play the same part as an accountant. (Duh.) If you haven’t done so, you should probably take a good personality and/or spiritual gifts test. When you know who you are and what your strengths are, you are better able to use them for advancing of God’s mission.
STEP THREE: Put your personality, gifts and interests to work in service of the mission of God.
What I don’t mean in step three is that you should go on staff at a church. What I do mean is that when devotion to God’s mission is connected with embracing God’s transformation programme and a real understanding of who you are, remarkable things start to happen right where you are. Ideas appear. Possibilities emerge. Opportunities open. You find that you very naturally begin to feel that your life is lived with purpose and meaning
STEP FOUR: Enjoy the ‘slow magic’.
It’s not really magic, of course. It is cooperating with God and being led in a missional direction and embracing everything that means and one day noticing that somehow along the way you have discovered a deep and meaningful purpose for your life. It’s simple. It’s not even slightly easy on a lot of days, but it is simple. And you can start right now.
23 February 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: change,
humans,
kingdom of god
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