Have you ever looked at other people who are extraordinarily gifted and excelling, who seem to have a great purpose for living, and wondered, “Wow! What happened to me? I’m just focused on my job, raising my children, and paying the bills. I’m as ordinary as can be. What purpose does God have for my life?”
So how do you discover your purpose? Perhaps it’s similar to how Moses discovered his purpose. He had to come to the place where he recognized his gifts and learned to walk courageously in God’s purpose. Circumstances had caused Moses to be raised by Egyptian royalty, with the best education and privilege. But he ended up having to flee for his life into the wilderness where he stayed for forty years as a shepherd. Everything about his life seemed ordinary. Then one day God appeared to him and said, “I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt” (Exodus 3:10). I’m sure Moses immediately thought, “You want me to tell the most powerful man in the world to let two million slaves go? Seriously?” Moses pleaded with God to send someone else. “I can’t do it. I’m just ordinary. I stutter and can’t speak well.”
But God was saying, “Moses, I’ve shaped you from your birth. Every experience you’ve had and every gift I’ve placed in you has prepared you for this purpose.” Moses couldn’t see what God had placed in his life, yet over a thousand years later, the writer of Acts stated, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action” (Acts 7:22). That was a far cry from what Moses thought about himself. Moses couldn’t see in himself what others saw as being so obvious.
Too often we fail to recognize and appreciate the gifts and talents that God has given us. When you give them over to God to be used for His purposes, He will use them to accomplish great things in your life. But it’s up to you to mix your abilities and gifts with faith and move forward with courage, because, as with Moses, God’s assignment always comes with challenges. We like what’s easy, but God is saying, “Take those things that are difficult for you to do and give them to Me, because that’s how you’ll grow.” When God speaks to those difficult places, He’s speaking to your potential, to becoming everything you were designed to be. And just as Moses did, the day is coming when you look back at a defeated Pharaoh and say, “God, You did more than I could ask, think, or imagine. You fulfilled my life purpose.”