What Is Your Purpose?

I remember the first time I really thought about my purpose and God's plan for me. I was sitting in the little foyer to Golden Meadows Baptist Church in some little town in Louisiana. I was in maybe the 11th grade with my youth group helping rebuild some stuff and do a little Bible camp for some of the kids there. We broke up individually every day for our own Bible study with the packet that was prepared for us. I remember sitting there and the packet said something to the extent of "God desires for you to be right here, right now, reading this." He had not only planeed it, but He desired it. For some reason, that really stuck with me. I sat by myself on the floor of that sunlit foyer, and I just started crying with the realization that God had planned for me to be, of all places I could have been at that moment, on that floor. Sitting. Reading. Learning. Growing. That was when I first thought about my purpose. I had always considered purpose as some distant future, the ever-present "What are you doing after high school" question. My life purpose, my career, my calling... But that morning I realized that God had a purpose for me at that very moment. He didn't say to me, "Wait for another few years and I'll give you a purpose." He had always had one for me, and I didn't have to wait until after college to fulfill it. That was when I really discovered that purpose has nothing to do with jobs or anything like that. Purpose has to do with our relationship with God. The reason we were ever put on earth was because God was lonely. We were made with the purpose of having a relationship with the Creator. If you are running a race on a track and you stay in your lane, it is only natural that you will come to the finish line eventually. Purpose is the same. If we continue to grow closer to God (our original purpose), it is only natural that we will arrive at our long-term purpose eventually. We just have to stay in our lanes.