Living on Purpose

One of the best questions ever…

If your life is a dollar, what are you spending it for?

For my first thirteen conscious years, I spent my dollar on myself, trying to matter to people. During the next thirteen years, I spent my dollar working to make a big corporation bigger. For the last thirty-six years, I’ve spent my dollar attempting to help people grasp how much God loves them and trying to help people find and follow Jesus.

The source of this best question ever is Ron Blue, an author and speaker on personal finance from a biblical perspective. The same day I heard him pose that question, he also shared his personal purpose statement, which went like this…

“I, Ron Blue, exist to glorify God by loving and serving others and by using my financial skills and experience to help people become better stewards of what God has given them and, as a byproduct of that, to bring more resources into the Kingdom of God.”

I got the first part . . . about loving and serving others. That’s straight out of Jesus’ playbook. But the last part was challenging. I wasn’t a CPA. I didn’t have “financial skills and experience.” I was a sales guy. How could God use an ordinary businessperson to help people and to bring glory to Himself?

The answer came a few years later when I heard this principle from another speaker . . .

“A secular endeavor, approached with a spiritual motive, is spiritual. A spiritual endeavor, approached with a secular motive, is secular.”

God is about motive . . . He’s about the why! It doesn’t matter what my job is, if my focus was on living out 2 Corinthians 5:20 and being an ambassador for Christ, then I’m in the ministry! My motive is spiritual. And I’m living on purpose.

For a long time now, I’ve gone to work on purpose. From the world’s perspective, I’ve had some successes, but I’ve also failed at the top of my voice. But from God’s perspective, I’ve been successful every single day that I’ve stayed focused on loving and serving people as an ambassador for Christ.

Question: Why do you go to work? Could you be missing out on an on-purpose life by focusing solely on the nuts and bolts of your job instead of intentionally loving and serving people, modeling Jesus, and helping others find and follow Him?

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