How To Find Your Purpose
Written in 2017.
Pacing the isles of Walmart back and forth. Cereal boxes in my arms. Tears streaming down my face. This wasn’t exactly the way I thought this would be.
In January of 2016, I packed my bags to follow a God-sized dream after getting an internship at Elevation Church in Charlotte, NC. My stay in Charlotte ended up being longer than expected after receiving an opportunity to intern over the summer at Proverbs 31 Ministries. Another dream only He could have worked out. At the end of the summer, I was offered a full-time social media position at Proverbs 31 Ministries, which meant moving my life to Charlotte and leaving everything else behind.
Looking back I realize that oftentimes you spend your time dreaming of the destination but you’re not willing to make the sacrifices along the way.
That day walking around Walmart, I was faced with the reality of my dreams. It’s easy to say you’ll follow God wherever he leads, but what will you do when he actually calls you? Are you willing to walk away from family, friends, and the life you’ve always known?
This is the part you don’t see on social media.
You don’t see the lonely nights. You weren’t there in the unknown seasons that brought fear and anxiety. You didn’t see me furious with God beating the steering wheel of my car at red lights.
Why am I saying all of this? Because I want you to know your purpose won’t be found in the arrival. You find it in the process. In the middle of the unknown. In the sleepless nights and in all of your fears.
So how can you find your purpose? Here are 3 ways you can start.
1. Prepare for the promise.
What has God called you to and what are you doing to prepare?
If you feel called to be a speaker, you don’t have to wait till you’re on a platform to walk in that calling. Your purpose is found in the conversations over coffee, in the daily tasks, and in the mundane. It’s your preparation in the process that determines the fruit in the season to come.
2. Get to work.
Don’t focus on all of the details of how your life will play out. God is simply calling you to get to work. How can you expect God to use you to build His kingdom if you’re not being faithful where you are? Let’s be a generation that is faithful in working for God in the hidden places. Let’s be a generation that seeks whole-heartedly after God, not a platform.
3. Embrace your place.
It’s supposed to feel uncomfortable. It’s supposed to hurt. It wasn’t until I stopped looking behind me and started being faithful right where God brought me that I started to experience a breakthrough.
What’s that thing that you keep looking back on? Sometimes when God wants to do a new thing, it hurts. But it’s always for our good. Keep being faithful right where God’s placed you and the joy on the other side will be more than you can imagine.
“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.” | Ephesians 3:20