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What Is Your Purpose?

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Studies have shown that this is the number one question people would want to ask God.  The answer seems so elusive.  But, maybe we’re making it harder than it really is.

Let me back up.  Lately, in my prayer times, there’s this… feeling… anticipation.  Not mine actually, but God’s, if you can imagine that.  Ok, so maybe anticipation isn’t the right word, I know He knows the end from the beginning.  Still, there’s this… eagerness.  It’s as if the Lord is scooting up to the edge of His seat, nudging us to do something great.  It has something to do with the amazing treasure He’s hidden in us.  He knows what is there; we do not.  Could this be the day we discover it?

It’s not just a nice gift that He’s hidden, or even a very nice one.  It is the most extravagant and amazing package, a blessing hand constructed by the Creator of the entire universe.  Gifts of the Spirit, things that He treasures, deposited deep within us before we were ever born, waiting like an Easter egg to be discovered.  In contrast to the gifts we often give each other, these are not gifts for our own consumption.  These gifts connect us to God himself.  These are gifts with which we find our purpose.

Hmm, purpose… how many of us really find the things God intended for our short lives that would glorify Him and connect the world to Him?  We trudge along, in large part oblivious to the treasure just beneath the surface of ourselves.  We fail to see why that treasure was given.  We fail to see the answers that treasure was intended to provide to people who are around us.  Yeah, you and me, we have answers for someone else.  God provided us the incredible blessing to deliver those answers!  Yet, in my own life, I know I’ve selfishly withheld them many times.

I have so many things I personally want.  It’s not “natural” for me to just set them aside and search instead for what I should be giving to another person.  Right?  I mean, I don’t want to seem selfish, Lord, but I have some things I’m kind of wanting myself!  It’s easy for me to miss what God has purposed me to be.  And, in missing that purpose, literally to miss my own “life.”  Really though, it is God himself that I want.  He is the sum of all of these things I desire and need.  My greatest sense of completion and blessing are in this relationship with Him.

Psalm 103 says that our days are like grass.  We flourish very briefly, like a flower of the field.  Soon enough, the wind blows… we are gone… and eventually our place is no longer remembered.  The gifts we’ve been given weren’t to make our own lives memorable at that time.  (Sorry.)  The impact we leave will instead be the changed lives of others.  I sometimes fear that my “impact” will be a very small indention indeed, barely perceptible.  Through New Hope, I see that God is inviting me instead to leave a massive crater!  There’s that anticipation!  Will this be the day that Art will swing and connect?

What about you?  Will this be the day that YOU swing and connect?  Ask Him and see.  Is He inviting you to be a part of this movement of His Spirit and character?  Will you change the lives of children through New Hope?  Ask Him and see.  Is His amazing gift in you designed to meet this incredible need?  Ask Him and see, just ask.

Art HeathcockWhat Is Your Purpose?

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