Your Life's Purpose is Staring You Right in the Face, and You Think You're Just Having a Bad Day
Six and a half years ago, I heard a man say from the pulpit, “I haven’t had a bad day in 25 years.” I believed him, and I still do.
Now, before you go scoffing at his comment and making whatever assumptions you’re tempted to make, hold on for a second.
He wasn’t saying life’s been “just peachy” for twenty-five years. He wasn’t saying that everything has gone right or gone his way. He was saying, essentially, that his template for life holds no category for “bad” days because he lives with a clear, Kingdom-centered purpose, which no circumstance can take away from him.
I’ll share with you in a second what this looks like, but I can tell you firsthand that he is right. I’m not exactly keeping track of the years like he is. And I’m not claiming to be as spiritually mature as this man appears/claims to be. But I can tell you this: I don’t have bad days anymore, either.
I have hard days. (Heck, I have hard months/years.) I have days when it seems like I mostly fail. But I do not have bad days. And if you’ve been born of God, you don’t have them either. Here’s why.
Each day you wake up, you must ask yourself why.
What is today about? Why am I here today? What’s the goal of today, from God’s perspective? What will make today a “success”?
If we don’t give any thought to this, we’ll almost certainly operate with the wrong template, one that is merely natural and fleshly.
Some will wake up thinking that today is about getting a lot done, at work or around the house. As a result, if they aren’t as productive as they want to be, it’s a “bad” day.
Others will wake up hoping that the day goes smoothly—no hiccups, interruptions, or unnecessary difficulties. As a result, they will lose their peace when there are bumps along the road.
Still others will wake up with their minds fixed on pleasure and rest, especially so on Saturdays, birthdays, and vacation days. But if, for one reason or another, the ease (which these types of days promise) does not come, it is, once again, a “bad” day.
But all of these are wrong, of course. And we know this, how? Because, if you add up all the individual days of a person’s life, and you ask God whether his purpose for the person’s life was fulfilled, his measurement would include no trace of how much work they got done around the house, how many difficult situations they avoided, or how easy and pleasurable things were (nor how big of a business they built, nor how much knowledge they gained, nor how much wealth they acquired, nor whether they got married or how many kids/grandkids they had, etc.).
What will his measurement entail?
How much did the person shine? How much Christ did they reveal to the world around them? How much of God’s glory did they manifest?
That’s our purpose. That’s the reason God created us and keeps us on this earth, as opposed to beaming us into heaven right now. It’s that we would be conformed to the image of his Son, Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29), transformed from one degree of glory to the next (2 Corinthians 3:18), and make him known across the face of the earth, thereby reconciling the world to God and increasing the faith of many.
When this is your operating template—i.e., your definition of a “good” life—nothing can thwart the purposes of your day.
Something very important I hope you’ll come to terms with is the fact that your opportunity to be conformed to the image of Christ and reveal God to the world doesn’t increase when things are easier; it decreases. In other words, people see Christ in you far more clearly when the circumstances aren’t going your way than they do when your circumstances are wonderful.
As for revealing God’s love to the world (which, again, is the definition of a “good” life)… You may very well be loving your friends with the love of Christ, but they likely don’t see it as the love of Christ if they also love you and treat you as a friend. Jesus taught us that even those who are furthest from God love people that love them back, so if you want to be like God the Father, you must love your enemies, even those who persecute you (Matthew 5:46-48). What blows us away about the gospel isn’t the fact that God gave up his son for his friends, but for his enemies. That when Jesus was nailed to the cross, he cried, “Father, forgive them [i.e., my attackers], for they know not what they do.”
Thus, when others aren’t treating you kindly, don’t you see the opportunity right in front of you?! Don’t you see that this is the very moment you can reveal the love of God in a way that you could not reveal it before? With an eternal perspective, that’s a good day, an exciting day, a day you’ve been waiting for, a day that holds immense eternal purpose.
Furthermore, it’s not those who are wealthy, nor those whose circumstances are smooth and easy, who confound the world by their joy and peace. No, even if it is the peace of God that sustains you, others will not see it if it accords with your circumstances. Have peace, nonetheless, and do not be ashamed of being blessed. But more importantly, do not despise the day of calamity. “For the righteous… is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the LORD” (Psalm 112:6-7). Whatever others would consider a “bad” day or a “bad” year is, for you, the first chance you have to prove to the world that there is something otherworldly in you, something worth desiring.
If your chief aim is to be changed—to effectively become Christ to the people in your life and to bring God the greatest amount of glory you can—then you don’t see suffering as a hindrance to your life but an aid. Not only is it an opportunity to reveal Christ, as we’ve discussed, but also to be further transformed (by which you’ll reveal him more, etc.). This is why we are to “count it all joy” when we face trials, “for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness… that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).
Do you desire, above all things, to be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing? Do you desire, above all things, to bear all the fruits of the Spirit? Do you desire, above all things, to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge and to make that love known to others? If so, then rejoice in suffering (Romans 5:3-5) because it is the way that God teaches you to rely on him, which is the only way you will ever reveal him.
“He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity” (Job 36:15).
Suffering is the fire that purifies you (if you’ll be purified by it), the discipline that trains you (if you’ll be trained by it), the only way to get what you most deeply desire and to attain what you were made for. Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was made perfect through suffering (Hebrews 2:10). While we need not seek it, let us never despise it!
If you’re like me, from time to time, you catch yourself thinking about some dark, gruesome “worst case scenario” for your life.
Persecuted, beaten, raped, tortured, or all of the above happening to those I love. My mind tends to go the extreme: I’m completely alone, in a dark cell, for years and years, being tortured daily by the only sick individual who knows where I am. (I’m sure each person has their own type of nightmare; there’s no need to compare. Just giving you a peek into my mind.)
As messed up as the thought may be, the truth is this:
Extremes can be very insightful. Do you really see what I’m talking about regarding your purpose on the earth? Or do you find within you that there are exceptions to the rule once you get far enough away from “normal” or “acceptable” or “fair”? I tell you, the one reason—the only reason—that I don’t fear the worst-case scenario for my life is that no circumstance can take away my purpose on this earth, my ability to shine. If I have one captor—one person who sees my face all the rest of my days on earth—then I will love this person, bless this person, pray, believe, and hope for this person, that they might see my response to their cruelty and, through it, receive Christ. My life will be laid down for this person, and there is nothing and no one who can take this privilege from me.
There are people who’ve actually experienced this kind of suffering, so how would you counsel them to make the best of their situation? Where’s the redemption in it? Are they without the ability to live a good life in God’s eyes? Must they simply submit to Satan’s attempt to devour their life of meaning, waiting for the day the Lord finally takes them home, without any clue as to why God would leave them in that state for so long? I myself refuse to deprive any individual of the thing that grants meaning to their suffering—i.e., their ability to shine Christ through it.
We can now work our way backwards towards less extreme thought-experiments (or maybe more extreme in your eyes, not sure):
The electrical grid goes out. The whole world goes dark. Life as we know it becomes like an apocalyptic movie. Will you go into self-protect mode? Will you go into hiding, get out your guns, pursue survival at all costs? Or are you prepared to suffer for the sake of the gospel, to show meekness in a time when no one else will, to demonstrate that you’re truly not afraid of death and there is greater hope worth living for?
A beloved family member dies too soon. Will you turn and curse God, or give up faith in him altogether? Will you fall into depression, turning to old/new addictions to cope? Or will you humble yourself before God, remembering that no one is promised another breath? Will you bless God from your heart, and fix your eyes on things above? Will you take it as an opportunity to be present with other loved ones who are grieving, to be kind and gentle when they lash out?
Your spouse cheats on you, leaves you, and blames you for everything. Will you curse them in return, or will you be a peacemaker? Will you quickly and bitterly move on, or will you faithfully wait for them, as Christ waited for you, in hopes that God reconciles your marriage, never holding any offense against them?
You are born gay and will never get to be happily married if you follow God’s commands. Has God taken something from you, or has he given you a special calling? Will you live as if you’ve been deprived of one of the most desirable things in life (i.e., marriage and romantic passion), or will you see your unique circumstance as a means to the most desirable thing in life, a means to knowing and revealing Christ in a way that most people never will?
You lose your entire net-worth in a very short span of time and end up owing the government money that never even touched your bank account. (holla atcha boy!) Will you laugh as you remember the fleetingness of riches, and will you rejoice that you’ve become all the wiser (and spiritually richer) through the trial? Or will you spend the rest of your life wondering why God could’ve let this happen to you?
Your wife doesn’t sleep with you as often as you’d like. Or your husband isn’t the kind of husband you wish he was. Will you thank God for the trial that forces you always to depend on him, which holds the promise of your (and your spouse’s) sanctification? Or will you turn bitter and resentful—justifying, blaming, wishing, complaining?
Your car breaks down. Your kids are next-level whiny. You’re sick when it’s entirely too inconvenient. You don’t like your job.
Guys, when will we start seeing that these things are not hindrances to a good life, nor to a good day? They are the very context within which you may live a good life—one that actually means something, one that actually makes an impression on people, one that pleases and reveals God.
For those of us who love God and are called according to his purposes, God is working all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). All things—even terrible things, even our own failures—he is working together for our transformation, so there is nothing that can steal from today God’s ultimate purpose for your life.
Fight it and resist all you want, but it’s the truth that you cannot escape. When we finally accept our true calling as the thing that matters most, we will see there is no such thing as a “bad” day because the worse it gets, the greater potential it holds.
Oh, P.S.—My New Book is Out TODAY (50% OFF for a limited time)! 🚀
I couldn’t let release day pass without a quick celebration. After 11 months of working on it, Unless God Builds It: A Proposal to Radically Rethink the Church is finally live on Amazon. Link here: https://a.co/d/08pw70OP
In short, if you sense that there’s more for the Church to step into that our current ways of operating aren’t helping with, this book is for you.
Launch week is the most critical time for an author, so if you pick up a copy today—whether eBook or paperback—it helps the book get seen by more people. And I especially appreciate it if you’ll leave a review. (50% off til Friday, so get it cheap while you can!)
Love y’all, and have a great rest of your week.
In Christ,
Jake