I was going to look like a spiritual midget, the only woman at the conference who couldn’t complete the assignment we’d been given by the speaker. And I couldn’t hide because I was up front coordinating and emceeing things.
The event was a women’s conference at my church and the speaker was my friend Tammie Price, founder and director of A Place For Us Ministries and author of “The Story Matters,” a book recounting the miracles God performed as He built Tammie’s faith and established this international ministry for women in crisis situations.
In addition to her ministry responsibilities, Tammie also worked as a hairstylist for many years. I might’ve been paying her for a haircut, but what I actually received at each appointment was so much more than that as she shared her amazing “God stories” and experiences with me.
I was delighted when Tammie agreed to speak at our women’s conference. At the Friday evening session, she instructed each of us to pray and ask God to give us one word to serve as a theme for the life “story boards” we would be creating and sharing the next day.
Hearing from God, not audibly but powerfully, seems so natural for Tammie, I’m sure she was confident He would clearly reveal a personal word to each one of us if we asked Him. And based on the comments I heard as we were leaving that first meeting, it seemed like most of the ladies did, indeed, know what their one word was. I, however, did not.
I felt like Dorothy in the “Wizard of Oz” when she realized that although the wizard had courage to give the Lion, a brain for the Scarecrow, and a heart for the Tinman, he had nothing in his bag for her.
“Lord, please, please give me a word,” I prayed again as I drove home that night. I didn’t want to fake it, creating a story board that meant nothing to me, or offer up a lame excuse for not participating in this part of the conference.
But lo and behold, when I was nearly home, out of nowhere a word popped into my head. That word was “purpose,” and I knew it was too clear and too perfect to have come from my weary brain.
Years later, I still have that story board. Purpose has always, for better or worse, played a huge role in my life. But by age 19, what I then perceived as my purpose—chalking up as many fleeting little worldly successes as possible—was already exhausting me. I knew there had to be a greater purpose for my life and I found it when I finally understood and embraced the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I was recently thinking again about “purpose” as I read through the Gospels and was struck by how Jesus could’ve strayed from or even abandoned His purpose, but He didn’t.
As the time for His death and resurrection drew near, Jesus reminded His disciples what was going to happen and why it was necessary, but they just couldn’t seem to grasp it. Neither could the fickle crowds that turned on Him or the religious leaders who should’ve recognized their Messiah, but didn’t.
Even as He agonized over the weight of His purpose, Jesus stayed true to it, saying,
“Now My soul has become troubled; and what am I to say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” (John 12:27-28a)
Our lives reflect our highest purpose. May ours align with that of our Savior, communicated so perfectly in the words He prayed to His Father on the night before He was crucified: “… not My will, but Yours be done.”