At fifty years old, Hillary felt trapped in the golden cage of professionalism. Her family had paid for her to get her law degree and become a lawyer. To the praise of her relatives, she had become a successful appellate lawyer in their city, acquiring accolades and good standing for her family. Yet the stress and demand of the work drained her soul and forced her to reconsider whether her personal calling to be a social worker and “make a difference” had been forfeited in the name of family success.
Harvey discovered he had a knack for rebuilding “R-title” cars, and he loved reselling them to people who couldn’t afford a new vehicle. That was fulfilling to him. His friend Niko, by contrast, found work to pay the bills. It was a job. But Niko’s real passion was his involvement with the after-school student center down the street, where he loved spending time with the kids and giving them attention and care they didn’t receive at home.
Each of these stories captures, in a different way, the underground desire in all of us for fulfillment and purpose in life. What is your purpose? What is “purpose?” That’s a big question, especially with the impending loss of jobs to robotic A.I. in the coming decades. Finding something meaningful to do in life is essential for a sense of fulfillment, and spirituality plays an important role.
1. Universal Purpose
Since every human is created by God, we all possess a common universal purpose. Said another way, everyone’s purpose will include a couple of common ingredients (Genesis 1–2): worship, rulership, and relationship.
Worship: Life is a gift and a mystery we walk into. Our Creator did all the work to set the table, and we learn to sabbath with Him, discover who He is, then explore, enjoy, and marvel at the world He has made for us. Worshipping God is living in the simplicity of loving and trusting Him.
Rulership: Secondly, our life energy—whether that’s your vocation, artistry, hobbies, or family endeavors—is used to stamp God’s creativity, nobility, beauty, and goodness into everything we touch. We stand in our station of life, as the Creator’s delegate, and prosper everything around us, as He would. That’s our rulership.
Relationship: Finally, our purpose is tied, in fundamental ways, to community and relationships. Our purpose will involve meaningful relationships with other people. And any service or product we offer will be focused on other people. Talents, time, consideration, and character are all gifts we give to others to love and serve them with. That’s relationship.
2. Your Specific Design
Just like the plant life variation in the Amazon Jungle is impossibly broad and complex, so are the unique ways that our Creator has designed each of us to adapt to our environment. In that sense, your purpose requires a bit of self-discovery. How has the Creator and environment fashioned you uniquely? Here are a few questions that may help.
What are my core competencies? What am I good at? E.g., working with customers, learning languages, medicine, organizing things, mechanics, caring for people, driving trucks, problem solving, business startups, management, working with my hands, etc.
What are my core passions? What do I love to do so much that I’m willing to work hard at it? E.g., working with five-year-olds, caring for the sick, scientific experimentation, writing stories, advertising, helping people, etc.
What are my experiences? What practical environments have I been exposed to in the past that have forced me to learn specific skills? Those skills may be people skills or domain-specific skills that are employable or useful. For example: training horses, working with power tools, computer programming, or conflict resolution, etc.
3. Your Central Calling
Just because you’re good at something, passionate about it, and have experience, doesn’t mean that’s a core purpose of your life. Playing drums is a love of mine. And since I started playing at 11 years old, I’m not half-bad at it. I’ve got passion, experience, and skills. But drums are a hobby and not my “calling.” My calling is something more central to the core purpose God intended for my life. If my universal purpose is worship, rulership, and relationship, then my specific calling, the way Brian Flewelling was designed to worship, rule, and relate, is by helping disciple people in their faith in Jesus Christ. That’s how I fulfill my calling most deeply in my life. Yours will be different. And the specific ways our calling gets applied in various seasons of life may change and evolve. But the big idea is fairly stable for me. What about you; do you have a sense of a specific calling God has designed you for?
4. Discovering Your Calling is Different for Everyone
Not everyone has the luxury of such clarity. God doesn’t speak to us in the same ways or at the same times in life. Some people may go into a career thinking it will be fulfilling, only to stumble through multiple failures before landing on something that suits them best. Or some people may never find a calling tied to their paycheck. They may find a job that is moderately fulfilling and pays the bills, but discover their calling and fulfillment in their secondary activities: volunteering with the Boy Scouts, church life, training athletes, a vibrant arts community, or taking mission trips. While some people find their niche immediately, most of us migrate through various stages and seasons of activities and passions.
5. Evolving Over Time
Early seasons of life tend to be more exploratory and developmental. A variety of experiences, good and bad, gives people a broader sense of what they may find fulfilling or not, and of jobs they are not especially suited for. Hopefully, the middle years may involve a general settling down or refinement in a particular field of interest. Not always. Sometimes, the middle years may include a rebirth or a course correction. This may also be true in later years. However, the hope is that by the later years of a person’s life, they can focus on a specific field of interest that is most fulfilling and well-suited.
6. Career or Calling?
As mentioned, your job or career is not always tied to your calling. My father was a successful high-voltage electrician for over forty years. He served twenty of those years in the trade, and another twenty in management. And though he had a passion, competence, and determination to help people in this specific way, his calling only developed out of his career. His calling from God grew as he applied those specific skills to overseas mission work. Serving energy-impoverished communities around the world with electricity became a life purpose in the middle to later years of his life. Both his Creator and his environment shaped him to serve in this unique way.
If your calling isn’t necessarily rooted in your career, then how should you think wisely about your career? The three minimal ingredients for a fulfilling career are these: meaning, skills, and compensation. Meaning: You need to find enough value in it that it maintains your full concentration and excellence. Skill: You need to be proficiently qualified to perform the service you are offering. Compensation: Someone needs to be willing to pay you for your time and labor.
7. Nurturing Purpose
Here is a list of ways friends, parents, and counselors can nurture others' purpose.
a. Exploration: Ask questions that help the person self-discover what motivates them.
b. Internal motivation: Find interests that they are intrinsically motivated to learn and engage in.
c. Mentors: Introduce them to potential mentors and masters in their field who can help them grow.
d. Community: Help them find an environment of people where that passion or craft is practiced and refined.
e. Patience: Help them think practically and patiently about processes, responsibilities, and realities.
f. Personal Development: Nurture a growth mindset that leads to a sense of control, ownership, and improvement through hard work.
g. Free to Fail: Encourage a spirit of exploration where failure helps us discover new things.
h. Autonomy: Help people craft 10–15% of their job into something they find most fulfilling.
8. Questions to Ask Yourself and Others
Finally, here are some questions you can ask of yourself or others to help coach them in the discovery of their purpose and calling.
From Path to Purpose, by William Damon
a. What’s most important to you in your life?
b. Why do you care about those things?
c. Do you have any long-term goals?
d. Why are these goals important to you?
e. What does it mean to have a good life?
f. What does it mean to be a good person?
g. If you were looking back on your life, how would you want to be remembered?
From Grit, by Angela Duckworth
a. How does your job connect to other people or connect to the bigger picture?
b. How can your vocation be an expression of your deepest values?
c. Do I believe in my work enough to say, my work makes the world a better place.
From pastor Brian
a. What’s most important to God in your life?
b. What helps you connect most worshipfully to God? (worship)
c. What do you find yourself doing that brings the most joy and benefit to the people around you? (rulership, relationship)
d. How has God uniquely designed you to build His Kingdom on the earth?
Closing
Finding meaning in life is essential for our sense of fulfillment. God designed you to know Him and love Him. He also designed you to rule over the earth—to feel like you’ve made the world a better place. And finally, your purpose is inseparable from the community around you. Discovering how you specifically do those three things evolves through the different seasons of life. Don’t be anxious about it; the Lord will be with you, guiding you as you take your journey!
Recommended Resources:
- The Path to Purpose by William Damon
- Drive by Daniel Pink
- Grit by Angela Duckworth
- Love and Work by Marcus Buckingham
Tags: values, worship, work, development, calling, purpose, fulfillment, job, career, relationship, meaning, goals, design, seasons, skills, rulership
