Reclaiming Your Purpose

There is a marked difference between being "Driven" and being "Called."  The driven man or woman is motivated by accolade, applause, or acclaim.  They are go getters and pattern their lives to achieve.  Driven people are often cut throat and care less of those around them than the objective for which they are focused.  A driven man will knowingly and unknowingly withold his affection from his wife and children as he pursues promotion.  A driven woman will pursue success and standing to the point of exhaustion.  Often, driven ones burnout in a blaze of addiction, trying to cope with the omnipresent waves of anxiety and the pressures to get it all done.

We would all be driven people to some extent if it not had been for the grace of God.  For it is by grace that we are saved and called unto His good purpose.  Without God, men and women would fall into two categories, those who flaunt their achievement and those who flounder in failure.  Praise God, however, for a third category exists, those which the wise consider foolish and those which the strong consider weak; they are the Called.

"For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may nullify the things that are, so that no man may boast before God."  -1 Corinthians 1:26‭-‬29 

Let me tell you, by nature, I am driven.  It is the predisposition that I fall back toward whenever I am lacking in faith.  My drivenness motivated me through Bible College.  It's what incited my despair whenever I got a "B" on an assignment.  It's what inflated my ego when I was informed that I would be graduating second in my class and first amongst my fellow majors.  

It's my drivenness that tells me daily that I'm a failure, because 4 years ago you graduated and you've still yet to get a job.  It's my drivenness that sows feelings of emasculation when I stay home to raise my kids rather than goto work.  And its drivenness that has led to prayerlessness and unbelief in the calling of God over my life.

You see, there was a time when I lived as a Called man.  I followed wherever I sensed the Lord was leading me with a quiet resolve.  There was a peace about me akin to the sailing of a ship in calm waters, subject to the winds of the day.

In 2011 I felt a clear calling from God to be a pastor and a church planter in Europe.  So much so, that I would actually go to Italy that year.  It was an astonishing affirmation.  That the boy who at one point in his life, couldn't even go outside to play with his friends as a result of crippling anxiety, could somehow end up on the other side of the planet to stand in public squares preaching the grace and mercy of God.  I had truly felt that if God was for me, what could be against me?

But I was unaware of the pitfalls of my pride and soon enough I traded the peace of my being called for the panic of being driven. 

I presume that moment was near about when I got married in 2013.  It wasn't when I met Cindy.  No, I felt the clear calling to marry her and I had peace that she would be the woman to faithfully raise my children (it's turned out to be true).   Rather, when preparing for the wedding,  with all the stressors of preparing for a wedding,  I began to assert more and more control.  I began to allow those stressors to dictate my attitude and by time the wedding had come around,  I was an anxiety riddled heap of hospital visits; kidney stones and all...

But the pressures didn't subside.  When I moved in with Cindy, into her dorm housing at the University of Florida, she was blossoming in the prospect of a bright future.  Earning her Master's in Occupational Therapy, I began to feel less and less important.  I had yet to finish my degree...  I hadn't any special training or skills to merit me any favor in the workforce.  How was I to prove myself to my new inlaws?  Thus began a cycle of trial and failure that would color my disposition for the next several years.

In 2014, however, I sought to reclaim my calling.  Exactly 3 years to the day, I departed back for Italy.  This time, I was driven with the plan to unify local churches in and around the region of Bari, Italy.  I wanted to meet with the local leadership to develop a plan of stateside support in raising and sending local leaders into vocational ministry.  It didn't pan out...  I spent three weeks in Italy with some of the dearest friends I've ever made, but somehow found myself dejected because my plans hadn't come to fruition the way I wanted them to...  It was a failure and I found it hard to maintain my calling.  All the doubts had crept in. 

Even unto this day, perhaps until this morning, I categorized myself a failure. Though I would return to school and finish my degree in 2017, it has appeared all too much to have been a waste of several years and merely a means of accumulating forty thousand dollars of soul crushing debt...

That is, of course, when surveyed through the lense of being driven. For in all of my drivenness, when the desired results of my efforts never came, I began to doubt my calling.  When I doubted my calling, I doubted my theology.  When I doubted my theology I doubted my worldview.  In all, despite the abundance of blessings in my life, I doubted God.  All of it led to apathy.  It led to the resurgence of the old man. It led back to pornography.  It led back to drinking myself to sleep.  It led back to useless pursuits and wastes of time.  But it has also led me to realize the worthlessness of drivenness.

Today, I once again accept my calling.  Though I be awash in the cries of infants and the broken bones of toddlers, I will choose peace.  Not the pseudo-peace after several shots of rum, but the peace afforded me by the realization that God has called me to be the father of these children.  I once again accept, that despite the ever abounding seduction around me, I take delight in being the husband God has called me to be to the wife He has chosen for me.  And though, I may not know the timing, I once again choose to believe that God's purpose for me is to be that pastor and church planter in Europe, though my ministry begins here and now, I believe that one day He shall open the doors of that calling and I will walk through them.

Drivenness leads to despair, calledness leads to peace.  I strive to be driven, I rest in being called.  Pride motivates my drivenness, humility results from calledness.  Drivenness destroys you, calledness restores you.

Has life overwhelmed you?  Has disappointment and failure erased your identity in Christ?  Have you relied on substances to cope with the pressures of your drivenness? 

Lay it all down.  For it is the foolish that shame the wise.  It is the weak that shame the strong.  Let us boast all the more in our infirmities and inadequacies for we know that it is by the grace of God we are called to purpose and destiny.  If we are to boast, let us boast in His grace and in Him we shall find life and life more abundantly.