How to find your purpose
Follow your dreams, live your passion, be a person of purpose... they told us a bunch of this stuff, but I never had a clue what my passions or purpose was. I graduated high school not knowing what I wanted to do for a career, so I worked my way up (and sideways) on the corporate ladder, finding new things to try. When I was 29 someone asked me what my "big dream" was, and I responded "Everything!" because I still couldn't pin it down to anything specific. My wife knew what she wanted before she graduated high school, but her path to get there has been just as twisty as mine, with many surprises along the way.
Here's our advice: don't wait for anyone to reveal your destiny to you, just go out there and live. Experience things, try new stuff, be a person that leans forward, rather than holding back.
Fall in love.
Learn how to master something.
Get some skills.
Make friends outside your comfort zone.
In everything you do, orient yourself towards God and allow him to put opportunities in front of you. He will be involved in everything in your life, but he often won't make his presence clearly known. Don't sit around doing nothing out of fear of missing out on "God's plan" or some such nonsense. Missing out on God's plan is only of concern for those who live selfishly, focused on themselves and their own betterment. I'm not advocating you live that way, I want you to go out there and become a student of life, with eyes and ears and hands wide open to experience all that God has laid out for you to enjoy.
As the years roll on, two important things (among many others) will happen:
- You will be given ample opportunity to mature, to grow up, to man-up or woman-up. To learn discipline. To develop a passion for righteousness. The more you live and experience while staying open to God in everything, the more you will be humbled and awed and drawn into his majesty by all of creation. You will be invited to learn to love others the way that God loves others.
- You will discover certain things which bring you life, joy and fulfilment in a deep, lasting way. Pay attention to these things. If you have lived well and learned to love as God loves, then the things that bring your soul to life will be things that God smiles over, no matter what.
One day you'll look around you and realise this is your purpose. And then you should write it down and make a t-shirt and a poster and get it tattooed somewhere and all that stuff. Tell everyone all about it. It's good! But it requires you to get out there and keep your eyes and ears open for all that God will show you. Don't wait!
(Unless you're like 15... if you're 15, then finish high school first please. It's really not that long.)
