Just A Few Words - Our Purpose

Just a Few Words - Our Purpose

The place where God calls you to is the place where deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.^a —Frederick Buechner

FIGURING OUT what we’re supposed to be doing while we’re walking the face of the earth is not easy.

We’re pretty sure we should be doing something that matters. But we also want to love what we’re doing.

We need to be engaged. We want to be energized by our work or projects, and we want to know in our hearts that we’ve found our calling.

But we also want to make money so we can provide for our families. So how can we find that intersection of those things we should do for others, we need to do for our spirit, and we want materially?

Last Sunday, our pastor, Dr. Joe Clifford, spoke briefly about how we can understand what God might be calling us to do. He reminded us that at least two of three things usually occur when God is calling us to do something specific.

First, you may hear an internal voice that tells you when you are satisfied by a specific type of work or task. When you’re doing it, you are fulfilled; you love it. But there is also an external influence that is important. When others recognize your talents and begin to suggest that you consider using these gifts in a significant way, you need to pay attention. External influences are important because we often need that objectivity. Finally, sometimes a providential occurrence propels one’s circumstances toward clarity or change. Whether a series of seemingly coincidental happenstances or a life-altering event, what sometimes seems a disaster one minute can be fate smiling down on you sweetly the next.

Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize? So run to win! All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. (1 Corinthians 9:24-26)

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a parable about the man who entrusted his investment money to three of his servants. Two invested it wisely, returning more to their master than he had given them. The third, however, buried what he’d been given, forfeiting any potential for gain. Jesus reveals the story’s moral by telling us that “to those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But from those who do nothing, even what little they have will be taken away” (v. 29).

Whether we’re talking about talents, as in spiritual gifts, or talents, as in money, either way, we know that God is the provider—but we have to discern the call and have the courage to step out in faith.

^a Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (New York: Harper One, 1973), 119.