God's purpose for you is the reason you're alive.
Such a simple statement, yet one that literally turned my day around. After spending the first few hours of my day gardening with my brother for our grandma and lounging around for a bit, my family and I went to the mall for a couple of hours. The last store we visited was one called Fireworks, a quirky little shop with all sorts of gadgets and goodies and other random things. Having barely stepped into the store I noticed a book titled, What You Need to Know Going into College. So, being a college student myself, I had to pick it up to see what it had to say (even though I'm already halfway through college--there's always room to learn, right?!). It offered a lot of advice from how to deal with your parents to how to live on your own to how to be financially responsible. To my surprise it included a small section entitled, "You Need to Know Not to Leave Your Faith at Home" and these were some of the tips I came across in the pages that followed:
944. You need to know to let go of your preconceptions about how things will work out. God has a plan too.
955. You need to know to volunteer a couple of hours a week. At a homeless shelter or a soup kitchen. It will take your mind off you.
957. You need to know to be open to a real encounter with God.
958. You need to know it takes spiritual strength to face adversity. Going to church on a regular basis helps.
966. You need to know to pursue more than a degree. Pursue a purpose.
It was the last one I stumbled upon that really made an impact on me. In a list of one thousand things you need to know before you go into college, it was number nine-hundred and sixty-seven:
You need to know God's purpose for you is the reason you're alive.
Tell me this doesn't give you an incredible amount of hope and purpose. Really think about it.
This summer hasn't been an easy one for me--in fact, it's been one of the craziest summers I've ever had. I got back from South Africa on May 14th then spent a month at home before my mom got married on June 15th. After that I spent roughly six weeks at my university running an English-intensive, American-experience program for 26 international students from Taiwan and Brazil. Once that was over I spent a week and a half traveling around Southern California visiting friends and family I don't get to see very often and now I find myself on a two-week vacation (if I can even call it that; hasn't this entire year been vacation?) in the Pacific Northwest visiting even more family before the craziness of my junior year begins.
Up until recently, whenever I was asked about how I felt about going into my junior year of college, all I could muster up for an answer was, "Ehhh... I guess I'm excited." Feeling like I had no purpose and was even going through a sort of mid-college crisis (if such a thing exists), I couldn't say I was excited for the year to come. And then God began to work on my heart. And then I stumbled upon an encouraging piece of wisdom that I apparently "needed to know" as a university student: that God's purpose for me is the reason I'm alive. That God's purpose for you is the reason you're alive. That God's purpose for us is the reason we're alive.
You see, it doesn't matter whether or not we feel like we have purpose or not--the truth of the matter is, we do. We do have purpose. Emotions are fleeting and always changing and cannot tell us otherwise. No thing or human being can tell us otherwise. We have purpose. It is God-given and bestowed upon us the moment we enter this world.
I challenge you to dwell on that for a while. See what it is God may be speaking to you about.
He's always speaking.
We're just not always quiet enough to hear what it is He's saying.
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