Three questions to start a conversation:
- What helps you remember your purpose on a daily basis?
- Have you ever defined your purpose by a temporary circumstance?
- What obstacles make it hard for you to find a core purpose to life?
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Thanks for sharing @Carson!
I would agree about our purpose in life. I think where it becomes tricky to prevent temporary circumstances, such as a job, from becoming our purpose in life is in thinking about the question, how can I love God and love others well for who I am as a unique person?
Sometimes, when a job is a good fit it can be easy to make the job our purpose because it is the means by which we love God and love others. And so we can confuse what began as the means to an end for an actual end in itself and make the job our purpose and identity instead of it simply being a way in which we serve our purpose of loving God and loving others well.
This can then be really difficult in job transitions, when medical difficulties arise, or when life circumstances prevent us from serving in the ways that we used to. For me, even when I have kept my purpose of loving God and loving others in mind, I can still be at a loss of how to do that well now that circumstances have changed and so this can start to build feelings of purposelessness. I know what to do, but just not how to do it well.
For me, what can be really helpful in both the hard times and the good, is remembering that I am a beloved child of God and God’s love for me is not based on what I do, for He loved us while we were still sinners (Rom 5:8). And also knowing that He calls us to different things in different seasons and He works even through the small stuff. David likely didn’t feel as effective in his purpose while he was hiding for his life in the caves compared to when he was reigning as king. Yet his love for God and trust in Him while hiding and the love He showed to Saul during that time were likely far more effective in loving and caring for others well throughout the generations than much of what he did as King. For, their recording in Scripture has reached far more people than he ever served in his reign as King in Jerusalem. So, we never know how God might use the ways we love Him and love others even in those time when we feel at a loss for purpose or at a loss for how to serve our purpose well.
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