We all want to find our place in life. It may be a job, a person, a place, a community we love and are a part of, but we all have a hankering for finding purpose. Our purpose may be connected to, but it’s certainly bigger and broader than those things. Our lives are certainly about more than our jobs, relationships, or the places we live.
If we tie our sense of purpose to a relationship, what happens if that relationship ends for one reason or another? If your purpose is tied to your job, when happens if the industry changes and your job becomes obsolete, or if you get laid off because of a workplace injury? If your sense of purpose is deeply embedded in a community, what happens if that community is uprooted, say by a natural disaster?
All this is not to say that relationships, community, and work are unimportant; it’s to say that our purpose can include those, but flow from something bigger so that our sense of finding purpose is secure and can’t be overrun by circumstances.
Finding Purpose: Made for God
Sometimes we want to run away from the inevitable. Almost two millennia ago, St. Augustine, a bishop from North Africa, wrote this in his autobiography, Confessions – “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
Another way someone has put that is we have a God-shaped hole in us, and we try to fill that hole by finding purpose in all sorts of things – sex, money, the pursuit of power, fame, and influence – but we are never satisfied by it. We have an itch that we can’t scratch, and so we distract ourselves with anything and everything we can in order to ignore the itch.
God knitted us in our mother’s wombs and knows us through and through. Even our deepest, well-kept secrets aren’t secrets for God because he knows everything (Psalm 139).
Another Psalm paints the picture of the “God-shaped hole” by saying “As the deer pants for water, so my soul longs for you” (Psalm 42:1). There is something within us that is built for God, and until God is a part of our life, we are “restless” and try to find our purpose and joy in things that won’t satisfy or last.
C.S. Lewis, with his usual sharp wit, suggests that we sometimes think our desires are too strong, and we need to curb them when we come to God. It’s one reason why some people think of coming to God as being something that will limit them and their potential.
Lewis flips that on its head, saying, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Our desires and capacity for joy aren’t filled by food, sex, money, power, or anything else; we are restless and hunger for something that the things on earth just can’t seem to satisfy.
Our first stop if we want to find our purpose in life is to start with the God who made us for himself. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened,” said Jesus (Matthew 7:7-8).
God has gifted you
As we try to find our purpose in life, it’s important to pay attention to the things around us and in us. We often look beyond our immediate situation to find some grand purpose, but it doesn’t have to be that way. You have interests and gifts from God, both natural and spiritual, to work with. Because of their personalities and interests, some people are inclined toward certain jobs or causes.
What you are inclined toward may be right there to see in the things that bring you joy and a sense of deep satisfaction. Parker Palmer, in a little book called “Let your life speak” talks about paying attention to your life. He says, “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent”.
If we look at our lives close enough, we can see the things that move us and have shaped us. Pay attention to those things as you consider what God is drawing you toward. We can also look at the gifts, whether natural or spiritual, that God has given us to unearth our purpose or calling within and outside church spaces.
Spiritual gifts are those gifts given to us by the Spirit to build the church, and they can be anything from generosity, administration, prophecy, teaching, or hospitality (Romans 12).
Natural gifts are those gifts that are a result of natural and trained aptitude that don’t necessarily work toward building the faith and life of the church but are useful for ourselves and others. Among these are athletic ability, administrative gifts, etc. All these gifts, however, can be used to bring praise to God. Use your gifts.
You can also make use of tools such as personality inventories, or spiritual enneagram to see what you’re good at and what draws out your full capacities. These will help you in the process of self-discovery by leading you to ask good questions and point out areas of growth.
Another way to discover the shape of your life and the inclinations that may point toward your purpose is to ask yourself what things frustrate you and energize you toward action that benefits you and others. Also, what are you passionate about? Therein may lie your calling. “Joy bursts in our lives when we go about doing the good at hand and not trying to manipulate things and times to achieve joy.”
Pay attention to your life and its shape, and to the gifts that God has given you, and use them.
Listen to others
We must listen and pay attention to the ways God has spoken to us through his Word, in the gifts he has given us, and in the shape that our lives have taken. All these will give us guidance about our purpose in life, which includes but is broader than just the job we do. These are all valuable ways of listening. Another helpful thing to do is to listen to other people and seek counsel.
God has placed people in our lives to give us wisdom, and it would be foolish to do life without giving heed to the voices of the people around us. Of course, we ultimately have to make the decision ourselves, but hearing the voices of others is important. Personality inventories, which we pointed to earlier, are one way to listen to others. Another, more intimate way to do this is to speak to the people in your life.
The people that spend time with you, like your loved ones and colleagues, may have insights about you that are valuable. Even someone like a therapist, who isn’t in your life all the time, can have profound insights into you from their limited interactions with you during sessions. All these people around you see the things that energize or frustrate you, what brings you joy and sorrow.
Theirs is a perspective that can offer you insights you may be blind to. Sometimes, we can get trapped in a mindset that won’t let us acknowledge what we’re good at. We limit ourselves because we don’t feel up to the task, but the people around us can open our eyes to our potential and what God is calling us to.
As we do all this listening, the voice we listen to the most must be God’s. We can misdirect or limit ourselves; others may know us, but never as intimately as God does. Finding our purpose in life is about being found by God first and finding our life and joy in him because he made us for himself. Our deepest purpose in life is to enjoy God, and everything else – our work, causes, passions – find their proper orbit around that central preoccupation.
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Kate Motaung: Curator
Kate Motaung is the Senior Writer, Editor, and Content Manager for a multi-state company. She is the author of several books including Letters to Grief, 101 Prayers for Comfort in Difficult Times, and A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging...
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