Finding My Purpose
Spending time in God’s word has taught me that God works through people. Even when Jesus walked on earth, God was in the form of a man. The Bible has an abundance of stories about how God worked through people to share a powerful message.
As an early believer in Christ, I think we often look for God to pop up in our life and perform a miracle like some magic trick or a genie in a bottle ready to grant our wishes. We look at the darkness in this world and ask, “How can God allow this?”. These types of thoughts can really cause a person to struggle with their beliefs or may cause them to form a distorted view of God.
I think it’s easy to miss God’s call on our life. So many times, I have heard that God has a purpose for my life and that our goal as Christians should be to walk “in purpose”. But have you ever tried to figure out what that means? Like actually trying to put action to the words. I found this to be very challenging. I have searched for years trying to figure this out. I thought if my calling was from God my purpose had to be this great and mighty role. I kept my eyes open for an extraordinary task I just knew God would put in front of me and I would spring into action like a superhero. The way David beat Goliath with a stone and a sling shot. Or how Moses parted the sea with a staff leading the Israelites to safety. I believe this was my thought process because my knowledge of the Bible was limited to the stories from Sunday school and my experience of the world was through movies. Both of these stories sounded like a blockbuster hit, that must be how great God’s calling was going to be.
As I continued to seek this purpose for my life, I continued to ask God questions. I started learning what the Bible had to say. I learned that there are so many more people in the Bible that played a significate role by doing small tasks. The disciples fed 5000 people with 5 loaves of bread and two fish. In this story the miracle came from God, but the disciples are the ones who passed out to the food to the people. Their task was simple but made a powerful statement. I learned about Joseph, the man who helped raise Jesus. How difficult it must have been to stand by a virgin wife believing in her and trusting the Lord in a time were such a thing would have carried great shame for a man. I learned about the servants who retrieved the water for Jesus to turn into wine. This was as a labor-intensive task. Have you ever carried the groceries from your car to the house? Imagine carrying stone jars filled with water sloshing around while carry it back to a wedding. It was the servants who took the water to the king, not Jesus. They played a role in the first miracle Jesus preformed.
The truth is God was showing me my purpose all along. It’s the still small voice inside of me directing me to act on God’s behalf. Those tragedies that tug on my heart, those are the areas I am called to be a part of the solution. Some people feel passionate to save animals, where I feel called to help clothe the children in our community who lost everything in a fire. Some people feel pulled to care for the sick, while I feel pulled to love on the cashier hiding tears as she rings up customers. I believe that is our calling. It's not one big act but a lifetime of acting on God's behalf.
I feel led to speak about the struggles in my life not for pity but so that I can share how God blessed me on my darkest days. How he gave me peace amongst the chaos I had created for myself. And how he guided me out of my misery.
If you know anything about history, we learn by people sharing the stories of our past. What is not shared is lost. God still works miracles, he just does it through those who are brave enough to act on that small voice inside telling them to do something that would only make sense through God.