Living Your Purpose

Paul was a man of great passion. In the first part of his life, he would have described his life purpose as honoring and serving God by bringing people into obedience to the true religion. He was a tireless zealot with the goal of keeping religion both theologically and sociologically pure. Consequently, he lived out his purpose with great ideological fervor, heading up squads of religious soldiers given the mandate to arrest all dissenters. He was extremely successful in his work. The “golden boy” of the old guard.

Then one day he experienced a profound change of heart. Though the essence of his passion didn’t shift, his life purpose and strategic methodology did. He was convicted—by means of a radical and transformative divine encounter—that the people he had been so vigorously attacking were followers of the same God he was so passionately serving. So if he wanted to continue serving the same God with equal passion, he needed to widen his embrace to include the people he had labeled as dissenters and accept their belief in Jesus as the Messiah of God. We call that a major paradigm shift.

So now he lived his life with a new purpose. Here’s the way he described it: “Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant, dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him … Now don’t get me wrong: By no means do I count myself having achieved perfection in all of this, but I’ve got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward - to Jesus. Forgetting the past, I’m off and running, and I’m not turning back.” (Philippians 3:8-9, 13-14, The Message)

With this new purpose firmly implanted in his passionate heart and innovative mind, Paul lived his life with profound meaning and effectiveness. He faced obstacle after obstacle—imprisonment, beating, shipwreck, exhaustion, hunger, ridicule, persecution, rejection—but because he was crystal clear on his purpose and felt deeply the validity and significance of it, he was empowered to keep going. His effectiveness was legendary. He impacted the then-known world with his message, planting and building spiritual communities wherever he went. He started a movement that continues in force globally today.

Here’s his perspective on his life when he came to the end: “The time of my death is near. I have fought a good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful. And now the prize awaits me; the crown of righteousness that the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that great day.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8, New Living Translation)

No regrets. No complaints. No capitulations. Faithful to the purpose all the way to the end, he described plenty of failures along the way. But the power of living on purpose is that you can keep going after failure. You don’t have to be defined by it. You can get back on the horse and keep on riding toward your goal. And he did. Notice four principles of living on purpose.

First, it’s important to re-evaluate our life purpose along the way. And if we don’t choose to do it, often life forces us to. A crisis comes that requires an intentional re-evaluation, readjustment, and refocusing. And sometimes, as in the case of Paul, we discover that we’re living with a less than meaningful purpose and need to change the focus.

In other words, there are some purposes more worth living for than others. And it would be tragic to come to the end of life and make that painful discovery. Better to evaluate now whether we’re living for a worthy purpose or not and make necessary adjustments. It takes courage. But it’s absolutely worth it in the end in order to end with no regrets. Are you living the most meaningful purpose possible for yourself? Is your purpose in harmony with what God wants for you and what you were created to live for?

Second, to achieve your life purpose well you need to “forget” the past. That is, not let the past define you whether it’s your successes or your failures. We tend to do several things when it comes to our past: we either glory in it in pride or we wallow in it in shame or we deny it in pain. Any of those responses fixates us in the past and immobilizes us from pursuing God’s goal for our lives.

A man complained to his rabbi of depression. His life lately seemed like an endless string of failures, disappointments, and missed opportunities. Why, he asked, had God condemned him to live such a frustrating existence? The rabbi listened carefully and after some moments of contemplation, he asked the man to reach behind him and remove a large volume from his bookshelf. Assuming this was some profound tome of spiritual wisdom, the man reached for the volume. He noticed to his surprise that it was an almanac of sports statistics.

“Read page 543 aloud,” the rabbi instructed. And the man began reading the lifetime batting averages of baseball’s greatest hitters. Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams. “Not one of them batted more than 400,” observed the rabbi. “That means more than six in ten times, the greatest of the great struck out, popped out or flied out. More than six in ten times, they failed. Are you better than they were?” the rabbi asked the man. “Why do you expect more of yourself than they did?”

It’s easy to get fixated on our past. But that only immobilizes us from pushing ourselves toward the goal of our life purpose. We become conservative in our actions, afraid to do anything that might lead to failure again or might make us look bad. We end up paying attention to things we ought to be overlooking. William James, the American philosopher, psychologist and educator at Harvard University, in 1890 wrote, “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

Third, we must point ourselves in the “right” direction. Not just any direction or any goal will do, if we want to live God’s plan and purpose for us. Some directions are much more meaningful than others. You’ve no doubt heard the phrase, “When you come to the end of your life, no one wishes they had spent more time at the office.”

That’s referring to priorities. Right focus. A worthwhile purpose typically revolves around relationships – building meaningful, significant, fulfilling relationships. And that kind of purpose usually involves using your resources to make a difference in people’s lives in some tangible way. The whole idea of service and showing compassion to others makes up the kind of life purpose that brings the highest degree of fulfillment and meaning.

Paul focused the second part of his life on following the example of Jesus and helping people experience Jesus’ love and compassion. And Jesus had once stated clearly his life purpose in this way: “For the Son of Man came, not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for others.”

That example by Jesus is what empowered and motivated and shaped Paul’s life purpose. He kept his eyes on that picture of Jesus and refused to live the many lesser ways to live. He devoted his energies and skills and resources to serving others in the best way he could.