Purpose Is an Overlap, Not a Mystery

There is a philosophy on the island of Okinawa that says you should find meaning in the small things. The cup of coffee. The walk to work. The way the light comes in.

I admire it. I also think it is upside down.

When your life has purpose, the small things get sweeter on their own. You do not have to manufacture meaning in the coffee. The coffee is good because the day it belongs to is good.

So I want to talk about purpose. Not as a mystical thing you wait on God to reveal, but as something you can actually see, on paper, this week.

Start with what you love

Psalm 37 says, "Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart."

The very American way to read that is that God gives you everything you want. That is not what it says.

It says that when you delight in Him, God takes His desires and puts them in your heart until they become yours. He gives you a love for the things He wants you to accomplish.

That matters, because when you love what you do, you do it differently. If I hated pastoring, I would be even worse at it than I already am. But God put a love for it in me, and that love changes how I carry it.

Here is the part we resist. There is no secular section of your life. Not scripturally. He is your identity, your belonging, your energy, your joy, your vision. You are a unique expression of Him, and together we are the body of Christ. Some of us are thumbs. Some of us are pinky toes. Every part belongs, and He gives every part a love for its own function.

So the first circle is this. What do you love?

Then, what you are good at

Peter writes, "As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God... that in all things God may be glorified."

You have been gifted. Every person reading this has something God put in their hands.

And the enemy works overtime on exactly this point. He wants you to believe you are inadequate, that you are a failure, that what you do does not make a difference. You work your tail off all week and get to Friday and think, the only thing that mattered is that the check cleared.

That is the lie. Here is the truer belief. Who you are is significant. Therefore what you do is significant. Your giftedness came from God, and none of it is wasted.

The second circle. What are you good at?

And what the world needs

James says pure and undefiled religion is to visit orphans and widows in their trouble. In other words, find the need and meet it.

Over and over in Scripture, people bring a need to the leaders and the answer is the same. Go do it. The disciples said the crowd was hungry. Jesus said, you feed them.

There are needs around you that nobody else sees. You may be specifically gifted to see one of them. That is not an accident.

The third circle. What does the world need?

Now draw it

I drew this on a flip chart on a Sunday morning. A Venn diagram is the hardest thing in the world to draw by hand, so I am grateful for a clean version.

Where the circles overlap two at a time, you find something good. And in every one of those two-way overlaps, there is also a trap. I want to walk you through them, because the grind lives in these overlaps.

Passion, and the trap of vanity

Where what you love meets what you are good at, you find passion. That is a wonderful place. It is also the easiest place to get conceited.

Vanity is not looking in the mirror. Vanity is a condition of the heart where I think I am above. Where I quietly believe I am needed in the room for it to work.

If you want to lead, write this down. Never be the smartest person in the room. I surround myself with people who have insight far above mine on purpose. It is not modesty. It is the only thing that keeps passion from curdling into something the enemy can use.

Contribution, and the trap of weariness

Where what you are good at meets what the world needs, you find contribution. You are good at it, there is a need for it, and you do it.

But if there is no love in it anywhere, it is empty contribution. It only gives. Nothing makes a deposit. And people who live here burn out.

If you get home every day so exhausted that you cannot laugh with your children, you are probably living heavily in this overlap. You are weary not because you put your hand to the plow, but because the thought of the plow drains you before you touch it.

That is a dangerous place to live for long.

Mission, and the trap of mediocrity

Where what you love meets what the world needs, you find mission. It sounds like the most spiritual word on the chart. It is the one I struggle with the most.

Here is why. When you love it and there is a need for it, a difference gets made even if you are not very good at it. And because a difference is being made, it is easy to say, that is good enough.

I love pastoring. There is a need for it. People are getting saved, people are being baptized, the church is growing. It would be easy to stop there.

Then I draw a five-mile circle around our building. Inside that circle there are more than 64,000 people who do not know Jesus. We feed over 200 families a month, and there are more than 200 hungry people in our area. We have good church on Sunday and go home happy.

Mediocrity is not an option. I preach hardest here because this is where I live. And whatever my struggle is will probably be the limiting factor of my church, too. So when I say we are built for more, it is not a slogan. It is a rallying cry against my own ceiling.

Where the grind disappears

Every two-way overlap has a grind in it. Passion drifts into pride. Contribution drains you. Mission settles for good enough.

But right in the middle, where what you love and what you are good at and what the world needs all three overlap, that is purpose. And the grind is gone.

You do not grow weary, because it is powered by what you love. You do not settle, because you are good at it and getting better. You do not get proud, because the need keeps you on your knees.

Purpose is not a mystical thing we ask God for. It is seeing the areas of your life and aligning them so the center of your life is where they overlap.

That is the John 10:10 kind of life. Life, and life more abundant. You wake up ready to go. You do not want to go to sleep because there is still a need, you are still learning, and you still love it.

The most spiritual thing I will ever teach you

Get a piece of paper. Write down what you love. Write down what you are good at. Write down the needs you keep seeing. Then look for where they touch, and jump in the middle of it.

Some of you have been waiting for God to show you what you are good at and what He wants you to do. He already has. You just have not lived in the overlap.

Maybe you love older people and you are good on the phone. There are a lot of lonely, isolated people who cannot get out the way they used to. I am not sure your purpose is complicated.

And if you wrote down that you do not love anything, then something has taken root. Bitterness, unforgiveness, something. Bring it to the altar before you do anything else, because every one of us loves something. A root is blocking it.

Grace is the launch pad

Ephesians 2 says we are saved by grace through faith, not of works, so that no one can boast. You can never be good enough to get to heaven. Some of you need to be set free from trying.

But then verse ten. "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

Grace is the launch pad of purpose, not the excuse for doing nothing. God still loves us when we sit still. But He does not understand why we are not compelled, because what He prepared for us to walk in is the most fulfilling, energizing, joyful thing we will ever do.

• What do you love? Write it down before you answer anything else.
• What are you good at, even if the enemy has told you it does not count?
• What need do you keep noticing that nobody else seems to see?
• Which trap is yours right now: vanity, weariness, or mediocrity?
• Where do the three circles touch, and what would it take to move your life to the middle?