You felt it again at the worst possible time. Maybe in a meeting that meant nothing. Maybe scrolling at midnight, watching someone your age look like they already figured it out. A small voice under the noise asks the same thing it has asked for years. Is this it? Is this what I am for?
Most of us go looking for the answer in the wrong place. We look at the job, the title, the follower count, the next rung. And when we get the thing, the voice does not go quiet. It just moves the goalpost.
So here is the short of it, the way a Jude 3 Project Courageous Conversations panel framed it. Purpose is not what you do. It is why you exist. The panel, moderated by Jonathan Banks, roots your purpose in two facts you did not choose: you were made in God's image, and you were made for his glory. Which means you do not find purpose by digging deeper into yourself. You find it by knowing the God who made you. As one panelist put it, you cannot understand yourself apart from the one who built you.
That sounds simple. Living like it is true is the hard part. Let's walk it.
Is my purpose the same as my job?
No, and confusing the two is where a lot of the ache comes from. Bishop Thomas, the senior voice on the panel, drew the line that reframed the whole conversation. Your work is not your purpose.
“Purpose is not the what you do. It is the why you do it. Purpose is not what we do, but who we are.” (Bishop Thomas)
Being a pastor, being a teacher, being a parent, those are places where purpose shows up. They are not the purpose itself. Bishop Thomas called purpose an aspiration you discover over time, the why hidden in the fabric of the things you do. Dr. Brown said the same thing from another angle. Our doing flows from our being. Purpose answers the bigger questions underneath the job description: why God placed you here, and who he made you to be.
Here is the obvious pushback. If purpose is not my work, why does losing the work hurt so much? Because we tied our worth to the role and called it calling. Take the role away and it can feel like the self goes with it. The panel's point is mercy, not scolding. If your purpose lives in who you are and whose you are, then a layoff, a closed door, or a season on the bench cannot delete it. It was never stored there.
What was I actually created for?
To bear God's image in the earth, and to live for his glory. Dr. Lyons took it back to the garden. God was not bored or careless when he made people.
“Our created purpose was to bear the image of God in the earth.” (Dr. Lyons)
Dr. Foster opened the Hebrew. Genesis uses two words, tselem and demut, image and likeness. In the ancient world a king would place his image, a statue, a marker, in a territory so everyone passing through knew who reigned there. God is too big for one territory. So he placed his image across the whole earth, in people. You are walking evidence of who is in charge here. That is the dignity you were born holding, before you achieved one thing.
Scripture names a second reason out loud. In Isaiah 43:7, God says he created his people for his glory. Put the two together and your purpose has a shape before you ever pick a career. You exist to reflect God and to point past yourself to him.
Dr. Daniel Hill, in a separate Jude 3 conversation on the image of God, sharpens why this matters when life gets thin. Hill argues that your vocation is less a task you pull off with your own talents and more a promise of what God will do in and through you. His point lands hardest at the edges. When your strength is fading, when your abilities are not what they were, you are still someone God has commissioned, and God keeps working through your continued existence. Read that slowly if you are tired. Your purpose is not riding on your peak performance. It is riding on God's promise.
Why does chasing platform leave me empty?
Because the culture handed you a counterfeit and called it purpose. Dr. Foster named it without flinching.
“Western Christianity has distorted what it means to have purpose. We think platform, power, prestige, and prosperity.” (Dr. Foster)
We all know people with money, a name, and a stage who are not fulfilled, Dr. Foster noted, because purpose in America has gone individualistic. It is all about what I have and what I get. He pointed to Ecclesiastes, where the teacher tries everything, pleasure, work, wealth, wisdom, and keeps calling it meaningless, until he lands on one thing worth standing on: fear God and obey him. Purpose shrunk down to followers, cars, and platforms is not small purpose. It is purpose lost.
You can hear the objection coming. So is ambition a sin now? Should I want nothing? That is not what the panel said. The problem is not that you want to do something with your life. The problem is making the platform the point. A platform is a tool. The moment it becomes the why, it turns on you, because no amount of it ever answers the question you brought to it.
How do I actually find my purpose?
You find it by knowing God first, then yourself, in that order. Dr. Lyons pushed back on how we usually read the Bible, treating it like a mirror, always asking it to tell me about me.
“You cannot understand yourself apart from God. You understand yourself through God. He’s the manufacturer.” (Dr. Lyons)
The manufacturer image is worth holding. You do not learn what a thing is for by staring at it harder. You ask the one who designed it. Dr. Brown added the inner work that goes with it. You cannot grasp why God made you if you do not know yourself, so purpose is a discernment process. You bring God your past, your gifts, your scars, your experiences, and you ask him to show you how they serve his glory.
Dr. Brown also gave a warning worth tattooing somewhere. Do not let people who only see a version of you define your purpose. Just because someone says it does not make it God's will. Other people see a slice. God sees the whole.
This is exactly where a panel from another Jude 3 conversation on knowing who you are agreed. They put it plainly.
“Who we are has to start with who God is.” (Courageous Conversations panel on identity)
“There’s no way to know who you are without being connected to someone outside of who you are.” (Courageous Conversations panel on identity)
That second line cuts against everything the culture preaches. We are told to look within and we will find our truth. The panel says the opposite. You cannot define yourself from inside yourself. You are a created being, not the creator, and a created thing reads its meaning from the one who made it.
What if my purpose doesn't look impressive?
Then it may be exactly the purpose God assigned, and the smallness is not a sign you missed it. Bishop Thomas reminded the room that God creates us inside a story, with a setting and other characters, and our purpose gets discovered as our life collides with other lives. He even named his own purpose statement: to help people discover the meaning of faith and the will of God in the circumstances they find themselves in. Notice there is no platform in that sentence.
Dr. Foster pressed a hard freedom from Acts 16. Paul wanted to preach in Asia. The Spirit stopped him and redirected him to Macedonia. Paul's plan was good. God's redirect was better, and at the time it just looked like a closed door.
“It may be God’s will you don’t have a lot of followers. It may be God’s will that you don’t stand on certain platforms.” (Dr. Foster)
Lisa Fields, in a Jude 3 conversation on whether God uses people who feel unqualified, takes this further. She says God is not like us. He chooses the inexperienced on purpose.
“God puts us in position to be inexperienced so we can be dependent on him. He doesn't want experts, because experts usually aren't dependent.” (Lisa Fields)
“He's chosen because he's loved of God.” (Lisa Fields)
Read those together and the math of purpose flips. The world picks the qualified and the visible. God often picks the dependent and the hidden, because dependence is the soil where his glory actually shows. Your unimpressive assignment might be the whole point. And if you are tempted to think you are too unfinished for God to use, Fields offers one more line worth keeping close: God never starts projects he does not finish.
Purpose, the panel agreed, is not always seen or applauded. That does not make it less real. It is who God made you to be, lived out for his glory, right where he set you down.
Quick answers
What is purpose, simply? The reason you were created. The panel says it is the why behind your life, not the job or platform on top of it.
What were we created for? To bear God's image in the earth and to live for his glory, drawing on Genesis 1 and Isaiah 43:7.
How do I find my purpose? By knowing God first, then yourself. The panel calls it a discernment process. You understand yourself through the God who made you.
Is wanting a platform wrong? Not in itself. The panel's warning is making the platform the point. A platform is a tool. It is a poor god.
What if my purpose doesn't look impressive? Dr. Foster says it may be God's will that you do not have a big platform, and Lisa Fields says God often chooses the inexperienced so they stay dependent on him. Purpose is not measured by followers, money, or stages.
Listen to the full conversation
This Courageous Conversations panel on purpose was moderated by Jonathan Banks. Hear Bishop Thomas, Dr. Brown, Dr. Lyons, and Dr. Foster work through it in their own words on the Jude 3 Project podcast.