I am loving going back over these names God gives us over the course of our “spring” study, We Are What He Calls Us. One of the most frustrating experiences in your life can be living in the vicious cycle of hounding success as defined by the world when you don’t even know what you are supposed to be doing. You have a job. You might even been incredibly good at your job (or career). Yet you are unfulfilled.
You cannot walk away though because you are racking up prizes. Rave reviews. You are scaling up the rock wall for career rock stars, and you would be crazy to jump off now. I mean look at the time and effort you have invested in obtaining all these achievements.
What I have experienced is that the cycle is addictive and leaving it could mean leaving “things” to which you have become accustomed. It may mean leaving travel or luxury accommodations or a fancy office or an expansive wardrobe or an impressive title or lots of people reporting to you or the chance to speak in front of many or running an important project or company or money. Maybe the most frightening thing you would have to leave is your comfort zone. The safety of what you know.
This study is not about leaving your job. In fact, it is primarily about finding satisfaction in Christ while you do your job instead of relying on a job to give you the affirmation you crave. But it is worth at least a moment’s consideration that you might not be doing what you should be doing. Your dissatisfaction with the ups and downs of your life may be more than pinning your entire emotional fulfillment on the world’s assessment of your merit on any given day. It might be that you are not doing what you are supposed to be doing (regardless of how good you are at it).
You are destined for a specific purpose. God created you with something unique in mind. He created an ideal plan for our lives. Nobody ever follows that ideal plan without error because we are human and we mess things up, but the good news is that the purpose is always there. Waiting for you to claim it as your own. Your specific purpose is the real prize to pursue.
You may, however, be in the exact right job for today. I have held the right job and still suffered miserably because I based my self-worth on what people around me believed about whether I was worthy or not. You and I are destined for a specific purpose, but even if we work in a place where that purpose can be achieved, we still must remember how God values us and calls us worthy and loved instead of relying on fickle opinions around us.
And if you are flailing today, confused about what to do or where to go, determined that there is no place for you, know that is not true. There is a SPECIFIC place for you where you can achieve a specific purpose that God has had in mind for you all this time (Just soak up Ephesians 2 below – sit with it for a good long time. Especially if you feel aimless today.) God reminds us that He created us with a purpose in mind. You and I have a specific purpose. How do I know?
Ephesians 2: 10: For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
II Corinthians 5:5: Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.
Jeremiah 29: 11: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
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