Purpose

If there's one thing I enjoy, it's relaxing in the evening with a hot cup of tea while having a meaningful conversation with another human being. So last night, I made a hot herb brew, added some honey, and conversed with Jennifer (one of our staff members) about purpose. Purpose being that substance which gives us a drive to move forward, or perhaps better said, the definition of our reason for living. And if there's one thing I don't want to live without, it's purpose.

Ed Sinke, our visiting teacher last week, helped me to sort out some of my ideas about purpose. He said that we all have a purpose unique to who we are, and it is so central to our individual identities such that to know it (which doesn't actually imply using it for something good), one must simply know the gifts, callings, abilities, or desires that are inside of them.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of the feeling-oriented discover-yourself exercises, but in all seriousness, this wasn't one of them. It had more with the creativity of God that we see among the differences in people. See, it's true that we are, in our personhoods, separate. We have an individual identity, a name that signifies who we are, a soul that no one else has. But what does this have to do with purpose?

If you ask me what my personal reason for living is, I will not answer you with what I think my individual purpose is. My first response will be, "I live to intimately know Jesus Christ." And then I will tell you that out of this intimate knowing will flow an outpour of life to lavish on others, the way Christ lavishes an outpour of life on me. I say this because I want to give life to others, and because I know that through Christ, I can. This is my drive to move forward.

Maybe my individual purpose is "to encourage and challenge minds to seek truth" or "to help people by meeting their specific needs," because after all, both of these desires are inside of me. And maybe this purpose will manifest itself through what I'm doing here in Mexico and plan to do in different countries. But the reality of it is, I don't care too much about the words used to verbalize this or how it ends up looking; what I really care about is not missing what's most important. And in my pursuit of this, I mean, in my pursuit of what's most important, I can say with certainty that my life will not lack purpose.