Your Purpose Is Not In Your Productivity

“But what drives you to get up every morning? What makes you want to even do each day?” Tessa knew she sounded desperate, but she didn’t care. She was. Derek took a moment to respond.

“It’s the fact that I’m not doing the day for myself,” he finally responded. “I’m doing it for God, and that gives me purpose. When I realize God has a job for me each and every day, I can’t help but be excited to wake up and step into whatever He has for me. Every day is unique with Him since I never know what His plans are, but I always know they’ll be good.” 

This is a small piece of dialogue from a YA (young adult) novel I’m working on. The main character, Tessa, grew up in a Christian family, but never truly knew God. My secondary character, Derek, is someone who came to know God about two years before he’s introduced to the story, and he was amazed at the transformation God did in his own life. 

This little piece of dialogue was a spur–of–the moment piece of inspiration that came to me early on in the process of working on this story (sometime around May), and I knew I had to write it down. I’ve since reworked some of it, but this is the main gist of it.

After I typed up the main part of it, I left it for a time. Then I reread it. Man, the way it hit me was alarming, and literally life changing.

I found this at a time in my life where I was cramming every spare moment of my time with work. School, writing, cleaning, graphic design, and every other responsibility I could think of to fill my time. 

I found purpose in my productivity.

Or at least, I thought so. Until I realized I was so restless, overstimulated, and was unable to enjoy just being. 

I thought I was doing a “good job” by making the best of my time. Working toward my long–term goals and getting things done is always the best thing for us to be doing, right? Isn’t that what we were made to do?

No, it’s not; and although I knew it in theory, I didn’t know it in my heart. I had lost sight of the truth in 1 Corinthians 7:17, “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.”

This isn’t to say that it’s wrong to be productive and work hard— quite the opposite, actually! Proverbs 12:24 and many other verses remind us that it’s important to work hard and be diligent. But when you find your purpose in your  work, you’re losing sight of where your purpose is supposed to be: in doing God’s work.

The Lord used my own writing to speak to me just weeks or months after it had been written, since I had begun to lose focus of what truly gives me purpose. 

I want to encourage you this week to meditate on 1 Corinthians 7:17. I don’t mean the New Age type of meditation, but the kind that is talked about in Joshua 1:8. Meditation on the word of God. 

God does have a job for you, a new one, every single day. We just have to be led by Spirit, which I talked about in this post, and He will show us what He wants us to do. That is where we find our purpose— not in our work, not in our productivity, but in stepping into the calling God has for us.

I’d love to know, am I the only one who has tended to overwork myself in the name of “productivity”, or have you ever done that? Do you enjoy writing inspirational stories or scenes, or would you rather read them? 

If you’d like to read some related posts to this one, try checking out:

• The Productivity Myth by Laura Boone 
• Being Faithful In The Little Builds Character 
• Involving God In The Little Things