If gas fuels a car, productivity fuels me… or at-least I thought it did.
Maybe it is culture, maybe it is my personality, but being productive has always fueled this sense of purpose deep inside me. For many years productivity and people have been my meter to gage if I am fulfilling a purpose.
The funny thing is, half the time the accomplishment of being productive and seeing tangible results from my work fill me with a sense of accomplishment, but the other half of the time (when I don’t get all the things done I want to get done) it fills me with false guilt over never being enough. The same is true with compliments and affirmation of people. Half the time it makes me feel good, but if I know others opinions are negative, I start to worry that maybe I am on the wrong path.
Hence, the problem with gaging purpose based on people and productivity. Both those are great, but when the define my purpose and control it, they become an idol. And the thing about idols…God hates them. He begins to strip us of them because He commands us to love Him the most.
In the last two years God has been stripping me of these idols. It is scary, it is painful, but it is also freeing. I get glimpses of my true purpose; untarnished by the need to be productive and the need to please people.
But old habits die hard. New mindsets need time to carve paths. Triggers can send up walls of doubt that pretend to guard us from harm. This is the stripping of idols. It is uncomfortable to step into the things God is calling me to (less, not more) and wade through these new habits and mindsets. The feelings that come with them are hard and I want to shove them aside to erase them. I want instant change…or at-least be done by now. But as much as I loathe these unsettling feelings I am realizing they can be an agent of good if I allow them to be. If I didn’t have the feelings, I wouldn’t search out the truth.
The truth is God wants my love more than anything else. I can do all the good things in the world, but if I don’t love Him first, I have gained nothing. If I try to do all the things I think I should and crank out 99% productivity, but forget to abide in Him and obey His call on my life, I have wasted it all.
The hard but amazing truth I am learning is my life cannot be measured by results. Eternity is unseen, that is why I must give myself wholly to abiding in God, discerning His voice in my life, and obeying HIS direction. That means productivity and the opinions of people are not my guiding force.
I never planned my life this way. I saw myself staying home with my kids while having a business at home. As God has stripped my idols, I have had to say goodbye to extra work and yes to focusing mainly on my family for the time….maybe forever. The productivity in my says I should do more. God says do less. I am beginning to realize that what God calls me to may not always make sense in my mind and that is ok. I don’t have to figure everything out or see the ending to everything.
I have to have faith.
Infact, I may never understand, please everyone, or crank out cultures basis of productivity and purpose, but I believe obedience to Gods call on my life–whether it makes sense to me or not–is the best way I can spend my life. Instead of doing things that seem useful and makes sense, I am learning to simply surrender myself over to the purpose God has for me. To place my faith in the fact that because He created that purpose it will be useful.
As I look back on the way I used to measure my purpose, I see a surface of peace but the undercurrent was restless and unsettled. Now as I measure my purpose, in a strange way the surface can be restless and doubt, but under the surface is this deep settled peace. As much as I want the tangly, yucky feelings on the surface to forever go away, I think they may be the tension needed to always pull me back to God; to keep me in check.
Jesus says He will give us a peace that the world can’t. While there are many applications of what He was saying here, I can’t help but think, this new way to live my purpose is a form of that peace. A strange peace, but a deep peace.
We all want to have purpose, it is hardwired into us by our Creator. In what ways have you found confidence and peace in the purposes God calls you to?
