All around us, many people obsess about the question of life purpose.
Maybe some of you are struggling with the very question, or maybe you don’t. But either way, allow me to clear the mystery to you : the bible already give us the answer.
Efesus 2:10
God’s purpose for each and every one of us that believes in Him is so that we become a vessel of good works towards other people.
With that out of the way, you might ask, if it were that simple why do a lot of people still struggle and not actually feel like they are fulfilling their life purpose?
That is the part i want to talk to you about today.
You see, the bible is filled with examples of people who fulfilled what God had set them out to do on earth. People like Moses, King David, Isaiah, the apostles, and of course our Lord Jesus.
But the bible also doesn’t shy away from examples of people who, despite them having great potentials, end their life having failed to achieve their purpose.
People like the Israelites who died on the desert because of their stubbornness.
Someone like Samson who should’ve been a great judge of Israel but had to sacrifice himself as a captive.
Or someone like King Salomon, who literally had everything all set for him to be a great king, but then he falls into idolatry and died leaving a legacy of oppression and civil war among the Israelites.
Knowing your life purpose doesn’t mean you will automatically achieve it.
It takes a certain ingredient and without it, we will likely end up at the end of our lives without achieving our purpose, or in other words, with wasted potential. Just like the Israelites, samson, or king salomon.
So what is this secret ingredient?
To answer that, i would like to tell you a story about how a pottery is made. And just to make it more immersive, let’s imagine that we are the lump of clay.
So there we are. Just a lump of clay lying on the ground being trampled by people walking by. But one day, a potter picked us up and said (yes, in this story a clay can communicate with the potter) that he is going to turn us into a pot, into something that people can use. Just like that, our destiny shifted, from being trampled and walked over, now we have a purpose.
“How exciting!” We said to the potter. Am i going to store water? Or rice? Or something else?
“Not so fast” the potter told us. In our current condition, we can be of no use to anybody. We are still raw, wild, untamed. The potter needs to put us into some kind of process before people can use us.
“Okay” we said. We let the potter take us into his workshop to begin this ‘process’
The potter begin to pour sand onto us and then begin to pound us repeatedly, trying to make us one with the sand.
“How uncomfortable!”, we told the potter , “why do you need to use the sand?”
The potter simply replied that the sand is needed to prevent us from cracking in later stages.
“Okay” we said. We let the potter blend the sand and water into us.
Speaking of water, the potter uses an awful lot of water throughout the process, he constantly drenched us with water.
“How strange,” we asked the potter, “why do you use so much water on me?”
The potter explained that the water is needed to make us soft and malleable.
“Okay” we said. We don’t really understand what malleable means, but we let the potter continue his work
After the potter saw that we are thoroughly blended with the sand and soft enough from the water, he puts us onto a platform. Then the platform begins to rotate and us with it. As we rotate, the potter begins to apply force to mold us.
“How uncomfortable!”, we told the potter, “why can’t you let me be in my current shape and form?”,
The potter simply replied that we can’t be of any use in our current shape so he needs to mold and bend us into certain shape.
“Okay” we said. As the potter continue working, we start to change form. It was uncomfortable, but the water sure helps.
As we continue to rotate, the potter takes out his tool and begin to chip away at us. At this point it’s no longer uncomfortable, the process has become painful.
“How painful!” we told the potter, “please stop! Why would you let me experience such pain?”.
The potter simply replied that he has a plan of how we would turn out, and those pieces of us simply do not fit with his plan, so they must be chipped away.
“Okay” we said. We now actually look like a finished pot, It is a far cry than the lump of clay we once were. We begin to wonder whether the potter is done with us.
Turns out the potter is not finished with us. He puts us into an oven and light a fire that consumes us.
“How painful!” we cried to the potter “Why do you let this fire burn me like this? Didn’t you say you want to use me?”
The potter simply replied that the fire is needed to strengthen and make permanent all of the previous work he has done.
“Okay” we said. We didn’t really have any other choice and just bear with the heat.
In the end the fire did strengthen us and we emerged from the oven as a finished pot, smooth without any cracks thanks to the sand.
“how wonderful” the potter said to us
The potter explained to us that he has finished his work on us. But now it is our turn to do our work, to be something useful to other people.
“Okay” we said, equally excited for the future in front of us.
And that’s how a pottery is made (minus the fictionalized dialogue of course). A pottery needs to undergo different steps to turn from unusable lump of clay to something that has value for other people. The same analogy also applies to our purpose in life. God has great plans for each and every one of us, but God cannot use us in our current state, so he has to put us into a process.
We will have the sands of flaws and imperfection blended into us.
We will have to be drenched with the water of the Word of God to soften us.
We will have to be molded, twisted and transformed into the person God can use.
We will have parts of ourselves that don’t conform with God’s plan chipped away.
And finally we will have to undergo a refining fire that strengthen and make our character permanent.
If we understand our purpose in that light, we will be more aware of the way God molds us through the events in our daily life. At times, we will be uncomfortable and confusedly ask God “why ?”
At that point, unlike the clay, we have a choice. Will we refuse God’s process on our life? If we do, then we end up just like Samson, Salomon, and the Israelites.
Or do we have that secret ingredient i’m talking about earlier?
The one ingredient that enables the lump of clay to turn into a beautiful and useful pot.
The ingredient is one little word :
“okay”.
If we have that ingredient, then, and only then will we emerge as a finished pottery, ready to be used by God to bring value to people.
Amen.