It has been such a pleasure reading these articles these last few weeks. One Hot Mess (OHM) has been done such an awesome job of being transparent about how her worship of perfection Click to read, people Click to read, and proving herself Click to read, has kept her from truly being able to love herself.  Her story brings such truth and honesty about what we need to do in order to truly love who we are.    Today we are going to talk about the true meaning of purpose.  Let’s see what OHM has for the ending.

We’ve been discussing some unusual idols over the past few weeks, identifying them in ourselves and tearing them down so that we can find our worth in Jesus. When we find our worth in Him — not in becoming perfect, pleasing people, or proving ourselves — we learn to love ourselves better. To wrap up the Love Yourself Challenge, let’s talk about idolizing our purpose.

Lies I Believed

When I became a stay-at-home-mom I felt like I had no purpose. That sounds ridiculous now, but because I had a job in leadership before I became a mom, I felt like I was downgrading. For the first couple of years of motherhood, I became obsessed with becoming useful. I didn’t know what it was like to not have anything to work on. So I became obsessed with creating my dreams and becoming the woman of my dreams. I wanted to find my purpose now that I was a mom. It continues to sound ridiculous, but I felt so lost. I used to obsess about the future to the point that I didn’t live day by day. I wasn’t satisfied with what God gave me to do each day. I never liked or appreciated “now.”

Purpose was my idol and as I pursued my purpose, life became complicated. Because I was so distracted, I couldn’t manage the “insignificant” life I had. That made me feel even more insignificant. Thank God, I finally learned to manage the little I had, and over time, He began to help me develop the dreams that are in my heart.

When Your Dreams Become an Idol
Have you ever gone after a dream that turned into a nightmare because your real life began to fall apart? There’s nothing wrong with being a dreamer or a visionary or an “ideas person,” but sometimes we can get so focused on the future that we miss today.

Maybe we become consumed with becoming a future version of ourselves or meeting certain goals (i.e. married before 35). Maybe we just dislike the season that we’re in so much that we do everything we can to make it go by faster — we sleep, binge on Netflix and Facebook, daydream, work, brainstorm, plan, complain… all while missing the opportunities and wonder we have right in front of us. Sometimes we even make foolish or destructive decisions that affect the people around us.

It is okay to want God’s direction for the future, but to think that we have no purpose today is not just insecurity, it’s pride. We either completely ignore the fact that God made us and gave us everything we have, or we have the audacity to belittle what He gave us and how he made us.

Valuing Today

To tear down the idol of purpose, take care of the present; I think Jesus gives us a great example of this in the Bible.

Most of us know the parable of the talents from Matthew 25:14-30. In it, a man who was going away on a journey entrusted his wealth to his three servants. He divided the wealth among his servants according to their abilities. One servant got 5 talents (a kind of money), another got 2 talents, and the other got 1.

When the man returned to collect his wealth, he saw that two of his servants invested their talents and gave him back double what he had entrusted to them. Because they did so well, the man said he would put them in charge of more things. However, one servant — the one who only received one talent — buried his talent in the ground instead of doing something with it. The man was angry with this servant for doing nothing with what he entrusted to him and he threw him outside in the darkness where there was “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Burying Your Talents
Jesus uses this parable to talk about the “Kingdom of Heaven” which is what we are a part of if we believe in Him. Have you ever considered what it means to bury your talents?

Burying your talents means thinking your talents are not significant enough to “make a difference” to God. It means comparing our talents to other people’s. It means blaming God instead of blessing him for what He gives us

²⁴ “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. ²⁵ So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’  Matthew 25:24-25

It also looks like doing nothing with what you have today. Maybe you don’t see the purpose in what you’ve been entrusted with today so you make nothing of it.

What About The Future?

James 4:13-17 says, “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. If anyone, then, knows the good they out to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”

This could all be read as, “Don’t procrastinate,” but it also means, “Do what you ought to do today.” Don’t be stuck in dreamland just because you don’t think today is worth anything. Tomorrow isn’t promised to us.

As for the “arrogant” part, it sounds harsh, but to think that today is insignificant in comparison to all you could accomplish tomorrow, is as if “today” is “beneath you.” I certainly thought that way for a while. But we don’t get the right to say that the season we’re in isn’t worth anything. Our “talents” don’t belong to us. The Bible says,

“For from him and through him and for him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

God is expecting a return on His investment because He sees you as valuable. He values you so much, He used His only Son’s blood to redeem you. And He went even further to entrust His possessions to us.

Significant to God

So manage your “talents.” Your “talents” may include your current job, your singleness, your marriage, children, time, home, church, health, friendships, personality, finances, etc. Anything that God gave you as a responsibility is a “talent.” Your talents may not match your big dreams, but God gives you more when you are faithful with little. Do not let the present pass you by — you’ll soon realize how valuable it is and you’ll regret not having invested in it when you had the chance.

If you ever question, doubt, or forget your purpose, just remember your purpose is in Jesus. You belong to Him. Everything else is extra, and that all belongs to Him too. That is who you are; that is what matters more than anything. When all is said and done, when eternity comes we want to hear God say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” That happens by taking care of the present, one-day-at-a-time, and trusting God to give us vision for the future.

What if instead of pursuing our purpose, we pursue Jesus in the present? What if we learned to accept the season we are in and who we are today and allow God to use us as such? Not only would we learn to love ourselves more each day, we would become who God wants us to be, and we would see His dreams — the ones that are bigger and better than any we could dream — come true through us.

Love Yourself Challenge:

This month has been so eye-opening.  The Love Yourself Challenge is a time for us to reflect on what we need to do to have a healthy view of ourselves. How can we do that when we have a warped view of perfection? When we aim for the world’s definition of perfection that we never hit the mark which causes us to turn our eyes on ourselves in a negative way.  We beat ourselves up and are not able to appreciate what God is doing.  As OHM said this month, it is very hard to love ourselves when we are constantly trying to please people.  People’s expectation of us becomes more important than God’s and we put man where God is supposed to be in our lives.  This snowballs to us wanting to prove ourselves so bad that we do not observe the accomplishments we have made because we think success is something else.  We think we failed because we cannot keep up with others. We allow other people’s achievements to be our standard for life.  OHM’s honesty about motherhood was so powerful because the world we live in doesn’t look at motherhood as purpose, they categorize it as a detour or a delay.  But when you leave your identity in the hands of others, you give them the right to define what is the success and true purpose. So before we can drop the weight, get the new hairstyle, take this series and really meditate on the points made these few weeks.

Day 21 — Journaling question: What “talents” has God called you to manage in this season?

Day 22 — Meditate on this Scripture:

“For from him and through him and for him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

Day 23 — Pray and ask God to show you how the dreams you have for tomorrow are connected to the talents he’s given you today.

Day 24 — What is something that you’re struggling to see the “significance” or “purpose” of in the season? Talk to God about how to turn it into worship towards him.

Day 25 — Spend some time reading your Bible and learn something new about who God is today. Pursue Jesus, not to “figure out your purpose,” but just to know Him more.

Day 26 — Celebrate the small things you did well today.

Day 27 — Journaling question: Look back on last year. How have you grown? Thank God.

Day 28 — Where do find your worth? Write in a journal and/or talk to God about this.

Day 29 — Meditate on this Scripture:

“This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24)

Day 30 — Count your blessings. Thank God for them and listen to this song by Anthany Evans, “All That Matters.”

Thank you for joining us these last four weeks.  We would love yo hear from you.  Comment below or email us on the side thruthewinters@gmail.com. Also, please follow us on Facebook or Instagram @throughthewinters.com.