Tag Archives: Purpose

January 4, 2013 · 4:29 am

Who God Created Me to Be: What Drives Your Life?


Drives “Everyone’s life is driven by something: many are driven by things like guilt, resentment, anger, fear, materialism, and the need for approval” (Rick Warren, 2002).

 Who is Driving the Bus?

 A dictionary definition of drive is to guide, to control, or to direct.  One of the questions that we are focusing on today is what the driving force in our life is.  Having a focused, central purpose to life that is rooted in a relationship with Him translates into a way of living that places God at the center of existence.  The thought that comes to mind is that God calls us in to a life to be who we are in terms of a relationship with Him.  At this point I am reminded again of the fact that, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (The Baptist Catechism).  So, in other words, a primary goal of being a innately –natural, authentic Christian who is driven by purpose is that a relationship with Him needs to be the defining characteristic of what drives the bus.  Unfortunately, most of us have grown up in a world where we have told to conform, forced to conform, and expected to conform.  The environmental invalidation stifles creativity within  and individuals become programmed by society and cultural expectations and we live a life of being driven by things, people, and expectations instead of purpose.

Reflection about Spiritual Direction: What or Who is Pushing Your Buttons?

 Have you ever taken time to think reflectively about what is driving your behavior in life?  It is an interesting question because I see people every day who are getting their buttons pushed by something or someone and they spend their time living a reactive rather than a proactive life.  In a life of being who God created you to be, is important to understand that the reason why we are just reacting is that we have not developed a comfort level with the way God made them and confidence enough to act beyond the influence and expectations of others.  Therefore, they get in the trap of conformity and are afraid to color outside the lines because of what others expect, a desire to please, and the fear of personal rejection.

What does the Bible say about drive and motivation for behavior?

 “Then I observed that most people are motivated to success by their envy of their neighbors. But this, too, is meaningless, like chasing the wind” (Ecclesiastes 4:4Living Bible).

 The answer is that any efforts to live a life of trying to be like others or being driven by anything less than the purpose of God for life is spending time, effort, energy, resources, and time on something that will never be achieved.  Solomon called it “chasing the wind”.  When things outside of their purpose in life drive people, the person God created them to be, life turns into an empty pursuit that is never satisfying, stressful, and is not true to our true nature.  Therefore the key to harnessing the drives that lead to chasing to wind is to begin with a discovery process of individual purpose and who God created us to be.

Purpose provides a place to harness and direct the thing that will drive us forward.

“The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder – waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you” (Thomas Carlyle).

 The truth is that nothing matters more than knowing God’s purpose for your life, and nothing can bring satisfaction and wholeness in life like knowing who God created you to be a s an individual creation of God.

Some of the benefits of living to be what God created you to be in a a purpose-driven life is that it:

Gives meaning to your life and defines where to put your energy..

Simplifies your life and keeps you from chasing the wind.

Focuses your life on what is important to magnify your relationship with God.

It motivates you to live with an upward and inward focus that leads you to the future that God has for your life.

A central component of purpose is that it prepares you in this life to be fully developed as you enter eternity.  Remember that you were not put on earth to be creating an image for others to commit to memory.  Every believer was put in this world to “glorify God and to enjoy him forever” (The Baptist Catechism).  Surrendering to who you are in Christ in a life of discipleship and purpose is so that we will be conformed to the image of Christ in this life to enter the next life with a clear knowledge of who God created us to be now and then.

Affirmation

Everyone suffers with the problem of being driven by the wrong thing at times.  What we can remember is that “Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.” This is such a significant point and intentional statement.  It is important because it magnifies the dual responsibility to surrender to having a purpose, but also acting in faith and knowledge in response to who God is in reality.  Each person must live for the purpose for which God has designed; otherwise, whatever meaning seems to be obtained through living for lesser purposes will evaporate in eternity ahead.

Something that may important to remember is that people who don’t know their purpose try to do too much and that causes the elevation of stress, fatigue, and conflict. Indeed it is tempting to have one’s finger in many pies, but are they our pies to have our fingers in all of the time?  What we will discover is that when we have stripped life of the inessentials that do not contribute to who God created us to be and aligns with purpose, life will become more productive and satisfied.

When the right thing drives us we will discover that purpose always produces passion and that nothing energizes a life like a clear sense of purpose.  Perhaps this is why most of the Christians I meet have so little passion for the Kingdom of God. They are not living with a clear vision of the purpose for which God has created them or functioning in that purpose.

An important fact to accept is that given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed.  If that strikes you as negative and pessimistic; then, you have not read Ecclesiastes enough to understand the importance of a life without a purpose.  If reading the message of Ecclesiastes depresses you, it must be because you do  not understand what Solomon is saying. In a simple statement of truth, the message of Ecclesiastes is “Meaning and satisfaction are not found in any of life’s components; they are found only in life’s Creator”.

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May 21, 2012 · 6:27 pm

How Pupose and Gifts Keep Us On Track


How Purpose and Gifts Keep Us On Track

Discover Your Purpose In Life And It Will Keep You  On Track

Do you ever wonder why you are where you are and what you should be doing with your life?  In all honesty, there are times when I have to reassess what I am doing.  This is something that humans have struggled with from the very beginning of time. In the garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve a reason for existence and something to do with their lives.

Using Biblical precepts, the Christian can discover the purpose of life, design his or her destiny, and direct their achievement.

1. Remember that you are “called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28).

 Don’t think that by tapping into your human resources you will be where you’re supposed to be in your life. There is an expression that is used about some preachers, “they are momma called and daddy sent”. The fact is that only God can send us and when he does, he gifts us with the ability, talent, and skill to work within that calling. God will give evidence of those gifts and others will recognize the gift and follow by acknowledging your anointing to operate in that gift.

2. Take command of your life by submitting to God’s control of your life. (Romans 12 and 13).

Working for God is not a popularity contest, it is a spiritual calling to leadership and ministry of the gifts He has given us. That means: Functioning in a local church body in the gift God has given you along with others in submission to God. Think about the second part of God’s Great Commission, as Paul explains (I Cor. 12:15-17), the individual Christian cannot function alone. Each is like a specific part of the human body. The finger cannot function unless the brain does. The lungs must work well before the foot can carry the body. All parts of the body – and all parts of the church – must work in harmony and in submission to a Divine order God has set in place.

3. Share your Christian life with those around to bear the fruit of the purpose and gift you have to create lasting spiritual change. (John 15)

Realize that all spiritual fruit comes from being rightly related to God and comes in a life of surrender and submission. What are your dreams and desires? They usually come under four headings: spiritual, intellectual, physical, and those related to your personality, attitudes, and emotions. Ask yourself, am I asking God to bless what I want or have I decided to surrender to what He has called me for and gifted me to do? One way to know if we are gifted in a particular area is whether there is spiritual fruit from what we are doing and does it produce lasting change in people’s lives. When we decide to join God in what He is doing in there will be fruit and the fruit will bring spiritual change and lasting effect on the lives of people that we minister the gift to.

4. Pinpoint your social desires and ask yourself: Are my desires and goals the same as the Heavenly Fathers? (Colossians 3:1)

Think about your relationships with family, spouse, co-workers, people you associate with in organizations, and those in your church. Does you attitude reflect a perspective to others that I want God to be in control and that I am going to live a life under control, led by the Holy Spirit? If not; then fine-tune your goals to reflect the goals of God. This has to do with what we value –where our affections are set. God’s purpose in life is for us to be where He intends for us to be. It is being a good steward and being passionate about the right things. A lot of people spend their money in the wrong places and end up loosing everything they value most. Likewise, many people spend their lives in places and trying to exercise gifts that they don’t have and never have a productive life of value in the kingdom of heaven. The real issue is being a good steward of what God has gifted me to do, not what I want, or others want.

5. Where your heart is, there will be your treasure also. Do what you love. (Matt. 6:21).

A critical question that we have to ask ourselves in Christian ministry is why are we doing what we are doing. Is it for the approval that we get from others or is what we love to do because God has called us to do this ministry. Malcolm Forbes said, “Whatever you like to do, just find a way of doing it. The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.” People who have their hearts connected to their work have evidence that manifests in what they do. They are enthusiastic, they take great time to think about it–pray about it, and have a desire to make what they do reflect excellency and bring glory to God. They are leaders and where they lead people to is to a higher place with God and not to complacency. When we love what we do like Jesus loves what He does, we will surrender to the gift, calling, and ministry that He has gifted us to do.

6. Ministry is the motive –Spiritual gifts are to minister help to someone who needs what you have to offer. (I Corinthians 12).

There is no more noble occupation than assisting another human being, or in helping someone succeed. Some of the reasons that people do not succeed at what they are gifted at are evident by: The motive is misplaced, it is about me and my rights; there has been little discipleship and personal spiritual growth; there is a spirit of pride and rebellion; and there has been no training and mentoring by a spiritually mature mentor. One thing that I remember that Joe Dubose said is a call to ministry is a call to prepare. Many people fail at the tasks of ministry because the motive is wrong from the beginning. It first has to be about God and then be about what God wants to do in people’s lives through the gift.

 Once you discover your God-ordained purpose, you must hold it under the brightness of God’s scrutiny and ask yourself: Is my attitudes, gift, and my ministry pleasing to God?

7. There is wisdom in a multitude of counselors –Seek wise counsel from spiritually mature people. (Proverbs 11:14).

Surround yourself with people you know and trust – and who know you, your strengths and weaknesses. Tap into their wisdom and experience, ask for their candid appraisal. One way that I can evaluate what I am doing is to find trustworthy people who are objective, functional, and will tell me the truth. So, often people just mirror back to us what we want to hear and are afraid of hurting our feelings. Sometimes we need to hear some painful truth in order to keep us humble before God and keep us from making fatal mistakes about what are purpose, gifts, and ministry means. Resisting the need to tell people the truth does not help them, it hurts them by re-enforcing the misconceptions they already have. There is a way to find where we belong in the ministry and it is not a popular vote, it is by a particular purpose of a sovereign God who created us for His glory.

8. If you are wondering where God wants you to be in this life, then create your own mission statement and ask yourself four questions about your purpose:

1. WHY do you have this purpose in life?

2 . WHO are you? (What have you accomplished to date? What is the code you live by?)

3. WHAT do you plan to accomplish in your destiny?

4 . WHEN are these goals to be achieved? (You must have a time line.)

9. Build an Action Plan: Determine how you will achieve your goals.

Start with the overview, details can come later.

10. Ask yourself,

“Is this really what I believe the Lord has planned for me?

Am I passionate about this? Can I give my life to this?” Believe that “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.” (Phil. 4:13).

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May 7, 2011 · 11:12 pm

Hope as the Pathway and Agency for Success in Any Venture


Hope is What We Express About Life That is a Bridge To The Future

The ability to express hope through challenging circumstances is an essential element to create success in the ventures of life.  Expressing hope is the act of building a bridge that over circumstances–opposition paving a way to desirable outcome in the future.  Almost everyone is concerned about effectiveness– how to find success in life that creates the momentum to get where we want to arrive. many available studies support the assumption that hope is a key component that distinguishes how well an individual navigates through challenges. Therefore, the influence of hope upon life can be measured in qualitative terms that relate to physical health, higher academic functioning, interpersonal functioning, athletic performance, psychosocial adjustment, capacity for self-regulation, and superior ability to face and overcome obstacles.  On the other hand a lack of hope can be connected to individuals being easily confused by obstacles, avoidant, ineffectiveness and the absence of  heartiness through life challenges. When factors are considered about why some people succeed and why others do not, there may be many factors contributing to success, but the single mitigating factor that empowers success– even when other deficiencies exist– is the presence of hope.

An effort to define hope might provide some insight about what it is, what it does, and how it is expressed. Some common definitions of hope are to wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment, or to have confidence; trust, to look forward to with confidence or expectation. In life, we hope that our children will be successful, the sun will shine, and that everything will always work out. The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God‘s help.  The idea of hope in general terms is an expectation that motivates life in the present with a belief that the future hold possibility that can be achieved.   Hope is a way of expressing life that builds a bridge to the future.

In the Christian approach to hope a Biblical definition of hope is “confident expectation.”  Hope is a firm assurance regarding things that are unclear and unknown (Romans 8:24-25; Hebrews 11:1,7).  Christians believe that hope in the present and in the future is a confident expectation that is based in essential beliefs about God and His oversight, involvement, and control over what happens in life.  For Christians, who understand the basis of their beliefs,  hope is an essential ingredient in the life expressed upward toward God and outward toward goals (Proverbs 23:18) . In times of distress, when faced with despair and loss, there are situations where life loses its essential meaning  and zest (Lamentations 3:18, Job 7:6). When faced with death and times when  there is no apparent hope (Isaiah 38:18, Job 17:15), Christian hope supplies a way of organizing belief into confident expectation that those who put their hope in God will receive assistance(Psalm 28:7).  Therefore, Christians believe, and will not be perplexed, put to shame in their hope (Isaiah 49:23), and will be vindicated as they place hopeful expectation in God.  As a result,  hope and belief is a general attitude of confidence in God’s protection– help (Jeremiah 29:11).  Therefore, hope frees Christians from fear and anxiety (Psalm 46:2-3).  Christian hope is based upon beliefs and assumptions about, God, good and evil, life, eternity and life in the present.  Hope provides momentum to live with expectation that God is guiding what is happening to a positive outcome.

One issue of interest is how hope energizes and infuses life with momentum to move ahead. Hope provides a clear way that can reduce the power of obstacles to disable supplying an attitude that enables reaching forward with a belief that success is attainable.  As a result, attention is drawn to how hope can be increased in how an individual approaches life.  Is there a road to happiness and a set point that can be achieved that happiness can be measured, believed to be normative as a maxim?  An equally important issue to understand is that a state of happiness is a subjective condition.  If someone asked you to describe happiness what would the story contain for you?

Research has shown that automatic assumptions of happiness are often incorrect.  Often hope and happiness are associated with feeling good about what is occurring.  In fact, what is true is that people who feel good in certain circumstances, like winning the lottery, actually become unhappy, dissatisfied and loose hope in life.  Carl Maslow illustrated that people feel a better sense of well-being when they have basic survival needs met rather than monetary gain.  Lifestyle always rises to the level of income and beyond and what happens is that possessions or positions in life do not seem to bring happiness and hope.  People get on the hedonistic treadmill trying to find happiness and gain hope but, “the abundance of life is not in the things we possess” (Jesus).  Often people assume that happiness and having hope is a result of what happens to people in life.  However, it is not what happens to people; it’s how they construct and interpret those events, it is how you mindfully experience those events.

A key to hope, a road to happiness is emotional well-being.  People who have hope in life and experience emotional well being are people who are virtually engaged in life– grounded in meaning and purpose in life.  To be happy, to have hope means being fully involved with every detail of life.  A life driven by purpose, calling, a sense of belonging and fitting where you are is critical to feeling positive about what is taking place in existence.  When people are fully engaged in life with a sense of fitting, belonging– owning a place in life– engaging in positive relationships, then attention redirects our energy away from negatives which are destructive, limiting, defeating activity that drain vitality from life.  You may have heard the expression, “time flies when you are having fun.”  Another way to understand this is a state of grace, a “flow state.”  The experience of flow happens when you are able to be completely caught up in what you are doing and time flies.

Meeting the challenges of life with hope increases the flow of life that sets an expectation that sees a life that has possibilities, even when faced with extreme opposition.  What occurs in the hope transaction is that alternative routes to reach outcome are discovered, then implemented through pathways thinking.  “Pathways thinking” means that when the first route you try is blocked, you can produce alternative routes to get to a destination by thinking flexibly and are able to change course as needed. A challenge faced when attempting to cultivate an increased hope is to how to cultivate thinking patterns that connect to alternatives rather than boxed in solutions. A principle  of hope is that hope is a learned experience as well as a motivational feeling experienced, which indicates that hope both a phenomenon and a mindset.

Hope is embraced as a principle in thinking when hope has agency.  “Agency thinking”  is thinking with efficacious belief, a sense,  that the desired goal can be reached.  Borrowing from a Biblical principle in Hebrews 11:1; “faith” in Christian thinking is stirred by reciting, vividly recalling successful ventures of faith in the past.  The “evidence of things hoped for”  is in the record of those who have the story of success presented in a history of belief.  Individuals who spend their time reciting their failures or being reminded constantly of failure are not likely to accomplish much.  However, when there is a sense of agency and belief is cultivated through celebrating success and failure jointly (on the road to success), then high hope can be instilled that enables accomplishment.

One thing that is for sure in life is that there are always people who can convincingly tell you why you cannot succeed. However when you want to succeed, a bridge to the future must be constructed with faith, hope, and belief and it needs to begin today, without delay.

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