Part 3: How I Discovered my Purpose (and continue to…)

I can’t believe I am writing Part 3 to this series but here we are (please read Part 1 and Part 2 for this blog to make sense!). Finally, I think we are at a good point to go over my journey that led to discovering my purpose. But I have to go over three disclaimers first.

First, I don’t think I discovered everything about my purpose. I think it’s ever evolving and it keeps growing.

But what I do know is this:

Clarity doesn’t usually come all at once. The path becomes lit more and more as I keep walking in what the Lord has already revealed to me.

Second, the purpose of this blog series is not to provide a polished framework for discovering purpose. If that were my goal, I probably would have simply provided a summarized structured guide to discovering your purpose. Or I wouldn’t have talked so extensively about Jerry’s podcast or walked y’all through my own wrestlings in detail.

So, what is series this for?

To describe the process and the pain of discovering my God-given purpose.

As a testimony. As an example. As a relatable journey for those going through this process. As this was something I did not find easily during my discovery journey.

With the hopes that others might draw parallels to their journey. And maybe that could reduce a step or two in their process.

That is why, from the beginning, this blog series has been all about exploring the layers of discovery process.

Because discovering purpose is rarely linear. Neat nor measurable. It’s often deeply personal and shaped by process.

It’s about the questions.
The discomfort.
The resistance.
The doubt and the fear.
The refinement.
The crumbs.

Having said that, thirdly, I am not suggesting that my journey is the template. I am not saying that your journey or path will be the same as mine. I cannot definitively say, “This is the path you must follow to discover your purpose,” nor can I promise that if you replicate my process, you will arrive at the same clarity.

Because ultimately, it’s the Holy Spirit who must reveal your purpose to you! Not my journey or a framework. It flows from your relationship with the Lord.

So, what I am going to do in this blog is just layout the different components of my journey, going from one breakthrough to the next, highlighting the key moments that shaped the journey in between.

So, here it goes!

Step 1: Obscurity to Clarity

I think my first breakthrough in this journey was when I finally understood what purpose was. Its characteristics. How purpose plays a huge role in the kingdom of God and in the body of Christ. And the specificity and the intentionality of it all.

When I came across Jerry’s podcast I talk about in Part 2.

To put things into perspective, the whole process took about six months to a year, maybe. I cannot remember every detail from that season but I remember a lot of wrestling, unusual busyness, heightened spiritual warfare, and an accident that I walked away unscratched from.

Distractions that felt urgent and important. Real issues that took a lot of my time and efffort.The enemy tried hard to steal my focus.
He still does.

However, every detail of that season was used by God to get me closer to what I was seeking from him. I went through this step in great detail in the first two parts of this series. So, no more details here.

Step 2: Clarity to Wrestling

Moving on, this may not seem like a breakthrough, but it truly was. It was the stage of wrestling with the pain that comes when the lessons from a previous breakthrough must be put into practice. And application of breakthroughs in everyday life can be hard! Very hard!

It’s one thing to understand a concept.
It’s a whole another thing to live it.

For instance, having a breakthrough with addiction sounds wonderful but staying away from that substance or your vice afterwards? This is where the real work begins. You have good days and some bad.

It requires grit, determination, focus, hard work, consistency, walking away from the familiar, and honestly, a strong support system for the fruits of the spiritual breakthrough to show up as some real tangible change in the flesh.

It was not much different for me after my first breakthrough with understanding what purpose was all about. I had the knowledge about it but then I found myself staring at all that knowledge.

Either not knowing how to go about it or being very hesitant to do something about it. Both paralyzed me.

But at the end of the day, I had to take a hard look at my past and myself. The good and the messy parts.

I had to acknowledge the pain that led to great victories and stronger character traits. Because I knew God brings purpose out of pain.

To best describe this process, I asked ChatGPT to come up with an infographic compiling Jerry’s spiritual map highlights that I summarized in Part 2 of this series. Back then, I did not do it this way but I think demonstrating it this way is the most helpful to explain my process.

I tried to come up with this infographic myself but it was turning out to be a bottleneck to writing this blog. It seemed like the best time to use ChatGPT so I can focus on the main writing. And I must say, not too bad! This works great for me to demonstrate my process. With some tweaks.

While the graphic above outlines all the main characteristics about purpose, I think six main questions become pivotal to discovering our God-given purpose. So, I put together these questions as a discovery wheel as below (I used Canva for this, it’s a great tool!).

Now, this purpose wheel is most useful if you can use it as a reflection tool. So, I put together a downloadable file that you could possibly use for your reflection.

As an example, I filled out my responses in this downloadable discovery wheel for you. Now, I may not have talked about all of these events or situations in my life in this blog but just roll with me here. If you want to understand a little bit more about the background to this table, you should try reading my blog on The Four Pillars, the foundation for Anchored By His Grace blog!

Hope this filled out wheel is helpful for you to do the same! If you want to dive deeper or reflect even further, you can use this downloadable reflection purpose worksheet and then, use those reflections to fill out the downloadable purpose wheel.

Step 3: Putting it all Together

This was probably the final step for me to understand what my purpose is. At least for now, in this season. I had to connect the different elements of the purpose wheel to come up with a statement that best described my purpose. And it started like this:

“My purpose is to help women, especially single women, discover and walk in their God-given identity, authority, and purpose by using my gifts of strategic thinking, clarity, and guidance so they can live fully aligned with God’s design and never settle for less than His best.”

This was just one iteration. You can go through as many as you like until you come up with something that seems most accurate to represent what the Holy Spirit is showing you. Then after that, the process is similar to coming up with a mission statement.

For instance, my purpose statement could be something like this (edit as much as you like to for yourself!):

I am called to help women (single women), discover their God-given identity, walk in their authority as daughters of the King, and live with clarity and purpose without settling for less than God’s best.

I personally think this is one practical way to hone in and discover your God-given purpose. But it is not the only way.

Ultimately, the Holy Spirit may just reveal your purpose in a split second without any of this analysis. Or, you may have always known what God called you to do and you may not need to what I did subconsciously during that period of obscurity.

Regardless of how you discover it, my prayer is that you step forward with intentionality, courage, and faith, living fully in the purpose God has uniquely designed for you.

Now that we have walked through a practical way to discover your purpose, it is just as important, if not more, to actually walk in it. It’s the next obvious step, isn’t it?

That takes me to my next point. I said this at the end of my previous post and I am not sure why I do this to myself but we’ll dive into practical ways to live out your God-given purpose in Part 4! Pray for me, y’all!