Discovering Your Purpose
It’s about finding meaning in the mundane everyday stuff
I was raised to believe that God has a purpose and plan for each of us; a custom-designed guide to living your best life.
All you had to do was figure out what it was.
Good luck.
It was actually even more complicated than that. Because there were degrees of God’s plan for your life. And you needed to be discerning about which of God’s purposes and plans for your life you were following.
God’s Perfect Will & Plan
First, and by far the best, was the idea of God’s perfect will and plan for your life.
This was like everything aligning in harmony with God’s plans for you. The perfect life, comprising the perfect significant other (for you), the perfect career (for you), in the perfect place (again, for you).
(Note how self-centered this is!)
Importantly, being in God’s perfect plan didn’t mean you wouldn’t face difficulties. After all, even Jesus said in this world we would face trouble (see John. But the good news was that Jesus said he had overcome the world! (see John 16:33)
So any challenges in your life were mitigated by knowing that you were in God’s perfect will and plan. Where else would you want to be?
The assurance was that no matter what happened it would eventually all work out (perfectly), according to God’s purpose for your life.
God’s Permissive Will & Plan
If you missed God’s perfect will and plan for your life, you might find yourself within his permissive will and plan.
In other words, you made some choices that God allowed, even though they weren’t part of his perfect will and plan for your life. Which, fortunately, meant that while things wouldn’t necessarily be ideal, they probably wouldn't be too bad either.
Maybe you chose the wrong college or the wrong spouse or the wrong job or the wrong place to live.
Not to worry.
Even though you weren’t in God’s perfect will and plan, God being God, could still work in and through those mistakes to make sure life was mostly okay.
If you were in God’s permissive will and plan, your life wouldn’t ever quite be what it was supposed to be. But, all things considered, it probably wouldn’t be too bad.
Missing God’s Will and Plan
Worst of all was missing God’s will and plan completely. Either through ignorance, rebellion, disobedience, or your lack of seeking God’s will for your life, you messed up and missed it.
Basically, you were screwed.
If you even had the wherewithal to realize you had missed God’s will and plan, God being God and all, would accept your groveling and sincere repentance for your sins.
And then maybe, if you were lucky, God might help get you back on track. At least on the way to his permissive will and plan.
But it would take hella effort and discernment to figure it out.
Mental Masturbation
I abandoned this way of thinking long ago. I simply don’t believe the world (or God) works this way. And, honestly, writing this now, the whole notion seems ridiculous.
Yet it’s strange how things we’re taught in our formative years stick with us even after we’ve intellectually rejected and abandoned them.
Despite what I both intellectually and intuitively believe to be the case regarding free will, I’ve wasted many moments of my life wondering and worrying about God’s perfect will and plan. Especially regarding education and career choices.
Re-reading a journal I wrote in almost daily 15 to 20 years ago reveals a soul desperate for answers and filled with anxiety about making wrong choices. Page after page is me praying and crying out to God to reveal his purpose and plan for my life.
Should I do this or that degree?
Should I follow this or that plan?
Should I be a professor or pastor or something else?
I think I want to be a professor. But what if that is my selfishness and my plan, rather than your will and plan?
God, give me the desires you have for me.
And please take away the desires I have that are not from you.
Anguished wrestling like this over and over, page after page after page.
I feel sorry for the young man and tortured soul that wrote like this and whose mind was dominated by these kinds of thoughts.
That young man was me.
He’s still me.
Cognitive Dissonance
I was an ordained minister and lead pastor for 10 years. Over time I developed a strong sense of pastoral vocation, thanks especially to the writings of the late Eugene Peterson. I saw my vocation as a pastor-theologian.
However, I really wanted to be a professor of theology and philosophy of religion. I was hoping to at least adjunct while being a pastor if I couldn’t be a full-time professor.
For a variety of reasons, none of that worked out. And in 2018 I left vocational ministry and transitioned to the business world. I now find myself as a quality and continuous improvement professional, which is something I never imagined I’d be doing.
Fortunately, I enjoy the work and it turns out I’m pretty good at it. I’m truly fortunate.
However, I can’t help but wonder:
What happened?
Did I miss God’s will, purpose, and plan for my life?
If so, what about ALL THOSE CRIES OUT TO GOD SEEKING HIS WILL OVER MANY YEARS?!?!?!?
What about all the people — professors and student colleagues alike — who affirmed my academic longings and essentially said, “Yes, this is exactly what you should be doing?”
Is there still time and a way for me to “get back on track”? If so, how?
This is the insidious side of having it pounded into your head during your formative years that God has a perfect plan for your life.
If it turns out you miss out on the deepest longings and desires of your heart for your career or whatever, you believe you missed it forever and are somehow out of step with God’s purpose and plan for your life.
And if you fervently prayed and sought the counsel of wise people in your life whom you trusted and respected, as I did over many years, it makes it all the worse.
Something seriously doesn’t add up. The cognitive dissonance created causes anxiety, self-doubt, self-loathing, and a host of other issues.
Just Do Your Thing
Over the years, I’ve increasingly come to believe that our “purpose” is really just to faithfully do whatever it is we find ourselves doing, whoever we find ourselves doing it with, and wherever we're doing it.
In other words, there’s no grand plan.
There’s no perfect will and purpose for your life to discover.
There’s no permissive will and purpose for your life that’s second best.
There’s just this moment.
Today.
And the key question is, What are we doing with it?
The writer Annie Dillard famously said:
How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour or that one is what we are doing.
So what am I doing?
What are you doing?
Who are we becoming in the process?
Those are the important questions.
And they’re the questions that help shape our purpose.
No one’s life turns out precisely as they’d planned or imagined. And I believe we infuse purpose and meaning into our lives. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Perhaps an overarching “purpose” is just a story we create and tell ourselves to try and make sense of things.
What if life’s purpose is just to do the daily stuff of life — the everyday, ordinary, mundane things we all have to do; to do them conscientiously and with care and love and kindness and compassion — and find the beauty and meaning in that?
Maybe that’s all there is.
Maybe that’s enough.