What is your purpose any way?

How do you reconcile your life? When you get to a certain point how do you connect with the Spirit to understand “What now?”

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10 NIV

Reflection

Each season of our life we are given the opportunity to mature to the next level. If we are growing in our relationship with God you can see just how that growth happened through those seasons.

When a tree is cut down, we see rings. These rings represent seasons of growth for that tree. Depending on the age, we might see a good many rings. I heard that it tells a story of the tree's health. There are seasons when there has been an abundance of water and nutrition. There are seasons where the tree struggled. All in all, the tree, up until it was cut down, had to survive each year and deal with whatever it was that it had to get by.

Isn’t this how life is?

When we are very young, by this I mean teen years, twenties, and possibly thirties, we have not had enough "maturity time" to appreciate what "seasoning" is doing for us. However, God is very much at work during that time as we are evolving to an ultimate purpose. We are living an "in the moment" purpose, but that is not the full purpose. I say that because God needs us and our free will to do things during our journey that are truly needed.

Examples include assisting a friend in need, volunteering at a food shelter, spending time with an ill friend, holding the door for someone, and so forth. You understand the idea.

If you are a person with a growing relationship with God, those opportunities for service seem to come fairly often. I suspect it’s because God trusts you, and as you serve, you get the satisfaction of doing something that is good. You feel needed and you feel like you matter, at least in that moment. For me, it’s about building a “service memory” which essentially builds on itself. The more you do something, especially something that makes you feel good, the more you will continue to do it. It will become second nature.

As we grow our purpose, the ultimate one unfolds, and if we are lucky, we find it out before we leave here. We are gifted with a specific purpose. However, I really don’t believe we have one and only one purpose. Sure, at a high-level category we do. But during the living of that high-level purpose, we have made an impact time after time. We don’t really see it, but when you do think back, you will see it. The collective things pulled together and just how you made another's world feel demonstrate you doing what was needed in that moment. More importantly, God tapped you on the shoulder and you did what He needed you to do.

I really believe in this. God gave us free will and we can decide to do or not to do. Of course, if God is asking you, He really wants you to choose the path He needs in that moment. If you are a faithful servant, you will take it.

Back to the idea of through the years. We are not perfect servants of God. It is something we learn over time. We might have seasons where we struggle, and that’s when God might work on us even harder. Painful growth occurs, and perhaps that brings about more appreciation of that growth. I really can’t say. What I can say is growth is growth. It does not always have to be painful to be meaningful or important.

Some of us just need to take the harder road to our destination.

I think what is important here is that our true purpose is to love and serve our Heavenly Father. So long as what we do is leading to that end, it would seem that we should be okay in our circumstances. That is very easy to say when life is filled with abundance, not so much when life is very hard. However, it strikes me that accepting where you are and how you are seems to be the approach that works best. That isn’t to say we should not aspire and look to improve. We should, but not at the expense of our soul.

When we get so focused on the task, the goal, or whatever it is, we can easily forget the why and for whom of the pursuit. That’s when it becomes selfish and we neglect the true purpose of our lives. It is very easy for whatever it is to feel meaningless. That is why it is important to appreciate the overall purpose so that when we are focused in the moment, we can be trusted and deliver.

In all things, we should do it for the glory of God, not for us, not for our family, but for God. We should praise and thank God for all of it because at the end of the day, what else is there really?

When our lives wrap up here, whatever the day is, that moment, wouldn’t it be a better life that we lived ours to serve our creator in the way we could? Wouldn’t it be better to have impacted the world around us to the best of our abilities? I think it is and in so doing we enrich our own souls and the lead the way for others.

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for this reflection and understanding on the idea of purpose. Thank you for helping me along this journey and allowing me to know things as it was appropriate for me. I may never fully understand it all and that does not matter. What matters is that I serve you while I am here. I serve you in the ways I can and by so doing I pray that continue to be a better person. That I do make a difference and that my life has mattered to at least the world around me. Please keep me inspired in the serving you my Father. Help me renew my focus on that everyday and let me be an example of someone that truly understood it and lived it. I pray all of this in Jesus name who is my savior and Lord. Amen.