Railroad Tracks.

Sometimes you can’t get to your destination without getting off track first.

I’ve been thinking a lot about habits during the first few weeks of this semester, and especially the difficulty that comes with breaking bad ones. It feels like I have slowly but surely built railroad tracks into my life, and every time I go against one of my habits, I have to somehow derail the train of my life while still keeping it upright, and if I’m not giving it the utmost effort, it’s so easy to just ride the rails. I’ve spent the last year or so trying to build healthy habits, and so with a lot of things riding the rails is really good, but at the same time, I have plenty of habits that are not so great for me.

Somehow, this past spring semester I got the idea into my head that people at Lipscomb University, where I go to school, just didn’t really want to be around me, or me to be around them. Granted, that could be true of some people, which I don’t blame them for, but that’s besides the point. I started to get really, really awkward around people most of the time. Everyone has that friend who pretends not to see them in public even though they know he did, and I think I was that guy a lot of the time last spring. Unfortunately what it did was build railroad tracks into my life so that I just tended to assume that me talking to people would be a bother or an inconvenience to them, and so I didn’t do it. However, I spent a lot of time this summer figuring out, what I guess would be called my purpose. In a journal entry I described it like this;

“I feel a burden on my life to not just live well myself, but also to live a life that invites others into living well, and teaches by example how to do it…I want to not only live a life of resting in [God], but also to spend my life building a place where people are encouraged to lean into that relationship with God themselves, just as they are surrounded by a community that is doing the same.”

I’ve done a lot of derailing of this habit in the past three weeks or so, namely because it’s hit me so incredibly hard that I can’t live a life that calls those around me to something higher if I don’t ever show them the life I’m living. More than that, it’s hard to build a community that invites those who feel like strangers in this world into friendship if I can’t even say ‘hi’ to my friends as I walk around a university campus. Finally, what I believed about the way most people saw me is, at the end of the day, a lie, and I shouldn’t allow myself to believe it.

I heard a speaker say recently that, “I believe we shouldn’t ask people for their permission to serve them, we just do it, and assume they appreciate the help.” I think love is the best (and probably only) way of inviting someone into a better life, and it needs to be treated with the same mentality. I’m going to show people radical, love even in the way I say ‘hi’ to them, even if the way I do it is bothersome at times, or if I make a fool of myself in the process.

However, I write this not to talk about a habit I’m getting rid of, or because I want more people to talk to me on campus (although, seriously, don’t be afraid to, I promise I don’t bite). I’m writing this because at the end of the day, I think it’s so important to live into our purposes as people. For me, that means I have to spend time leaning into God as He slowly forms my life to His image, and continuing to just be friends with people, as He does the hard work of showing Himself through me. I genuinely believe God wants me to enter into friendships, even if they aren’t all super deep ones, expressly so He can use me as a beacon of His presence.

One of my favorite Greek words (and yes, I know how nerdy it is to have a favorite Greek word) is telos. It means something like purpose, and Aristotle said the telos of an arrow is the bullseye at the center of a target. I think I’m realizing what the telos of my life is, and I think it’s pretty much epitomized by that quote a few paragraphs back. What I want you to know is that God didn’t make a single person on this planet without a telos. It’s a part of our makeup as human beings; we’re all going somewhere, but I think it’s important to realize that we control the majority of the direction our lives go in, and not all points on the target are created equal. It’s easy to ride the railroad tracks laid down by this world, but generally speaking, they don’t lead to the bullseye.

If you’re reading this, I want you to know that God has a purpose and an identity for you too. Whether you know exactly what it is, don’t believe anyone or anything that says otherwise. He has entrusted you with good gifts, and He wants to make use of them. That being said, it’s so easy to get so afraid that you don’t do anything at all. If you bury your gifts in the dirt of your fears, your only option is failure. Like the great poet of our era Michael Scott said, “‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.’ — Wayne Gretzky” With that in mind, please, know that you are gifted, and don’t be afraid to lean into what God has given you. That might not mean saying ‘hi’ to everybody you see on campus at a university or trying to plug into a great church. It could be anything from practicing guitar every day so you can play beautiful music to going to class every day so you can do a really good job of refining crude oil.

I want to make a distinction here though, because there’s two parts to this concept of telos. On one hand there’s the part where we live it. For me, that could mean anything from counseling a friend through a breakup next week to planting a church 20 years from now. On the other hand though, there’s things that we do in the now to train ourselves to perform when game time comes. It’s a lot easier to hit the bullseye if you’ve spent an hour every day for 20 years honing your skills with a bow. If you want to be an artist, go start painting. If you want to be a pediatrician, go volunteer with a church’s kids ministry to learn how to relate to children well. If you don’t know what you want to be, a good place to start training is with trying to figure it out, although that will look different for everyone.

Like I said though, I got tricked out of my purpose by lies I told myself last spring. I’ve come to realize that my greatest strengths are all with people, and yet that is also the area of my greatest insecurity. There is some sort of force in this world that does not want God to build His Kingdom here on this earth. How you describe that force is beside the point, but at the end of the day, I think it knows where we all as people are strongest, and how God could do the most through us. As such, our area of greatest potential is often the area of greatest attack.

So if you’re not sure what your purpose is, a good place to start is where your greatest fears of failure are. Now if you already know your purpose, but you’re afraid to try after it, start by asking yourself, “What’s the alternative?” Living a life aimed away from your telos is neither fun, nor good, nor ultimately satisfying, although I can tell you from experience that it is much easier to ride the rails of fear that come with trying.

The thing is that this is on you now. At the end of the day, your telos is your responsibility. Your life will not change in the time it takes for you to read a blog post. However, if you’re willing, something you read can change the course of your life, but that’s more on you than it is on the thing you read. That being said, I believe a change like that comes only from one thing, and that is seeking first God, His Kingdom, and His Righteousness. God can do more to set us on the path to our telos in a single second than we could do in a whole lifetime of trying to bend our spirits to that end. The great part is that He doesn’t have to bend us. Being around Him naturally forms us to His image, and forms our course in life to the telos He intends. Don’t listen to me say it; Jesus did it much better than I ever could, and I hope what He said gives you as much hope as it gives me.

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me — watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28–30, The Message)

So get out there. Derail your train. Hit the target, and change the world.

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Originally published at theforlornemoose.wordpress.com on September 12, 2016.