OPINION:
For much of history, worship has been a central part of society. It’s evidenced in the ruins of ancient temples and in the ornate cathedrals preserved around the world. We see it in ancient writings like the Iliad and the Odyssey. An awareness of the supernatural was often culturally normative and ubiquitous, a cohesive part of society.
Our modern culture feels so far removed from that! Spirituality is no longer seen as essential to society, but rather an optional hobby you can participate in during your free time.
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By and large, we are godless society — we have rejected the supernatural and the sacred. We live in a society without a higher power, without a Creator, with nothing external to speak into our existence. Our culture is a secular one, concerned primarily with what we can see, measure, and understand.
But this erasure of the sacred leaves us with no gods or heroes except ourselves.
In the absence of a transcendent relationship to give us meaning, we become the central protagonist in the story, the hero on a mission. What is this mission? We must discover it for ourselves. And once we figure out our purpose in life, then we must get about the work of accomplishing it.
In short, a secular worldview makes us and our activity central.
This path to meaning feels great at first. Who doesn’t like being the center of their own universe? Who doesn’t want to be the hero achieving great things? But the secular path to meaning isn’t sustainable. Eventually, finding purpose through ourselves and our work will fail us, as our growing levels of exhaustion, anxiety, loneliness and depression testify.
When our work is the path to meaning, we will never be satisfied because there’s always a new hill to climb, a new goal to meet, a new level of success to chase. When our work is how we find meaning, we’ll always feel exhausted and burnt out because we rest is antithetical to our pursuit of purpose. When our work is our source of purpose, then we’ll be terrified of failure, sickness, or old age, anything that keeps us from doing what we believe we’re made for.
But there is a better way to live a meaningful life and it’s found when we return to the sacred, to the transcendent relationship we were made for!
The Bible tells us that our purpose is a Person. We weren’t made for a specific set of tasks but for God Himself! We are His image-bearers. Our very existence is tied to Him. In fact, Jesus came not to restore our ability to do great things, but to restore our relationship with the One we were made for (1 Peter 3:18). He says that eternal life is found in knowing not doing (Matthew 7:21-23, John 17:3).
If our meaning comes through the sacred, through a relationship with the divine, then a purposeful life isn’t found through our achievement, but through our abiding. We no longer need to work hard for a sense of purpose. We can live purposeful lives right now by simply living our lives with God and for God (Colossians 3:23-24). As the writer of Hebrews says, we simply “run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2).
In a secular world, the path to meaning is found through self-discovery and hard work. The pressure is on you to discover what you were made for and work hard to bring it to fruition.
But in a sacred relationship with God through Jesus, meaning is found through relationship and rest. We don’t have to discover what we were made for, it’s plain as day in the scriptures. We don’t have to work hard to bring it to fruition because Jesus already did the hard work for us. We can live deeply purposeful lives today without exhaustion or fear. Because even in our rest, we can know Him. Through all life’s seasons and stages, we can know Him. Our purpose is a Person, and there’s no better news in all the world.
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Kelly Needham is a servant of Jesus Christ, a student of the Bible and COO of her home, where she lives with her husband, Jimmy and their five children. She is the author of “Purposefooled: Why Chasing Your Dreams, Finding Your Calling and Reaching for Greatness Will Never Be Enough” and has been a contributing author to many other books. She has served on staff at multiple churches, serving in youth, college and women’s ministry. Kelly currently co-leads a women’s teaching program, training women to accurately handle the word of truth and co-hosts a podcast, “Clearly with Jimmy and Kelly Needham.” Whether writing or speaking, Kelly’s aim is to convince as many people as possible that nothing compares to knowing Jesus.
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