What’s Keeping You From Living With Purpose?

I was 17, in the pediatric ICU, attempting to take my first steps after my initial open heart surgery to correct a congenital heart defect. This was a big deal, since walking meant steps closer to discharge. As I gingerly walked past the nurse’s station, with wires holding my sternum together, one particular nurse asked me, “How are you doing so well?”

My mind spun for an answer, until God reframed my mind and affirmed: it was all HIM.

God had to literally take ahold of my physical heart to change my spiritual heart. God, in His insurmountable grace, was changing my pain into purpose.

So often in life, we are searching for meaning, purpose, significance, and identity, aren’t we? And often the answer to those words don’t come in a lightning bolt experience. It comes through a step-by-step pursuit of a relationship with God himself.

And what is keeping us from that deep and intimate pursuit?

In this day and age: social media.

God didn’t create us to just stare at our phones, watching how other people live their lives in perfectly curated videos, photos, and posts. And now with AI? Who even knows what’s real anymore! We scroll and scroll, in hopes of “finding” that sense of purpose and acceptance, searching for something better. It’s the distraction of these things that keeps us from living out our purpose. Comparing our lives to someone else’s, busyness, and looking horizontally, not vertically for a life of purpose.

So how do we obtain a life of purpose? Through relationship. By sitting in His presence. Acknowledging His presence. Talking to Him. Asking Him (we have not because we ask not). Deciphering His voice from the rest, which is achieved by knowing Scripture. Is your day one of on-going conversations with God? It can be! While driving, think about Him. Acknowledge the beauty of creation. Pray for those He puts on your mind. While doing the mundane, take that time to think about Him. The things of Him. Not our fleshly pursuits of the next thing, buying the next thing, upgrading, or even comparing your life to another person’s.

I believe finding purpose isn’t necessarily circumstantial, but is in the pursuit of God. THAT is where purpose, significance, and identity are found. Not in the next thing. For all things tangible are fleeting, but a relationship with God will lead to eternity. THEN you will find that your lens through which you live life and see your circumstances, will change.

No lightning bolt experience is needed; it just starts today, by choosing a life that is lived for HIM, and nothing else. Now, let’s go out and live our purpose, starting today, by just living a life with HIM.