God's Purpose- Your Life's Work

Life's Purpose- the GPS of your life's actions
Copyright 2012- God's Work in Progress 

Purpose as I define it is the foundational driving force in your life, which comes out of you.  It is already there. It is not external like a call or a mission or vision, and is placed in everyone by God. It drives your lives it is the fuel in your person’s engine. Want Proof?

Jesus’ core purpose-  To give you a full and satisfying life (John 10:10b)

If you unpack this you will see lots of sub-outcomes and benfits and such. This purpose drove his time on Earth and and continues to drive it even now in heaven.

Satan’s purpose- to steal kill and destroy.  (John 10:10a)  Don't have to unpack this.

Here's a flash-  Satan and his helpers have been working full time making sure that people do NOT find their Life's Purpose.  Believe me he knows what the world would be like if we all knew and lived God's Purpose for our lives and it scares him to death.  His primary focus has been to prevent this from happening.

Unpacking and Finding Your Life's Purpose

I have observed a lot of books and seminars that have the intent of helping people find their life's purpose.  I think this is great.  I also think it is very important that we define what we mean by purpose.  Most of the reading equates purpose with calling. I believe strongly that this is a mistake.  Calling is not a life's work.  One can be called for a given work, such as writing a book or starting a church or going on a mission field, or starting a company and then that calling changes- this happens a lot.  But sometimes these callings take a lifetime.   Sometimes callings take a lifetime and they should not.   Many callings are interim challenges   But your Life's Purpose does not change if it is a LIFE'S purpose.  Right?   So if a calling can end or change, then a calling can't be our purpose. Callings are more like a goal or a vision or mission. So  I think a calling, a vocation, is very important but I believe a calling is an EXPRESSION of purpose, not our purpose.  Jesus was called to the cross.  Done.

Mission is not purpose either.  Missions are accomplished.  And people say they are "called" to mission and I believe it.  Jesus Mission is to seek and save the lost.  Will this mission end. Yes it will.  When all tings to come together at the end, (read Revelaton)  the saved will be with God in the new heaven and the new earth and the lost.............. you read it for yourself.  But the point is the mission is over.  Good Guys win.

Another common teaching is that our Spiritual Gifts determine our Life's Purpose or that BOTH calling, mission and gifts together determine it. This  I believe is also not accurate.  Alongside the above idea of calling is the distribution of gifting by the Holy Spirit.  Gifts, are not us, they are God through us.  They exist for the "building up of the Body"- They are "indicative" of purpose. They are also extremely important in God's plan for the world and have a role to play in our Life's Purpose but they are not our purpose.

Which brings us to purpose-

Our Life's Purpose is our Life's Work-  it is, in its essence, an intense focus of how we are supposed to live our lives day to day-  it is clarity-  an application of our lives that makes us extremely effective- it is the source of provision and when we devote it BACK to God, it also makes us very effective co-laborers with Christ in achieving provision and in saving the world.

I have helped a few  hundred or so people to find their purpose and almost every single time they cry or feel like it.  And the people whom I know, including myself, who have discovered their life's purpose, live a very focused, driven life.  Not a life of compulsion, but a life that has very specific direction and guidance.  When you discover your life's purpose your life changes permanently because purpose is the narrow path. It is an unlimited limited way, the most excellent way, and it is the way beyond all the other ways. It is God's WAY for your life.

Here is the substance of your Life's Purpose or Work, which is the foundation and focus of our lives.

Core Competence-  In each of us there is a foundational skill or ability that is at the ROOT of every other skill we have.  It is something that is so natural, so common to us, that most of us don't see it. It is in use all the time and you don't even think about doing it because is is so natural.  The people around you know it, ask them. 

Core Passion- There is, residing in EVERY person's heart an eternal care or concern that is primal and that when it is met, all seems right with the world.  It is a care or concern that when it is being addressed time seems to stop, or your sense of it diminishes. It is something you are always thinking about and it winds its way into your thinking and reading and conversations in a default way.  It is a foundational concern that God has placed on your heart.  If you have "many" of them there is something, some primal concern that links them all together. This is your CORE passion.

Your Life's Work, your Life's Purpose is "discovered" not created. It already exists.  And here is how you discover it:

You apply your Core Competence (the natural foundational ability you are naturally great at), to your Core Passion (your external foundational concern for the world around you.) 

When you apply your core competence to that core passion or concern that is fundamental in your heart you stop "working".  You have found your Life's Work, and this work is your primary work and  is comprised of all "the works that have been prepared in advance" for you to do.  These all come out of this Life's Work.

Think about your life for a minute-  Think about the times when you were most effective-when you firing on all cylinders.  That was a time when this very purpose was happening. God reveals these moments to show it to you. 

Now when you discover your purpose you can live more intentionally, and you can make decisions on purpose, and you should.  Your purpose gives you permission to say yes to work that aligns with it, and no to work that does not. In fact you almost have an obligation NOT to do work that conflicts with your purpose.  When you are doing work that aligns with your purpose what  you do is more meaningful,  and you have JOY.

Here's a plan.  Get on your knees and thank God for your purpose.  Devote it to Him, dedicate it to him.  Ask him to release the work that He has prepared in advance, ask him to show you the Plans He has for you to prosper you and give you a future and a hope.  And He will.

Send me an e-mail and I will send you tool I'm working on to help you discover it. Up to this point all my work has been one on one or in a seminar I lead.  Your feedback on the tool will help.