Day 2621 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Philippians 2:13 NIV

Yesterday we discussed how having a divided heart when it comes to our faith is simply not possible. We can't afford to see God, our walk with Him, or the kind of life that He's calling us to live as a hobby or pastime. God is a jealous God, and He doesn't deserve to have to share time or space in our lives with anything else that we may have once held dear. He paid a massive price to bring us back to Him from the sinful way of life that we'd lived. We owe Him more than joint custody!

But when we start walking down His path we notice just how drastically alien it really is. We start experiencing all these changes that we would have never imagined making. We begin to realize how many things are being stripped away and left behind as we grow closer to Him. And it’s something that takes a whole lot of adjusting because what was once normal is replaced with a way of life that is anything but what we’ve been used to.

What makes this change so unsettling and difficult is that we have a hard time letting go of all these other dreams and ideas and ways of living because we’d believed for so long that we’d find our purpose within them. And deep down we're all searching for purpose. We're looking for our reason to be alive. We're trying to figure out who we are, where we belong, what we're here to do, where everything falls in our lives, and where our lives fall in everything. But all too often, we end up spreading ourselves so thin that the goal we once set out in pursuit of becomes so distant that we just give up.

We settle. We stop trying. We stop searching. We just assume that life is all that the world tells us that it is. We accept this version of existence that we see everyone else living and we just fall in line behind them and do as they do so that we can feel like we're doing something. That's why this desire to fit in and feel like we belong here is so common. It’s the quickest and easiest path to some semblance of a purpose, so people just accept it because they’re tired of trying to find anything different and they’re not willing to look outside the box. But as we settle for just being like everyone else, and we switch our focus from trying to find our place and our purpose for simply gaining the approval of those around us.

But the truth is that we'll never find purpose along the paths this world has paved. We'll never find who we were made to be if we simply settle for being a copy of everyone around us. Our true purpose is only found in the One who made us. Our story isn't meant to read like everyone else's story. God wrote us a very different book, but it's one that sadly gets abandoned because we get sucked into this comparative way of living.

We compare ourselves and our lives to everyone else around us, and when we see differences, we're taught to assume that the majority wins. So we give up little bits and pieces of who we were meant to be in order to take on more of what the world is busy doing. We stop thinking about our purpose and settle for seeking a shadow of an identity that looks more like what other people are living for. Slowly but surely we drift further and further away from the answer that we initially wanted to find.

"You never know why you're alive until you know what you would die for." MercyMe nailed it in their song "I Would Die for You." Everyone is living like these lives will never end. Everyone is seeking their purpose in a life built on staying put in this world. Everyone is building their lives on the illusion of meaning that society has placed on things that simply don't matter. Material wealth. Rockstar titles. Massive houses. Hundreds of friends who only tell you how awesome you are. Jobs that provide this sense of accomplishment and power and prestige.

But it's all built on life in this world, and it all keeps us focused down here rather than turning our focus outside the confines of this globe and these temporary lives. There is more than what the world is looking for, but nobody wants to try to find it because it's so drastically different that you'll be shocked at the changes it requires you to make to even start searching for God's plan in the midst of a world centered around human dreams.

That's why our faith can't be just a hobby. It can't be a part-time gig. God has a plan and a purpose for each of us. He has a life that He's written specifically for every individual person. But it's different. It's the kind of different that never stops pulling you away from what's normal. It's the kind of different that will make people run away because it's scary and it's hard and it's completely foreign to what we would have ever imagined or chosen for ourselves.

But His path is the only one that will ever lead us to the life of purpose and meaning that we've longed to find. It's only when we stop working to make our lives fit in this world and let God start working in us instead that we will ever find who we were always meant to be. But as we've talked about a little here recently, it requires complete surrender. He can't lead us where He needs us to be if we won't let go of where we are right now.

Friends, a life of faith leads us down a path that is ever diverging from the world we're living in. And that is in many ways uncomfortable, uncertain, unconventional, and far from easy. But if we truly want to find our purpose, our meaning, our identity, then we will only find them in God and in His will for our lives. He will do the good work and help us make the changes and lead us in the direction we need to go to reach where He's calling us to go. But we can't start that journey half-hearted because we'll never make it.

Please don't doubt God or His plans for you. His will is very different from ours, and when His path leads us to some leaps of faith, we find out really quick just how different His plans for us are. Don't look back. Don't look down. Don't second guess it. Don't give this world or its ways any more room or time in your life. We've all given this place plenty of opportunities to lead us to what we've been searching for. And it has failed every single time because we're not meant to make this our home and this place has nothing to offer us.

We belong with our Father and in Him alone will we ever find our purpose for being here in this place. God will give us someplace to call home. He will give us a meaning and a purpose in the work that He’s calling us to do. But if we don’t surrender and let Him do what needs to be done, then we’ll just keep searching endlessly for something that this world can’t provide. Until it all points back to Him, we're just adrift in an endless sea hoping to find land that simply isn't there.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold