Something Janet and I saw recently on social media caught our ear. It wasn’t bad in itself. There wasn’t anything wrong with it, per se. But it was the implicit assumption behind it that bothered us.

Social media is often just a highlight reel, and shows all the exciting, exotic adventures. Nothing wrong with any of that. I love exciting, exotic adventures. It’s all good.

But the message was, “I’m finally living my purpose. God has given me this adventurous life to enjoy.”

We never know what someone’s been through or their story, especially on social media. I would not begrudge anyone a happy and pleasurable life. That’s all good. God wants us to enjoy life.

But rather than say, “God has given me this adventurous life to enjoy,” I would change the word “enjoy” to “live.” That might not look like a big change at first, but it is. It is a huge change in perspective.

Yes, God wants us to enjoy life. Enjoying life is good. I’m all for enjoying life. But that’s not our purpose.

Living the life God has created us to live is our purpose.

Frankl over Freud

Sigmund Freud said, in a nutshell: Life revolves around pleasure. People live and search for pleasure more than anything else. Sex is the greatest pleasure possible, so life is really all about sex.

Now I’m not a prude, and sex is a really important part of life. When practiced according to God’s design — one biological man and one biological woman, inside a marriage covenant — it’s an amazingly beautiful thing. Deep intimacy within a sole, uncompromising, life-long covenant commitment, marriage is a model of our relationship with God. (That’s why there’s no marriage in Heaven, see Matthew 22:30. We’ll have the real thing; we won’t need the model anymore.)

But pursuing pleasure, even sex, is not what life’s about. Another psychologist, Viktor Frankl disagreed with Freud. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl said, in a nutshell:

“People live and search for meaning. When they can’t find meaning, they settle for pleasure.”

— Viktor Frankl (my paraphrase), in Man’s Search for Meaning

Life is about purpose. We feel empty without it, and often medicate with all sorts of healthy and unhealthy pleasures when we can’t find it. But that doesn’t work. Pleasure doesn’t take away the void, the pain of an empty life lived without purpose. Pleasure only distracts us from the pain and the emptiness, and only temporarily.

So What’s Our Purpose?

Our purpose in the Kingdom of God is two-fold.

First, we were created to love God and be loved by him. That is success in life. Any definition of success beyond that is idolatry.

Second, we all have a unique purpose and calling on our life. It’s something we alone can bring into the world. It’s something that, if we don’t do it, no one will, and world will be worse off.

“This task was given to you, Frodo Baggins, and if you do not find a way, no one will.”

– Galadriel, in The Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien

Loving God and Being Loved By Him

Like everything in the Kingdom, there is a corporate and individual component.

The individual component is our personal time with Jesus. This is everything, isn’t it? True fulfillment in life comes from this place of intimacy with Jesus. It’s that time you and him spend together alone, just the two of you, however you spend your time together. Private and intimate.

The corporate component is loving God in a loving, healthy, Church family. It’s where we participate with a body of believers and do life together, manifesting our love of God through our love for each other. Being part of a healthy, loving, church family is amazing. I couldn’t imagine life without these people. They are my real family.

The Unique Purpose and Call on Your Life

Counterintuitively, this also has a corporate and an individual component, like everything in the Kingdom.

Individually, your purpose is yours alone. It’s God’s unique calling on your life. It’s an exciting journey of discovery with him to uncover who you are and what you’re for. It’s exciting to partner with God for your life. And a bit terrifying, because your calling is bigger than what you could accomplish without him.

Whenever God talks to someone about their calling, Moses, Gideon, whoever, when they are overwhelmed by it and raise objections, God doesn’t disagree with their objections. He just says, “Nevertheless, I will be with you.” He loves the partnership with us!

Your calling is unique to you. One of the enemy’s greatest deceptions is getting us to judge others who are not called to what we’re called to. Everyone’s calling looks different, even when they are called to similar ministries.

So if our callings are unique to us, how can there be a corporate component? Because you can’t do it by yourself. None of us can accomplish our calling alone. We need community.

Even God needs community. It’s baked into the essence of his being. He has community within himself — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We were made in his image, so we need community.

This community doesn’t have to be the church. God’s put us in lots of different communities. It could be your church. But it could also be your company, your school, your neighborhood, or a group of people doing what you’re doing. For example, an artist needs to hang around with other artists.

I have a writer’s mastermind group I’m in, peers doing the same online thing that I am. I couldn’t do this without them. Each of us are good at something the others aren’t. For example, I hate doing video, but there’s someone in our group who does it professionally. Someone else turned me on to a graphic designer they knew when I needed one. And I have helped them with their tech challenges.

To summarize:

To experience loving God, alone with him and together with other believers, and to walk out his unique calling on our life, with the help of a supportive community — that’s what we were created for.

Your Turn

How about you? Does this resonate? What obstacles have gotten in the way, or are in the way, between you and God? Do you know the calling on your life? Where are you on that journey of discovery? Have you found a community? Tell us your thoughts and your story in the comments; it will bless others. And please share this post if it would bless others.