On Purpose & Brokenness

Did you ever see the movie Hugo? The one about the boy who lives inside this huge clock in a Parisian train station? It’s based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick and it’s a magical tale about an orphan boy trying to uncover a secret left to him by his father.

There’s a strikingly truth-filled line in the movie where Hugo says,

Maybe that’s why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn’t able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it’s the same with people. If you lose your purpose… it’s like you’re broken.”

Purpose, the answer to the ‘what am I here for’ question, the reason we get up every day and put one foot ahead of the other. It’s the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘why’ of life and without a clearly defined purpose we’re able to manage life but the point of why we do what we do gets lost.

Brokenness happens to everyone. We go through devastating trials and hard times and we just can’t see a purpose through our pain. The pain rises up smothering everything in it’s path, devouring, erasing the point of life.

And it will if we let it.

I firmly believe each and every one of us is born with a grand purpose, an adventure appointed just for us, a desire planted deep in our soul. God alone can breathe it to life. Our job is to take it by the hand and make it real.

The enemy of our souls will try everything in his arsenal to destroy, dilute or distract us from God’s grand purpose for our lives. He’ll try to break us and remove our effectiveness because he knows if we figure out our purpose and take God at His word, we really can change the world.

He hopes we never believe the truth about us being ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’, because he wants us to believe we aren’t and God has nothing for us. Or, he’ll try to make us believe God is not what He says and he’ll inject doubt and fear to make us believe his low-down lies.

Because he wants us to stay broken.

He wants us to stay bitter, wallowing in self-pity, ineffective and weak, less than what we are created to be…

…MORE THAN CONQUERERS!

Knowing our purpose is a wonderful gift because it positively affects and focuses our lives.  Purpose does all these things and so much more:

1. Purpose defines our dreams

2. Purpose drives us forward.

3. Purpose allows us to sacrifice the good for the best.

4. Purpose allows us to say no.

5. Purpose keeps us on course.

6. Purpose is long range vision in the short-term days.

7. Purpose helps us push through the pain.

8. Purpose challenges us to dream big.

9. Purpose helps us live with the end in mind.

10. Purpose causes us to set our faces like flint.

11. Purpose gives our big idea a goal.

12. Purpose keeps us on course when distractions pull in every direction.

We’re all broken somewhere. But in the broken places of our lives lie the beautiful, fearful fragments of our purpose. God alone can glue them together anew with a fresh look and a new resolve. He alone can take the shattered and make them sure. He can drive our dream back to the realm of the possible.

Purpose is real. You have one my friend and so do I. I didn’t know mine for a long time and I only found it in knowing Him. The one who fearfully and wonderfully made us all. Out of your relationship will flow a life of meaning and purpose. Together as we seek Him, we will learn to live on purpose and we will change the world. We will know what we were meant to do and though we can’t change our history of brokenness, in His hands our broken lives will be made whole.

And we’ll do what we are meant to do.