SoulFit: Purpose In The Ordinary

We challenge the idea that purpose is one big life calling and talk about how God grows purpose through everyday routines. We look at Scripture and real-life moments that prove small acts of faithfulness can shape others more than we may ever see. 
• chasing a “big purpose” mindset that leaves people feeling stuck 
• purpose in the ordinary as a daily way of living 
• Moses, Ruth, and other biblical examples of God working in routine moments 
• working with all our heart as service to God from Colossians 3:23–24 
• the danger of waiting for “someday” and missing today’s assignment 
• faithfulness in small things from Luke 16:10 
• simple kindness and presence as a real calling 
• an ordinary social post that sparks spiritual change in someone else 
I’ll see everybody next week. 

https://aarondegler.com/

Transcript

Welcome To SoulFit

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to SoulFit. Thank you so much for joining us. If this is your first time to SoulFit, each week we just join our live call that we take a few verses out of the Bible and how do we make that applicable to our life in our everyday life? So thank you for joining us on SoulFit. Let's join our live call. All right, so we will get started. So I talk a lot about purpose. Finding your purpose. And I hear over and over, I don't, I mean, we even did a four-week workshop on finding your purpose. We met in person. I had handouts, fill in the blanks, all the things. And I would probably be pretty confident in saying that many of those that came didn't find their aha purpose in life, is kind of what we were working on. And so I hear that very often about I don't know what my purpose is, I don't, you know, whatever it is. And I think because we're often looking for that big, what is your overall big purpose in life? What's that ray of sunshine that is guiding you in life? Some may know it, but I think many of us don't know what that big ray of sunshine that we call our purpose is that we're following. So today we're going to talk about purpose in the ordinary. My parents often, as they get in their 80s, they one, they talk about death a lot. Almost every time I talk to them, they talk about death. But they talk about not really knowing what their purpose is anymore. I believe they still have purpose. And again, I think they're looking for that radius sunshine. What's our big life purpose? But they have a purpose. And I get to visit with them every Friday, and they help my sister out. They're and and they, my dad takes care of my mom, and they have purpose. But I think they get stuck in what's my big purpose. Because we we get a little older in life, and I think we tend to lose those things in the ordinary that we have purpose. So we're going to talk a little bit about it, it's it's not our purpose, it's not just what we what we do one day. Because I think, well, when I do this one day, it's more about how do you live every day, is how we live out our purpose in the ordinary. So we're going to talk about kind of how does that look? You know, because honestly, and we've talked about this when we talked about being in the middle. Our lives are in the middle. Isn't it pretty much normal days? Are their routines, their responsibilities, their work, family errands? I mean, probably think about your today. Did you do anything like that was like way crazy towards your purpose in life? Probably not. I mean, you probably got up, worked out, went to work, did some things, ran some errands, nothing just really wild and crazy. If you, if you somebody said, How's your day so far? You go, eh, it's about, I mean, normal. I mean nothing major. And I think that's what most of us would say on most days. And sometimes I think we think, I'm just kind of going through the motions of life. And in those moments, in that ordinary, in the middle, as we talked about, is when God works through the ordinary. You know, the Bible is full of ordinary people that God worked through in everyday, everyday things. If we look at Moses, God found Moses when he was tending sheep. And so in Exodus 3, 1 through 4, it talks about Moses and says, Now Moses was tending flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Herob, the mountain of God. Moses just out there tending some sheep, being a sheep herder. Nothing great, nothing special. Just minding his own business. And then there the angel of the Lord appeared. To him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that through the bush there that was on fire it didn't burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight. Why the bush does not burn. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, Moses, Moses. And Moses said, Here I am. And that is one of my most favorite lines in the Bible. Not only here I am, but the Hebrew word for here I am. The Hebrew word for here I am is henini. And Moses was just doing his normal thing, his everyday thing when God showed up. And when God showed up in his ordinary day, Moses' response was, Henini, here I am. Just doing his everyday thing. Peter, Peter is just out fishing, mind his own business being a fisherman. Then we have Ruth. What was Ruth doing? She was just gathering some grain in the field when Boaz found her and took favor to her. Manna just came down and they got to eat it. Have you ever experienced that? Have you ever experienced a blessing from somebody? Maybe it was a gift of time. Maybe it was a gift of money. Maybe it was a gift in other ways. Typically, those are through people. And that is as as Ruth found it, it was through God helped her through people, through Boaz. And as time and time again is what the Bible shows is that God meets us in our daily routines. That's where He meets us. In Colossians 3, 23 through 24, it says, Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters. Since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward, it is the Lord Christ you are serving. And always think about that because we think about sometimes, I know when I was younger, I worked for different places and go, eh, you know, I'm just gonna get by, do, or they're not very nice to me, so I'm not gonna put in too hard a work. But really, that wasn't the right attitude. That wasn't the right heart. Because working with all your heart doesn't, it doesn't matter what the other person is doing, maybe my boss, my supervisor, doesn't matter what they were doing. It's what is my personal responsibility? How am I supposed to do my work? And if I'm working as if I was working serving the Lord, am I gonna shortchange him? Am I gonna go, eh, he's being mean a little mean to me. I'm not gonna do that. No. It's I'm gonna do all that I can do in the manner that I can do it. So our purpose is not just reserved for those special moments that we go, oh, I'm gonna use my purpose right here, or oh, I'm gonna use my purpose right here. It's really lived out in our everyday obedience. So all of us have a purpose and we get to live it in the ordinary every single day. Because sometimes when we say, What, you know, my purpose, and sometimes we say, I'm gonna wait for someday, someday, when life slows down. And you know, it's kind of like saying, I'm gonna have a child when I'm when I feel ready. Did anybody have a child when they were ready? Like, okay, now is the moment? I would probably say no. There was something wasn't quite ready, or you didn't feel prepared as a parent, all the different things. Sometimes we say, when I figure things out, as we mentioned before, do you feel at your age, at your different ages, do you feel like you have it all figured out? And chances are probably no. There's probably things you go, I have I don't have that figured out. Or when I reach the next stage, we say those things and we say, then I'll live in my purpose. But our purpose doesn't start later, it starts now. Because the danger of waiting for that big purpose that we're looking for is then we miss the small assignment God has given us. I don't know if you've ever heard of, I don't know, it's not a joke, it's probably a story, where there's a flood and a man's trapped on top of his house. And he says, and he prays to God and says, Please save me, please save me. And a boat comes along and says, you know, we're here to help. And he goes, No, no, I'm waiting on God to save me. And so then a helicopter comes and lowers down, says, We're here to save you. He said, No, no, I'm waiting on God to save me. And then the rain, it's keep raining and the water keeps coming up, and the man drowns. And he gets to heaven. He says, God, why didn't you save me? And God said, Well, I gave you a couple chances and you didn't take them. Because, and that's what we do, because we're so focused on our big purpose or our big thing in life, or the big sunshine ray of sunshine that we're going for, that we miss all the other ordinary times that we were, that we were being called to our purpose. And and he grows our purpose, God grows our purpose in our small acts of faithfulness. And in Luke 16, 10, we've talked about this before. Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much. So our daily choices matter. Maybe it's just encouraging someone, maybe it's showing a little bit of kindness. And we don't think about that oftentimes as our purpose. What's your purpose as a child of God? To be kind, to be encouraging, to be patient, to do your work well, to be present with people. All of those are what God has called us to do. It's our purpose. What purpose is bigger than your than a calling from God? And it doesn't, he's not asking for anything dramatic. He's not asking for this, you get, you know, in Time magazine, or you get a big write-up in your local paper, or he's not looking for any of that. He's looking for just the simpleness of loving another human being. And and that's an amazing purpose to have when you can have that impact on people. And and has has anybody not come in contact with one person today? Probably everybody has come in contact with at least one. Maybe it's a family member, a friend, a stranger, but probably at least one. And so you've already had one opportunity today in the ordinary to love another human being. Now you may have chosen to holler at them. I don't know what kind of communication you had with that one other person today, but we had an opportunity. God put that in our path in the ordinary for today. And he uses the ordinary to shape us, he uses the discipline to he the routine shapes our discipline. It shapes our character, it shapes our faithfulness, it shapes our humility. And in the ordinary, is what he's using to shape us. If you're mean to people all the time and you reach and you're looking for this big purpose, do we feel confident that we're gonna get it? Probably not, because you're not we are not being faithful with what he's given us. With that person he put in front of us, was I kind to them? Did I show them uh kindness or love in any way? Even because do people always deserve it? Do we always deserve it? Probably not. Probably we deserve not love. We just maybe are liked, and maybe not even liked, maybe highly disliked. But he he and so kind of the challenge is what is he developing through you in your daily routines? We take them for granted. Our daily routines is just another day. I'm just uh just going through the motions, it's just another day. But what is he developing through you in your daily routines? And we think about we think about our our purpose as being this big thing. But I'm gonna share. I had an experience this week, and and I'll I'll share it because it was just a it was just something, a daily routine. It was nothing major, nothing big. But so I think the first before the end of the year, at the end of the year, before the new year started, she had posted about on Facebook about reading the Bible in a year and the app, how to follow along, how to do it through the Bible app. Um, it was Terry Lee Cobble's Bible in a year and her podcast and all that. Um, and so that was the end of last year. I mean, she got a message this this week from somebody that had saw her post and had begun doing that at the beginning of the year, and went on to say that it had an a profound effect on her relationship with God, on her, on her inside spirit, as well as the way she is going out into the world. And that's something that Kim just did out of the ordinary. Nothing major, nothing big, nothing wow, nothing that spectacular. Just doing something ordinary. And and and look at the return on that ordinary action in somebody else's life. And sometimes when we do those things, that was fortunate enough to be able to get to know I had an impact. Because it feels good when we have an impact on somebody and somebody says, hey, thank you. You had this impact on me or something you did, said whatever. It's really a good feeling. But there's also times when we go about our ordinary and we live out our purpose in that moment, and we may never know what kind of impact that had, what kind of difference it made in that purpose person's life. When we talk about one starfish, maybe it affected that one person and we may never know it. But what if we cheated them out of that opportunity because we didn't live out our purpose in the moment in our ordinary routine? What if we didn't do that? And we kept looking for that big purpose, and we get to the end of life and we get up to heaven and we go, God, I was supposed to have this big purpose, and you never, I mean, you never showed it to me. And then he shows, he opens up the screen of your life and says, Oh, remember this person? Oh, do you remember this person? Oh, do you remember this opportunity you had to help? Oh, do you remember this? And he said, I gave you a purpose-driven life your whole life. And he said, You missed it time after time after time because you were waiting for a big purpose. And so you were given what you asked for, but you didn't see it. And and I think about that often when we come in contact with with people, with things that we can help, it's purpose in the ordinary that we are called to do. So at our end day, we led a purposeful life because the purpose, and and you get done and go, I just led an ordinary life. But if you are purposeful in the ordinary, you can be at the end of life and go, I led a very purposeful life because I took purpose in every ordinary moment. And so that is really the challenge is to live a purposeful life in the ordinary. And so the the next the next five weeks, we're gonna talk, we're gonna have a series called She Matters, which is five different women from the Bible that if we looked at their lives, if we looked at them from in today's standards, we go, they they are not gonna matter, they're not gonna amount to much. And each one of their lives mattered and made an amazing difference in their life and the lives of others around them. And so next week we're gonna be talking about Hagar. We talked about, we spent a lot of time on Sarah last uh when we talked about waiting on God and trying to take control. We talked about Sarah and we're kind of focused on Sarah and just kind of briefly talked about Hagar. She kind of went out to the wilderness and all that. But we're gonna really dive into Hagar next week and talk about her wilderness and talk about how does her wilderness look a lot like our wilderness and how and the impact that that had on her because she mattered. So that's gonna be a five-week series. I think it'll be be good to see how each person matters and really to understand how we each matter. So um I'll I'll finish this up in prayer and then you can go on with your fantastic finally Friday. Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for bringing us all together. Lord, I just pray over each one of us that we just live out our purpose that you have given us in those moments in the in our daily routines, and that I just pray that you'd open our eyes to see those ordinary moments that we are supposed to pour out our purpose and live out our purpose. And we I just pray that we see those moments along the way in our day, even though when we're kind of sometimes blinded by the stress, the struggles, the overwhelm, the anxiety, that we take that time to go. Is this a moment I'm supposed to live out in purpose, Lord? And I just pray that um you open our eyes to see that and we do live a purposeful life and show the love of Christ in our purposeful life. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thank you to each one of you. Have a great Friday, and I'll see everybody next week. Thank y'all. And thank you to each of you for joining me on this week, SoFit. Look forward to seeing you right here next time on SoulFit.