Purpose - Do I Have One? - Craig Lounsbrough
We all throw around the idea of having a purpose, or not having one, or wondering if we’re supposed to have one, or whatever we’re wondering. We wonder if we really need a purpose, and if so do we create it or does it already exist and we just haven’t happened to happen upon it just yet? However or in whatever way we go about it, we all ponder this whole idea of having a purpose.
Purpose Tells Us That We’re More Than Just the Sum Total of Our Existence
The fact that we have a purpose evidences the fact that we are more than just the sum total of whoever it is that we are. A purpose says that we have a much larger role in this thing that we call life than just the living out of our individual lives. Purpose tells us that everything that’s within us is designed to engage everything that’s outside of us, and there’s a whole lot out there. A purpose tells us that we are more than just “us.”
Purpose Tells Us There is Something Greater Than Us That We’re Invited to Participate In
The fact that we have a purpose tells us that ‘something else’ is out there. It tells us that the horizons in life don’t come anywhere close to ending at the end of our existence as the single, solitary human beings that all of us are. Gratefully, a purpose tells us that we are not the end of all that there is. In fact, ‘we’ are barely the beginning.
Purpose Tells Us That We’re a Piece of a Much Larger Puzzle That’s Would be Incomplete Without Us
Our purpose tells us that this massive world out there, as huge as it is, is sorely incomplete without us. Large or small, complicated or simple, breathtaking or life giving, regardless of what our purpose is, the world will be incomplete unless we fulfill it. That makes each and every one of us terribly important in ways that most of us never even consider, and few of us even remotely comprehend. Everything that’s out there will be less than everything that’s out there if we forsake our purpose.
Purpose Tells Us That To Not Seek Out Your Purpose is Only to Exist
Yet, many choose not to believe that they have a purpose, or they believe that they have one but don’t bother themselves with finding it. There are those of us who succumb to a life of mindless tedium or a pathetic routine where we senselessly march in lock-step with a world around us that’s forsaken its purpose as well. We surrender to a purposeless existence which is surrendering to death way ahead of death’s actual arrival. Many of us will know nothing other than a directionless cadence, having left the footprints of our lives meandering down a road that’s meandering itself. Eventually the road will lead to wherever apathy and mediocrity pave it. And we can be certain that it will never lead to whatever our purpose was.
We Don’t Have to Create a Purpose, We Only Have to Find It
Purpose is not something that we create or have to create. It’s something that we have to find. It’s not about tediously constructing some sort of purpose out of the scattered pieces and errant parts of whatever we understand ourselves and our lives to be. God’s done that work already, and He’s done it with absolute perfection. We just need to commit ourselves to finding it. Next to our search for God, seeking out our passion is one of the most phenomenal adventures that we will ever have the privilege of undertaking. It is a treasure hunt of the greatest sort.
Your Purpose Awaits
You have a purpose. It stands eager and ready to be discovered. Purpose is never going to be so elusive that you can’t find it simply because purpose is deeply desirous of being found, seized, unleashed and ultimately achieved. In doing so, you will change your life and the lives of those around you, because when you embrace your purpose your purpose will embrace you and that changes everything. It’s time to ask one of the most vital questions that you will ever ask yourself. And that question is, “what is my purpose?”
January 9, 2015
