Do you really know who you are? What is your God-given purpose in life?
Award-winning television host and Christian author Beth Townsend has spent a great deal of time studying what the Bible has to say about finding our life’s purpose and has some answers.
She told CBN News’ The Prayer Linkthat discovering who you are begins when you know who you’re not.
“Everybody wants to know who they are, but I like to start with a backwards approach. If you know who you’re not, who God’s not called you to be, who you are then begins to emerge and have complete freedom to walk in the giftedness, in the fullness of the Spirit,” Townsend explained.
“We try to be too many things and we get too influenced by the culture that we see what other people are doing and we think, ‘maybe I should do that.’ But, we shrink back and say to God, ‘where is it that I gifted?’ Once we hear from Him and we eliminate what I like to call ‘knowing your nots,’ who you are becomes very evident and it becomes much easier,” she continued.
Townsend explained that she worked hard at developing strong interview skills, which led her to create the show Life on Purpose which is streamed on Pureflix.
“I had been saved, but I didn’t really know what being a Christian was really like. I thought, you know, I think that’s a God thing – purpose,” she said. “I told my husband, ‘I’m going to interview people who wake up every day and they know what God’s calling them to do and they’re doing it. I’m going to ask them front and center how they knew and how they didn’t.’ That started in 2001 and I’ve been doing that ever since.”
Townsend pointed out that we’ve all made mistakes in our lives. However, we shouldn’t allow those errors to lead to regret.
“We all come from a broken family. We’ve all pretty much created a broken family because we’re in a broken world,” she noted. “You have to accept that there are just some things. Purpose is a process … it’s not perfection. So, we have to know we’re going to make mistakes,” Townsend noted. “So much that we feel the consequences of is our own poor decision so I lived the consequences of many of those.”
Townsend continued, “When I began to see Christ, I began to understand there’s a better path for my life. Purpose is a mindset, it’s a faith. It’s committing to a path where you’re going to make less mistakes and you’re going to live on purpose.”
Townsend said she was motivated to write her latest book, Life On Purpose: You Must Be Led Before You Can Lead, because of her own pursuit to discover purpose.
“I believe my story is for God’s glory,” she told CBN News. “Twenty years ago, I felt like God called me to write a book. Many times we think God’s purpose is this or God’s purpose is that and we set out thinking that if God called me to do it, it’s going to be easy, it’s going to be simple and it’s going to be quick. Not so much.”
“So, I went into this (book) thinking I was going to write a story based on all the interviews I had done because I had done so many great interviews. But God’s plan for my book was that those interviews were not to be about them, it was about what they could teach me,” she said. “In the book, I share purpose principles that changed my life. Every person that I interviewed changed my life. It was a divine appointment from God Himself … not for me to have a best-selling book. For me to learn a principle that not only I needed, but other people needed. They’re life-changing principles,” Townsend concluded.
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