Finding Purpose In Our Everyday Tasks

In my previous post, I talked about something I learned from a book our small group just went through together – Pathway to Purpose for Women, by Katie Brazelton. In this post, I wanted to share another great thought from the same book. The book’s overall goal is to help women discover their ultimate purposes that God has ordained for their lives. What she’s talking about is that life-altering, impossible-to-accomplish-without-His-help purpose and mission.

So many of us (myself included) desperately seek to know what that grand agenda is. We want to be part of something significant, something that makes a difference in people’s lives and in the world. Something that marries together our experiences, our life roles, longings, and passions. But often it takes years of purposeful searching to figure out what ours is.

Brazelton offers steps for us to work through, to help us process & figure it out. Many of the steps struck me hard, and I need to go back and spend more time on them. One of the most significant for me was: Do what matters today.

Before God reveals to us our grand life purpose, he has some testing and refining to do in us. We will not be trusted with the bigger things until we can prove we can handle the smaller things – our everyday tasks. We must joyfully, and purposefully, take pride in our everyday tasks that He entrusts to us, even when we feel that they are completely unglamorous and insignificant.

Brazelton says: “Every day he considers our willingness and faithfulness in the ordinary things to see if we can handle the challenging, unique assignments that he loves to entrust to those who are faithful. It is not God’s plan for you to spend today chasing after your future one thing when your many things are right in front of you. You were born to make a Christlike difference in hundreds of ordinary ways…”

Every experience, every encounter, every responsibility may very well be adding up to something He wants us to use later on. We are taught lessons of patience, kindness to strangers, and faithfulness in the dry spells. He uses our challenges and hard seasons to help us be more empathetic to others going through similar scenarios later on. We are stretched sometimes beyond what we think we can handle and later on are able to have confidence in the abilities God has gifted to us.

God wants to use what we are given today to prepare us for what He will entrust us with tomorrow. It is up to us to focus on the responsibilities He has placed before us – our roles in our families, in our jobs, development in our own spiritual walks, in relationships with neighbors and friends and co-workers, in the PTA, as coaches of our children’s sports teams, and as we serve in the random opportunities He opens up daily.

So I am working on embracing my everyday tasks with joy, knowing that every piece is significant and is a part of the process. I don’t want to miss out on my time of preparation for the things God will use me for later. I am working on it…

Do you have a hard time focusing on what He has given you to do today?

“Whatever our season of life, it offers its own opportunities and challenges for spiritual growth. Instead of wishing we were in another season, we ought to find out what this one offers.” John Ortberg