Spiritual Purpose

Lord, it feels like most Christians have very little sense of spiritual calling / purpose / tasked-ness... we are consumers on autopilot, mostly.

Or, alternatively, we tend to get our sense of identity and value from our sense of spiritual purpose, so we can only see our sense of calling in very grandiose terms – it's so huge to us that it becomes everything to us (we pastors and people in ministry or non-profits are especially susceptible to this). But the reality is that very few of us accomplish anything very earth shattering or long-term significant.

So it feels like those are really our only two options – if I'm going to have any sense of spiritual purpose, then I need to be in full time ministry and aim to achieve something BIG (I hear this a lot in evangelical circles), -OR- no one really has a spiritual purpose, the whole notion is overrated, doesn't matter what you do really... and so most do nothing.

It seems to me that the Scriptures land somewhere between these two poles... that everyone has a calling / purpose (hence spiritual giftedness, God working things for good, etc.). But the nature of the calling is primarily in the direction of small faithfulness. It's long obedience in the same direction (Eugene Peterson), it's fighting the long defeat (Tolkien), etc. Our calling is not to accomplish something big (usually)... our calling is to engage in the work, and so experience fellowship with you (through the labor).

So how do we help ordinary people gain more sense of spiritual purpose, when the nature of such work might seem (to the world) small and insignificant?

When people have no sense of purpose outside themselves, they inevitably make themselves (their desires) their sense of purpose...

If you don't have a sense of spiritual purpose / calling / built-ness (e.g. the reason why God created you, placed you on this planet, and then rescued you) you won't have much concern about missing God...