86 | How to Discover Your God Given Purpose in Life?

Welcome back to the Becoming Natural podcast. This is Penny and today’s episode is about discovering your God-given purpose. Hang on because this one’s gonna be great. Does that make anyone’s knees weak like it does mine? It sure did for me when I heard it for the first time. I touched on the subject of our purpose before but you know how things just keep showing up in your life? A phrase, a comment, a song, a conversation you have with a friend. Well, I have been duking it out with computer operating systems behind the scenes.

I was working on an episode about blue light. I thought it was getting really really good and you know what? Every lesson that I heard, a podcast I listened to, a conversation I had, I even listened to a sermon and they were preaching to me from the biggest pulpit God could find just short of hitting me over the head about divine purpose. It just kept showing up in my life. At the same time, I was getting a bit kerfuffled with someone that said, The Lord told me this or the Lord said to do this because I don’t know about you but the Lord has not told me to do anything in my entire life.

Does God not want to talk to me? Am I not listening well? Well, just when I got just a little bit snarky as God would have it in the midst of my pity party, a friend introduced me to an amazing book called, Created to Hear God by Havilah Cunnington. And I was promptly put in my place using scripture. She states that we are all created to hear God. That includes you, my friend, but in different ways. We can be a seer, a hearer, a feeler, or a knower.

All those words, the lyrics, the same message I kept hearing over and over. While it wasn’t a microphone from God, it was one way. I might have been actually hearing from God. So when it got to be ridiculous, I pushed the Blue Light episode for later and I really took a hard look into how to find your God given purpose in life. As each of my interactions were woven together and so unmistakably in this direction over the past couple of weeks, I decided I had to address it.

How many friends walk up to you and say, Hey friend, what’s your purpose in this world? Hey Sue, what’s God’s purpose for your life? I’m probably at a zero out of zero on that one. Not sure about you, but shouldn’t this be the most important question we ask ourselves? And if we’re a good friend, the most important way to encourage our friends to walk in their God given purpose? Why do so few of us stop and ask that question even of ourselves? What does scripture actually say about having purpose?

How does having purpose affect your body and how does it affect your health? What are simple ways to start noticing that God may have already put in your hands in the season. You are right in this very moment that you don’t even recognize. Not the season you’re waiting for after this one, this season, right here, right now. Havilah explains in that book that once you recognize ways that you might hear from God, it’s like that new car that you want. And now that is the only car that you ever see on the road, right?

I think I am here to prompt you to be looking around for that unavoidable sign in the road. If you’re listening right now, I suggest you brace yourself because lessons are on their way. Scripture tells us in Ephesians 2.10 that we were created for good works, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We weren’t just created. Scripture tells us there is meaningful work prepared for us to walk in. And in John 15.16, it says that we were appointed to bear fruit.

Jesus tells his disciples and he chose and appointed them to bear lasting fruit. 1 Peter 4.10 tells us that our gifts are meant to be used, as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s buried grace. This is the perfect verse to go from discovering your purpose to living with purpose. Do you think you may have a gift, but you have never been bold enough to use that gift, to go out on a limb, have the time to use your gift, or even recognize it as a gift?

It’s just your MO. I am here to tell you I was not only in your shoes, but I slid around, slip sliding in those shoes for years, completely clueless. When the question of my life’s purpose was posed to me, I was completely convicted. It hit me hard and I was in deep thought for days. I couldn’t get past raising kids, three little adorable toots of testosterone, all the while just keeping my head above water while battling it out with severe Crohn’s disease. Surely motherhood was all that God had on my plate in that season.

And by the way, being a mom is not just being a mom. It is absolutely exhausting, selfless, exhilarating, humbling, fun. It is a huge, beautiful job that I still love doing, even as my boys are starting to spread their wings. But my friends, being a mother is a role, definitely with great purpose. But I kept thinking, what was unthinkable at that time? What happens when these sweet boys of mine grow up? Surely God isn’t through with me in 18 years. So many incredible women much older than me have played huge roles in pouring into my life.

That is only one way that I could serve a purpose for God’s kingdom and a new way in the future. So why was I so old the first time that question of purpose deeply affected me? I don’t think I was alone. I asked my husband just the other day and he responded with something quite sarcastic like, keep the food on the table and pay for college. Nope, honey, that is a job, not your life’s purpose, dear husband. I thought about this a lot. Is it our generation?

Is it that faith has slipped to the back of so many of our lives? Is it that we’re so busy keeping up with the Joneses and with our jobs and with our families and activities that we don’t think about much of anything beyond simply survival? Can I get an amen on that? I think for a lot of us, it’s that last one. When your days are full of lunches and laundry and appointments and paychecks and asking, why am I here? Feels like a luxury. Actually having a spare moment of peace to even ask a question about anything, let alone deep thoughts on life is a luxury.

Something that we can always put off until later. And think about what we can actually see in each other’s lives. The house, the vacation pictures, the promotion, the kitchen remodel, the perfect Facebook lifestyle, right? Those are visible. But faithfulness, kindness, the quiet way somebody keeps showing up for a friend. You can’t post a picture of that very easily. So without ever making this decision, society and general started measuring a life by the visible things we can gather and claim. And we forgot to ask about the things that truly matter.

Things from the heart that determine not only our character, but sets the pace of the peace and the joy in our life. I was the queen of later. I used to tell myself, when I get through this phase, then I’ll think about it. When I feel better, I’ll think about that. When my baby hits kindergarten, then I’ll get there. When I get through my house renovation and then more of this is and that showed up. They always do. And before you know it, you look back and all the years have slipped by.

And how did we use the gifts that God gave us to make a mark on the world while life was storming by? Life doesn’t ever let up. There is no magical season where the calendar clears and you finally have room to think about what God made for you. If you’re waiting for that season, you might be waiting for one that never comes. Kids go to college. You travel to see them. You take care of your parents. Then there’s weddings. Then there’s grandchildren. Then, then, then. And if you’re raising little ones, that is real, holy, exhausting work.

If you’re caring for a parent or getting through chemo or just getting through a hard week, none of that is a pause button on a meaningful life. What I’m asking is smaller than a new project. I am asking whether you’ve ever stopped and asked God the question at all. Why am I here? Or taken a few minutes to ponder your gifts because you certainly have plenty of gifts. How can you use those gifts? This whole message is a message in my own life lesson because I sure hadn’t thought about a gift, purpose, a role.

It was up with kids early and bed exhausted. I was living in survival mode. I read something recently and of course I can’t remember where, but it was about how the American dream may not be all it’s cracked up to be. It was quite thought provoking and it really struck me. The American dream, like not all it’s cracked up to be, it’s the American dream. But think about what we’re chasing, the bigger house. So we have a bigger mortgage. The mortgage sometimes takes two incomes. The two incomes take longer hours away from your family.

We race from work to take the kids from practice to lessons to games because we want them to have every opportunity at their fingertips. We’re good parents, right? We save for vacations and retirement because someday supposedly we’ll finally have time to enjoy life. And we do it all on about six hours of sleep or less. When you reach retirement, are you going to be healthy enough to even travel with your hard earned savings? Will you know how to sit and be still after all of that activity in your life?

Not worry about if you have enough savings. The American dream really is just a rat race. It’s shocking. I know. And I am just as caught up in it as anyone else. But do we have to be? Where’s life’s enjoyment? Is this really what God planned for us? Run ragged until we hopefully make it to the retire healthy enough to enjoy it life. Have we ever reflected on the trade offs that we acquire in the American dream? And do we accept those trade offs of time with our family?

Peace, better health because everyone else is doing it. Researchers have noticed that as people around the world have gotten wealthier, they’ve also started feeling more and more starved for time. They actually call it a time famine. In one study of more than 6,000 people across four countries, the people who spent money to buy back time, things like paying someone to clean their house or to mow their yard, were more satisfied with their lives. And in an experiment, working adults were happier after a time saving purchase than after buying yet another big item.

We got wealthier and simultaneously we got poorer. Time poorer. The one thing that we can’t generate more of no matter how hard we try is time. Now I want to be really careful here. There is nothing wrong with owning a home, working hard or saving for the future. That is good stewardship. And so many families aren’t chasing anything. Two incomes is simply how the bills get paid. And if that’s you, I am not handing you a pile of guilt. You’re doing exactly what you need to do.

But I do think it’s worth asking whether we’ve confused making a living with actually living a joy filled purpose driven life. Is our drive to succeed making us healthier or creating stress that is actually going to harm us in the long run? Psalm 127 2 says, is it in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil for he gives to his beloved sheep? Did you catch that? Sleep is a gift that he gives us. And remember Martha, with Mary and Martha, the sisters in Luke 10, she’s busy serving Jesus in her own home.

Good work, important work. And Jesus tells her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things. But one thing is necessary. That’s in Luke 10, 41 and 42. He doesn’t scold her for serving. He gently turns her face back towards him to sit at his feet and listen to just listen. Maybe our purpose isn’t something we squeeze into what hours are left after the American dream. Maybe it’s supposed to shape how we live in the first place. Today, I want to go somewhere a little more uncomfortable with a little more call to challenge yourself, myself included.

I’ve come to believe that for most of us, the hardest part isn’t figuring out what our purpose is. It’s whether we’re willing to walk away from what we think is comfortable to live in that purpose. Think about that. There’s a great book by John Piper called Don’t Waste Your Life. It grew out of a message that he preached to a stadium full of college students back in 2000. And in it, he reads a little blurb from Reader’s Digest about a couple who took early retirement. He was 59, she was 51.

They moved to Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruised on their 30-foot trawler, played softball, and collected shells. And Piper said, don’t waste your life. Piper’s point was this. Picture coming to the end of your one and only life, standing before God who made you. And the best thing you have to show him is, look at my seashells. He called that a tragedy. And then he said, don’t waste your life. It is so short and so precious. Now, let me be fair. There is nothing wrong with retirement and there is nothing wrong with a boat or softball or a basket full of pretty shells.

Rest is a gift. Joy is a gift. God made the beaches and I’m pretty sure that he enjoys them too. The problem isn’t the shells. The problem is when the shells are the whole point. I don’t think most of us are collecting literal shells. Ours look like a phone that eats an hour every night. A day spent driving hours in traffic to and from work or activities. A calendar that’s so full of good things that there’s no room for a God thing. And I want to separate two things.

Rest is something that you choose. You stop on purpose so you can come back to God and to your people with something left to give them. Drift is something that happens to you. You don’t decide to spend three hours on your phone or five years waiting on later. You just look up and one day it’s gone. Rest fills you up and it creates introspection and spawns growth and often a desire to use your talents for good. Drift quietly empties you. It depletes you. It dumbs you down.

It demotivates you and it instills laziness in the long run. None of those shells look evil. That’s what makes them so sneaky. You could fill an entire life with perfectly good things and still look back and wonder what it was all for. So I want you to ask yourself one question and you don’t have to share your answer with a soul. What are your shells? What things prevent you from doing great things, mighty things, setting yourself apart from the norm? I can know exactly what the right thing is and I still don’t do it.

I don’t know about you. I can feel that nudge to invite the new family over and talk myself out of it because my house is a wreck. I can hear a sermon that lands right on my heart and be back to my to-do list before we’re out of the parking lot. Good grief that is me. That’s not a knowledge problem. That’s a willingness problem, a surrender problem to something that might be uncomfortable at first. My husband always told my kids, the reason Marines are so good at what they do is that they are comfortable with being uncomfortable.

I’m not sure I’m there yet. In fact, as I age, I think I’m going in the opposite direction. I’ve been through a lot of discomfort in my life and I feel way more comfortable being comfortable. And I am sure that is not where this message should be going, but I struggle with the best of us. I think we dress up our unwillingness in really respectable clothing. That’s just not my gift. I’ll serve when the children are older. Somebody else is better at doing that than me.

Or the forever excuse, someone else will do it. Or I’m too busy right now. Sometimes those are absolutely true. Sometimes they’re wise. You need to clear your calendar and you need to rest. And sometimes if we’re truthful, they’re just a polite way of saying, not me, Lord, not now. If you read Exodus 3 and 4, God shows up to Moses in a burning bush, a literal talking on fire bush that would just strike us all as crazy. You would think that that would settle it. Moses is talking to God in a burning bush and Moses spends almost two chapters coming up with reasons why he’s the wrong guy, why God is wrong.

Who am I? What if they don’t believe me? I’m not a good speaker. And when God answers every single one of those questions, Moses finally just says, please send somebody else. Can you imagine telling God no? I mean, yes, because I probably do it every single day more often than I think. But he is seeing God in a burning bush and still scared and still saying, please choose someone else but me. Now compare that to Isaiah and Isaiah 6. He gets a glimpse of the holiness of God.

He sees his own sin very clearly and the Lord asks, whom shall I send and who will go for us? And Isaiah says immediately, here I am, send me. Notice that Isaiah didn’t ask where he was going first. He didn’t ask for the job description or the timeline or how much it would cost him. He just said yes to God before he knew the assignment. I think that is not only willingness, but a deep faith by way of a daily relationship with God that exudes trust.

And I think that is a lot rarer than talent. When you spend daily time in the Word, even just 15 minutes, the scripture tells us the Word is living in an act of sword. It comes to life. And not only does it draw you closer to the Lord, but your priorities become the Lord’s priorities. Your will becomes his will and you are drawn to do not your own will, but his will to be done. Paul says it plainly in Romans 12. 1, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

A living sacrifice, not a one time big dramatic offering, a daily one, your body, your time, your Tuesday night. And the funny thing about a living sacrifice is that it keeps trying to crawl off the altar. Mine sure does. But in those moments of yes versus later, and you witness the power in being used by God in a way that he knows your name. You never want to be separated from that power again. This is the part I want you to lean in for, especially if you’re in a really hard season right now.

When that Bible study question first landed on me of what was my purpose, I stood on it for a very long time. Talk about later. I didn’t pray some beautiful prayer and get an answer the next morning. I just carried it with me for years. Meanwhile, life got harder. My health got a lot worse before it ever got better. And it wasn’t until years later, looking back, that I could see what God had been doing the whole time. He was building the testimony that I never thought I had.

He was clarifying my purpose through some of the darkest days of my life and healing my body all at the same time. Although it sure did not feel like healing then. Oh, how I begged to be healed and to be without pain. In the same season, in the middle of the mess, I couldn’t see it while I was in it. I could only see his purpose from the other side of the trenches. And my trenches were very, very deep. So if you’re in something big or painful right now, please hear me.

Just because you’re going through something hard doesn’t mean God can’t use you for his glory. And for his purposes, we just have to be willing, willing to trust God, to have unshakable faith that God will be with you in the fire. That doesn’t mean you’ll feel strong. Paul begged God to take away what he called his thorn. And God told him, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12, 9. And I smiled because that was my verse.

That is what carried me through most of my difficulty. And when people told me from the best places in their hearts how strong I was, I really secretly hated it. I didn’t ask to be strong. I didn’t ask to be enduring what I was enduring. I wanted it to be for God’s glory, but I was not enjoying it. And I certainly didn’t know without a doubt that I had healing coming on the other side. I didn’t know if I would be healed. Willing isn’t the same thing as able.

Some days willing is all you’ve got to give. And God can work with willing because I like to tie everything back into our incredible physiology. That connection between purpose and how we carry hard things isn’t only spiritual. It shows up in the health or the lack of health of our body too. This is where faith and physiology meet in a way that I didn’t expect. When something stressful happens, we all know this, but your body is beautifully designed. To respond, your sympathetic nervous system, that’s your get moving system, it kicks in, your heart speeds up, your body releases cortisol or to get energy where it’s needed.

Cortisol gets a bad reputation, but you really do need it. It helps you wake up in the morning and rise to a challenge. And then when the moment passes, your body is designed to settle back down and recover. We were never meant to live in survival mode all day long. So researchers have asked a really interesting question. Does having a sense of purpose change how our bodies handle everyday stress? In one study, close to 2000 adults kept track of their days for about a week. What stressed them out?

Their mood, their physical symptoms like headaches or an upset stomach. And here’s what got me. The people with a stronger sense of purpose didn’t have easier lives, nothing close to it. They ran into just as many stressful days as everybody else. But on those hard days, their bad moods didn’t cause the physical symptoms and they didn’t climb as much. The same storms, different responses. Another group of researchers pulled together information from 16 different studies. More than 100,000 people. That’s a whole lot of people across ages, across backgrounds, across countries.

people with more purpose in life reported feeling less stressed. Now I want to be fair with science, these studies show a connection. They can’t prove that purpose is what lowered the stress, but people who feel less stressed may also find it easier to sense purpose. Researchers are still working that out, but think about what that connection suggests. Purpose doesn’t remove the hard days at all. It may change how much those hard days take out of us. How we let things bounce off our bodies, unfazed, roll off like water on a duck’s back.

And I find it amazing that God made our bodies so that meaning and purpose aren’t just ideas. They show up in how we actually carry the stress. And we can all agree that long term stress does not do a body good. So how do you actually start? I want to give you some questions that are a little bit harder than what am I good at doing? Find a quiet few minutes. I know that’s a lot to ask actually, the car, the pickup line counts, bring a pen.

I’m going to link these questions as a free download on this episode’s page at becomingnational.com. But the first question, if my life ended this year, what would I be holding out to God? Not to scare you, but just to be truthful about where your hours are going. Are you using those hours in service to God in any way? Number two, where have I said later for so long that it quietly became no? That thing you keep saying you’ll do when life settles down. Is it still waiting for you or did you let it go without ever deciding to do it?

And can you still hop in? Number three, what am I protecting? Am I protecting my time, my comfort, my reputation, my clean house? What would happen if I held any of those things I find valuable just a little bit more loosely? What would I do for God if I didn’t care about what people thought? After everything I’ve walked through, I finally got bold enough to stop worrying so much about what other people thought of me. That boldness has been one of the biggest gifts of my life.

I am unafraid to speak about the miracles that we witness with our own eyes, the odds that I overcame, and admit all the while there was nothing in my physical body that carried me but only the strength from that 2 Corinthians 12, 9, and 10 verse that carried me out of that pit. The Lord completely refined my faith when I was brought to the end of my rope. He had to get me there. He had to get me to the end of my rope. But when He did, He changed me so He could use me.

Number 4, Am I busy or am I fruitful? These are not the same thing. So what is fruit? It’s not a busy calendar. Galatians 5 tells us the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Busy can look impressive and still leave us completely empty. Fruit looks like someone who is a little less alone because you showed up. Number 15-16, we were appointed to bear fruit, not to fill a calendar. You can be exhausted and running on the gerbil wheel getting nowhere and still not be doing the thing God put in front of you.

It’s important to realize that this purpose that we are striving for is where God knows that you can thrive. Yes, it might be hard to get started, but I guarantee when you find yourself at the center of God’s will for your life, you will feel a peace that passes all understanding, knowing that you are indeed walking in your purpose. Before you do anything with your answers, I just want you to take a moment and pray over them. One of my favorite prayers for this is Psalm 139, Search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. This is a very brave prayer. You’re inviting God to show you what you’ve been avoiding. It might make you a little bit uncomfortable, but notice how it ends, not with shame, with lead me. He doesn’t search your heart to scold you. He searches it so he can lead you somewhere better than where you are right now. Who doesn’t want that? Then tell someone, or if you don’t want to tell someone, write it down and watch as you become willing to respond to the nudgings.

Once you decide to find your purpose and walk in it, you will be amazed at those repetitive signs, those invitations to participate, those open doors that you never noticed. You’re going to start noticing it all the time. Willing does not mean doing everything. I’ve lived in a body with serious limitations and exhaustion is not holiness. If you’re sick or caring for someone around the clock or barely holding it together, willing might just look like a prayer from your bed. That counts. God sees it. Listening to the Bible app on Audible for 10 minutes a day, that’s easy.

Colossians 3.23 says, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. Whatever you do, the phone call, the meal, the blog post written from the couch, willing usually looks small. God is the one who makes it big if he wants to. I am still learning this. I am still evolving. I don’t think we will ever have it all figured out, and I also firmly believe every season might create opportunities to fulfill your purpose in a whole different way. But I know this.

You don’t have to have your whole purpose mapped out to start living it. You just have to be willing to take the next step that God puts in front of you. Even if it’s a small one, even if it’s a scary one, a messy one, even from the middle of something that’s really, really hard, being willing to share your heart could be the answer to someone else’s prayer. Imagine that. Back when I was in and out of the hospital, I kept a blog to keep friends posted about where I was and what I was doing.

I used to sign off with, I cannot wait to tell you how the story ends. And truthfully, I didn’t know how that story ended. I just knew who was writing my story. You don’t have to know how your story ends to start living it for God. So go find your quiet 10 minutes, ask the hard questions, put down a few of those shells that are sucking the life out of you, that are depleting you, and be willing, and most importantly in John Piper’s famous words, don’t waste your life.

I hope you have a great day.