Inevitably, people who have no clear sense of purpose in their lives succumb to depression, restlessness, vague feelings of anxiety, and fatigue. The fatigue is typically caused by emotional emptiness. Nothing excites them. Nothing gets them up in the morning. Life and even relationships become monotonous and each day seems to lose its brightness.
Several years ago, I heard a leading marriage and family therapist say that, in order to be happy and fulfilled, couples must be part of something bigger than themselves and bigger than their marriage. The same is true for individuals. Self-focus is a dead end. At some point, we realize that all the applause, all the purchases, all the trips, all the award shows, and even all the sex and romance, are only drugs that make us feel high and significant for a few hours. We eventually discover that all that drains away overnight. In the morning we feel insignificant again.
Too many Americans are part of nothing bigger than themselves. The selfie-tsunami on social media is indicative of that. How many are promoting the smallest details of their lives in some effort to feel significant – week after week? Again…self-focus is a dead end. It’s counterintuitive, but the key to feeling good about life and about yourself is to shift your focus from self to others and to something bigger than yourself. One of my favorite authors through the years has been Philip Yancey. There are a couple of paragraphs in his book, The Jesus I Never Knew, that caught my attention years ago and I roll it out every now and then on this blog because I think his point is so important. Let me share it with you now.
“My career as a journalist has afforded me opportunities to interview ‘stars,’ including NFL football greats, movie actors, music performers, best-selling authors, politicians, and TV personalities. These are the people who dominate the media. We fawn over them, pouring over the minutiae of their lives: the clothes they wear, the food they eat, the aerobic routines they follow, the people they love, the toothpaste they use. Yet I must tell you that, in my limited experience, I have found…our ‘idols’ are as miserable a group of people as I have ever met.
Most have troubled or broken marriages. Nearly all are incurably dependent on psychotherapy. In a heavy irony, these larger-than-life heroes seem tormented by self-doubt.
I have also spent time with people I call ‘servants.’ Doctors and nurses who work among the ultimate outcasts, leprosy patients in rural India. A Princeton graduate who runs a hotel for the homeless in Chicago. Health workers who have left high-paying jobs to serve in a backwater town of Mississippi, relief workers in Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and other repositories of human suffering. The Ph. D’s I met in Arizona, who are now scattered throughout jungles of South America translating the bible into obscure languages.
I was prepared to honor and admire these servants, to hold them up as inspiring examples. I was not prepared to envy them. Yet as I now reflect on the two groups side by side, stars and servants, the servants clearly immerge as the favored ones, the graced ones. Without question, I would rather spend time among the servants than among the stars: they possess qualities of depth and richness and even joy that I have not found elsewhere. Servants work for low pay, long hours, and no applause, ‘wasting’ their talents and skills among the poor and uneducated. Somehow, though, in the process of losing their lives they find them.”
The people Yancey speaks of are men and women who have chosen to be part of something greater than themselves because they count their cause as greater than themselves. Their lives have purpose beyond the next selfie, the next purchase, and the next cruise. Jesus points us to that same reality when he says, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” and when he says. “Those who lose their life for my sake, will find it.” There is no greater purpose than serving Jesus and fulfilling the call of the kingdom in your life. We are called to share the good news, alleviate the suffering of the poor, correct injustice, heal the brokenhearted and set captives free. We are called to be servants.
Again, the way to find happiness and fulfillment is counterintuitive…get your mind off yourself and onto the needs of others. Pursue the call of Jesus. Find your purpose in the destiny Jesus has written for you. Choose servanthood over self-indulgence. Sacrificing for others is the heart of the gospel and actually is the foundation for the abundant life Jesus promised.
Sometimes, I need a reminder. Perhaps, you do too.
