Let me tell you; You are not the sum of your Life scores.
One of the most interesting things I have discovered in mentoring young Men in my Church is that many of them are carrying a tension with the search for Identity that they don’t quite know how to articulate.
They are trying to figure out who they are, while simultaneously trying to become who everyone else expects them to be.
A 21 year old today is quite likely being parented by a Boomer, has older Millennial siblings, and has probably been taught by Teachers and Lecturers from those same generations. His first boss or internship supervisor is also likely to come from one of these generations.
Here’s why this matters.
Many of these ‘old schoolers’ grew up in a social framework where performance easily became identity. You performed well at school, you got a good University placement. You performed well at University, you got a good job. You performed well at work, you got promoted. You got promoted enough times, you became a Director, a CEO, perhaps even a Dr., Prof. or Hon.
Titles meant something. They were evidence that you had become somebody.
But something interesting is happening with the younger generation.
From what I have observed in the young Men I mentor, titles don’t seem to carry the same emotional weight. They are much more interested in Purpose.
They want to know why they are here. They want to make money, yes, but they also want to make meaning.
They want to travel. They want flexibility. They want to build things. They want to work for themselves. They want to pursue things they are passionate about.
Therein lies the tension.
The painful reality is that Sapitalism doesn’t particularly care about your Purpose. Money tends to follow performance in fields where the market has decided that performance is valuable.
You might feel called to be a Kindergarten Teacher, a Music Tutor, a Painter, a Fitness trainer, a Preacher, a Writer or a Social Worker. The problem is that some of these Vocations mostly don’t pay very much.
So what happens?
If you were the average Joe in my generation, you abandon the thing you feel drawn towards and pursue the thing that pays. It looks like a wise decision.
But, twenty years later, you wake up to discover that you became exceptionally good at climbing a ladder that was leaning against the wrong building.
I have always been in love with Literature and the written word. I wrote my first novel when I was 14, while still in high school. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of giving the original handwritten manuscript to my high school crush, who subsequently, and mysteriously, “lost” it.
I have never fully recovered from this betrayal.
But when the time came to choose my post-High School Vocation, my Dad steered me towards Electronic and Computer Sciences. His reasoning was simple, Electronic Sciences had better career prospects.
My Dad was the highest Authority in my life at the time, and so I listened.
In fairness, I have done well enough. But I’ll be honest. I sometimes wish I had stood my ground, because I have come to realise that there is a difference between being good at something and being called to something.
A performance-oriented culture will constantly ask you, “How well are you doing?”, but God asks a different question, “Who did I create you to be?”.
The danger is that we can spend our entire lives answering the first one and never stop long enough to ask the second. I have been challenging the young Men I mentor to consider something that sounds almost irresponsible in the world we live in. I challenge them to be willing to risk some financial progress in the early stages of life, if that is what it takes to discover their God-given calling.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting financial irresponsibility. I’m saying don’t confuse financial progress with progress in life.
I draw my thesis from what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” He gave the hierarchy of priorities; The Kingdom first, The things second.
Yet how often we reverse this. We pursue the things of the World first, and tell ourselves that once we have enough of them, we will finally have the freedom to pursue God’s things.
Paul takes this even further in Colossians 3:1 when he tells us to set our hearts on things above, where Christ is. In the A.D. era, Christ raised the standard of our aim, Upwards.
Our lives are no longer primarily about accumulating things here. We are called to orient ourselves towards Heavenly priorities.
And then there is Ephesians 2:10, “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
There is something deeply liberating about that. I have come to learn that Purpose is not something you manufacture. It is something you discover. Put another way, you don’t really find your Purpose. Purpose finds you, if you remain rooted in seeking the will of the One who created you.
Not your Dad. Not your Rich Uncle. Not your accomplished older brother. Not your friends. Not even your own carefully constructed five-year plan. The Creator’s manual is the place to start.
I know this isn’t easy to put to practice in the 21st Century envronment, and I’m not naive about it. I have spent enough time in the Marketplace to understand the pressure that comes with making a living, raising a family and trying to build something meaningful.
But I also know enough Men in their late thirties, forties and fifties who eventually looked around and realised they had spent decades becoming successful according to somebody else’s metric.
What a devastating realization.
Some have subsequently changed direction. They’ve left careers, started businesses, returned to school, started Ministries, returned to dreams they abandoned when they were young.
They remind me of Moses, who after Forty years tending sheep in the wilderness, a lifetime that could easily have looked like wasted potential, God found him. The Man who may have thought his life was pretty much set in place, was called to walk into Egypt and demand that Pharaoh let His people go. Recall, this was a dream he had had as a young Man, only he didn’t have the Wisdom to let God lead him, so he got into trouble. Boy can I relate.
For me, reorienting my own life back towards what I believe is my Creator’s original intention for me is my current No.1 priority. I believe i’m called to Minister to the Wise; The intellectuals, the accomplished, the wealthy, the people who have achieved much, but are still asking the deeper questions about what their lives are actually for. Mentoring young, Purpose driven Men showed me he also wants me to Minister to the Wise in their formative stages.
Let’s lock it in now.
When you are operating in the zone of Calling rooted in Identity, Flow comes more easily. Impact becomes an almost inevitable outcome. Work stops feeling like performance and starts feeling like expression. Whether it is financially lucrative or not (and sometimes it is), is no longer the primary metric.
Because Identity isn’t determined by the size of the cheque. It is being anchored in the One who made you.
Yahweh lovingly tells Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5, that before Jeremiah was formed in his mother’s womb, God knew him. Before he was born, God set him apart.
He is saying that to you and I today.
Before your first exam result, before your first promotion, before your first business, before your first salary, before your parents had an opportunity to tell you what they thought you should become, God already knew you.
This means your performance cannot be the source of your Identity.
To the young Man trying desperately to prove that he is somebody, I dare you to stop.
You don’t have to become a Doctor because your Dad is one. You don’t have to become an Engineer because it pays well. You don’t have to become a CEO because LinkedIn tells you that’s what success looks like. You don’t have to abandon the thing God has put in your heart because the Marketplace hasn’t yet figured out how to pay you for it.
Seek first the Kingdom. Set your mind on things above. Discover the good works prepared for you, and trust the One who created you to provide what you need along the way. He will free you from performing for an Identity, and usher you into the Heavenly world of performing from an Identity.
