What is my purpose?
Have you ever met someone who doesn’t feel their life has any meaning or purpose, perhaps as the result of the loss of a relationship, a career, a health setback or something similar?
My observation is that people who feel their life has no meaning, struggle to be motivated and often drift aimlessly from one thing to the next without any real drive or enthusiasm.
On the other hand, we have all encountered people with a deep sense of purpose, who have found a goal or a calling in their lives. Those people seem to wake up every day with excitement in their hearts and a motivation which drives them to give everything they have in pursuit of what they see as their purpose.
I know that the same has been true in my life. I have had seasons when I have woken up every morning wondering whether my life really mattered and struggling to even get out of bed. But I’ve also had seasons where the moment I woke up, I couldn't wait to get up to begin to tackle the challenges that lay before me.
Sometimes those purposes have been self-generated, such as getting fit to run a half marathon. Sometimes they have been things beyond myself, such as the season during Covid when I volunteered in the Kerith foodbank. But I know that when I feel I have a purpose, it has given me life.
A deeper sense of purpose
Two books have really helped me to get a deeper understanding of my God given purpose, both written by a pastor called Rick Warren.
The first book, The Purpose Driven Church, I got hold of a few years before I started leading Kerith. Iit gave me a whole new sense of what church was all about and how to grow a church that is truly howGod wants it the church be.
The second book, The Purpose Driven Life, I got just as I started leading Kerith and we actually did it as a series not long after I took over. You can read the first of 40 reflections that I shared on my blog back in 2008, as we worked our way through the series.
In this second book I’m sharing, the author Rick’s theory is that both as individuals and as a church family, we have a God given purpose. He derives this from what we call the Great Commission and the Great Commandment which is talked about in the Bible. I’ve shared a short summary below…
Worship – Love the Lord your God…
Our first purpose in life is to worship God – to make him the number one thing in our lives. In my sermon last Sunday looking at Romans, we saw that sin is not necessarily doing bad things, but is instead putting good things before God in our lives.
All of us have an in-built desire to worship something, and our lives work best when God is at the top of that list, when everything else – relationships, careers, hobbies, fitness, money, possessions etc – are ordered under him.
Community – baptising them….
We don’t often think of baptism in terms of community, but in the early church, believers were baptised into the community of the church.
The apostle Paul’s main metaphor for church is family, writing to the ‘brothers and sisters’ in every community that he addresses. Particularly post-Covid, I know of a number of Christians who have stopped going to church or being a part of a church community.
Part of our purpose as Christ-followers is to live in community and be a blessing to one another. Sometimes that is hard work, particularly when as is inevitable we hurt each other and let each other down, but in this I have found two things. Firstly, part of God shaping me comes from those hurts and frustrations in community, forcing me to see only God as perfect, teaching me forgiveness and knocking off some of my rough edges. Secondly the joys and benefits of being in community far outweigh the pains.
Discipleship – teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you
My friend John Burke has a great phrase to describe what it should be like joining a church – “come as you are, but don’t stay that way”. Following Jesus is not just about crossing a line of faith where you put your confidence and trust in him – it is a long journey of discipleship.
Christian author Dallas Willard helpfully defines discipleship as “becoming who Jesus would be if he was you”. I often wonder, what steps am I taking to become more of who Jesus would be if he was me, living my life in this moment in history with my background, giftings, character and everything else?
Evangelism – make disciples…
So far, we have looked at purposes which have to do with us looking up to God, and inward to community and discipleship amongst believers. The final two purposes of Rick’s Purpose Driven Life, have us looking outwardly to make an impact beyond the church.
The first is evangelism. If you’re like me then this might cause you to shudder with ideas of open air preaching or moving to another nation, but for most of us evangelism is much simpler than that.
My friend John Kirkby breaks it down into three simple steps, in his resource Isaiah 61 Movement:
Share life – build genuine friendships with people who don’t yet know Jesus
Share faith – when appropriate talk about the difference that knowing Jesus has made to your life
Share Jesus – invite your friend to take next steps towards Jesus, maybe reading a book, going to church or attending an Alpha course
Justice – love your neighbour…
This final purpose is about practically expressing the love of God to our local communities (and the wider world). We talk at Kerith about being the kind of church that if we ceased to exist, the people around us would feel that they had lost something.
This purpose works out at an individual level as we look to care for our ‘neighbours’ in the streets where we live, the colleagues we work with and in our families. But it also works out at a community level, as we run Foodbanks, debt counselling, parent and toddler groups and much more.
There is much more I could say on the topic of purpose, but I hope that has been helpful start. I find it helpful from time to time, both as an individual and as a church leader, to examine how I’m doing across these five purposes – maybe you could do the same?
In my experience, both as an individual and in relation to church, it’s better to try and be doing reasonably well in all five purposes rather than just focussing on excelling at one of them. It might be less spectacular, but ultimately it is more satisfying, more balanced and I think makes us more of who God wants us to be.