Why am I here? What is the purpose of my life? These two questions come up as we go through different seasons and decades of our life. But where can we find the answer?
Who Determines Our Purpose?
The world’s theory of our purpose is determined by who we are physically, socially, or what we can do with our skills and power. Using the world’s self-determined purpose ignores the most important fact that we must exist before we can do anything. Therefore, our abilities do not determine the purpose for which we were made.
Because we aren’t born knowing our purpose designed by God, we form our understanding and beliefs about our purpose from our messages, experiences, and the world’s influence. Living in these imperfect beliefs creates confusion and self-doubt about our purpose. Our need to know our purpose also sends us on a search to determine or create our own purpose. We will continue to search until we find our true purpose from our Creator, God.
Finding Our Purpose
The only way to know our true purpose is to ask the one who created it. The one who created all things, including people, is our loving Father, God. God uniquely handcrafted each one of us in His image. He created us out of His perfect, unconditional love so we could live together forever.
When Adam and Eve sinned, they put a barrier between God and us. But God had a plan to reunite us with Him now and forever in heaven through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. As we study the life of Jesus and the Scriptures of God, we see three aspects of God’s purpose: all the disciples of Jesus share.
The purpose for all of Christ’s disciples has three aspects.
- We are commanded to “Love God with all our hearts, mind, soul, and strength.” (Matt. 22:37, NIV)
- The disciples of Jesus are responsible for developing and growing a personal relationship with him every day in worship, prayer, praise, and by studying the Bible. As our relationship grows, Jesus helps us transform our heart, character, attitudes, words, and actions to mirror his. Jesus tells us. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35, NIV)
- The gift of Christ’s salvation in us should ignite a spiritual spark that makes us excited to share the hope of Christ’s gospel. Before Jesus ascended to heaven, he tells us his unified purpose for all of his disciples. “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.” (Mark 16:15-16, NIV)
These three aspects of our God-designed purpose never change. Our God-designed purpose can only be fulfilled when we are Christ’s disciples in a deep personal relationship with him. We can’t complete our God-purpose unless we are in an intimate working relationship with Jesus and God every day.
Our Missions Are Different Than Our Purpose
The apostle Paul uses the image of a body to help us see how all of God’s people are one through the salvation we receive in Christ. “The human body has many parts, but the many parts make up one whole body. So it is with the body of Christ.” (1 Cor. 12:12, NLT) We are all uniquely made for specific missions within the body, but our purpose to be unified in Christ doesn’t change.
When we have come to believe that our purpose is determined by our skills, talents, social standings, power, influence, accomplishments, or failures, we are operating from the world’s theory of our purpose. God’s word tells us that we all have different parts to play within the body of Christ that are all equally important in His grand plan, but we must be united in Christ.
Each of us is equipped through our natural skills, talents, personalities, and life experiences to connect with other people and share the love, hope, grace, and salvation of Jesus. Who would ever think that a disciple who has been through thirty years of abuse would be able to help other disciples of Christ realize that abuse has no place in the love of Jesus or our marriage vows before God?
God knew the paths in my life that I would choose, and He never left me. He brought me revelation, healing, and my defined mission to help others learn how to love like Jesus. My mission is specific to the body of Christ, and yours will be too. Never confuse your mission with your God-designed purpose.
It’s Time to Live in God’s Purpose
When we focus on loving the people in our home, work, and community, we are fulfilling our purpose and our mission. We won’t get deceived or sidetracked by thinking that we have to be famous or do something big to be enough for God. We can focus on loving others as Jesus loves us, which is being the beacon of Christ’s love and fulfilling our purpose.
The love of Jesus we share with others may be the only Jesus non-believers ever see. They need the loving salvation and hope of Jesus, and they are searching for answers. Be the beacon of truth about the meaning of their life and their purpose. Show them how living in Christ’s purpose frees them from the imperfect self-focused purpose of the world that is unachievable and a lie. Let us fulfill our purpose to be imitators of Christ!
Find encouragement and support for the challenges you face every day. Join my private Facebook group Growing Through God’s Transforming Grace.
Remind yourself who you are in Christ with this FREE download of Proclamations Now!