When Everything Around You Is Fighting Your Purpose: PDL Insights Part 15


When Everything Around You Is Fighting Your Purpose: PDL Insights Part 15


Why Many Fail to Fulfill Their Purposes After Discovering Them

As we continue discussing why many people fail to discover The Purpose Driven Life (PDL) or to embrace it to the end upon discovery, we move on to what I have called the social base. The social base is just the environment that we grow in and in most cases it is where we get our sense and interpretation of self from. Most of the time we fail to fulfil our purposes because the idea of purpose is alien and foreign in most of the environments that we are raised in hence we do not have strong enough reasons why we have to live Purpose Driven Lives.


Behavioural Psychology says that there are two primary motivators of success and these are the fear of pain and the pursuit for pleasure. Most of our actions are motivated by these two forces. Most people are driven by the fear of pain and hence have motivation to avoid the pain and start working towards their goals. This motivation however will not be enough once the person escapes the pain. The major motivation would be finding enough other reasons that go with our inner values why we must succeed. What will happen if you don’t succeed? If your answer is nothing, then you do not have enough fuel to take you through especially when you meet challenges and obstacles on your way.


We usually have challenges in realising and fulfilling our purposes in life because we are not aware of the existence of purpose and if we do, we are not developed and skilled for it. The social environment we grow in does not assist in developing us for purpose. I have always talked about how the rate at which the world is evolving is way faster than the rate at which people are evolving to cope. This is because the major institutions that develop people are changing at a very slow rate hence failing to cope with what the environment is demanding from people.


Looking at institutions like education, church, family, governments or local authorities, there is minimum investment in them to capacitate them to improve on quality and be effective instruments to develop enough people with a capacity of coping with the complex world. The corporate world and capitalist idea of profit is leading all change. When it comes to individual development the system has not fostered a culture of personal development.


Most personal development has been motivated by the capitalistic education system to be employable. People generally do not think of personal development other than improving employability therefore when it comes to the necessary skills for individual success in all aspects of life, people lack the most important skills required for success especially The Purpose Driven Life (PDL). Let us begin to look at the aspects in our social environment that influence our journeys to living purposeful lives.


Marriage and family
The first institution that has the potential to develop and support us for the PDL is that of marriage and family. The family institution should be a supportive environment that supports us for fruitfulness. It should be a sanctuary where we go to or where we stand on to tackle the pressures of the world system that is designed to destroy our lives and separate us from our true identity. Going back to the creation story of man, we see the establishment of the first family. Before Adam was given a wife he was given a purpose first. The purpose was dominating the earth starting with tending the garden. His wife is brought into the picture to be a helper meet (suitable, adapted, complementary) for him. [Genesis 2:18] AMP


With the earlier identified challenges of most people not being aware of The Purpose Driven Life, marriages and families have not been very supportive. Most people have been side-tracked from The Purpose Driven Life by marriage and family. They have not gotten support from their spouses and family. Sometimes it seems as if marriage and families have become greatest hindrances to purpose. Because family members are not wired to understand about purpose they put so much pressure that drains your energy and kill your voice. This is because we would value the comfort of family at the expense of our voices and inner values. This explains why the Apostle Paul commented on how marriage can drain energy saying,


I want you to live as free of complications as possible. When you're unmarried, you're free to concentrate on simply pleasing the Master. Marriage involves you in all the nuts and bolts of domestic life and in wanting to please your spouse, leading to so many more demands on your attention. The time and energy that married people spend on caring for and nurturing each other, the unmarried can spend in becoming whole and holy instruments of God. [1 Corinthians 7:32-35 THE MESSAGE Bible]


This should not however scare you into getting married as some have managed marriage and purpose and allowed each to support the other. People who have made an impact in life have however sometimes had to temporarily stand their ground and go against the advice of family for their purpose to take shape. It is when your conviction of purpose has begun showing fruit that you will be able to mend strained relationships. I am a living testimony to this. My PDL path seemed foolish to my family as I had to leave a degree program I was pursuing and take a different path. No one in my family was on my side to take the path I took but I stood with my inner convictions. It is when things began to take shape that I began to mend broken relationship and now all the people appreciate that I took that path.


If put to effective use however, marriage and family can be a good platform to develop the necessary character. With the right attitude we can maximise on whatever we get from our families. The resistance and sometimes opposition and lack of support can be blocks used by God to shape our character and test our convictions. Personally in my path I was earlier prophetically advised that I would meet the opposition from family and church so that I would develop the capability to withstand rejection. This capacity would then be necessary to capacitate me to stand in a more brutal environment that would not be supportive when I would take a path that challenges its norms and standards. I remember Mike Murdock in one of his books talking about how the family usually would create an environment to prepare us for whatever we would face in the pursuit of purpose. There would be people and circumstances that would typify the opposition of the enemy and the support of the counterparts and the right attitude will help us benefit from both. This echoes to the words of one who lived a PDL to the fullest who said,

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. [Romans 8:28]


System of This World
If you do not allow God to tell you who you are, the system of this world will and you are in great trouble if you start small – Coach Tarie: The Wisdom Garden (Volume 1)

Still on the social base, the general system of the world is designed by the enemy to stop you from fulfilling your divine purpose. In one presentation by Dr Lance Wallnau quoting a study that had been done in America said that, “By the time an average girl reaches the age of 15, she would have had some 13000 hours of comparison forced upon her in media telling her what she ought to look like and be like in order to be cool.” Research also says that it takes 10 000 hours of training for one to become a professional in anything. This means that by the time someone reaches that age they are professionals in disqualifying themselves and proving why they can’t do and be something.


This shows that The Purpose Driven Life (PDL) paradigm should be incorporated in the raising of children so that they grow with the right perception and attitude. This explains why sometimes when our purposes confront us we fail to embrace them because they seem to be way out of our reach as compared to our current positions. Many people in the bible doubted their capabilities when they encountered their purposes. Most of them tried to find excuses when their purposes confronted them.
Moses talked of his speaking challenges, Simon Peter and Isaiah talked of their uncleanness and Gideon tried to give excuses saying, 

"Please Lord, how am I to rescue Israel? Behold, my family is the least [significant] in Manasseh, and I am the youngest (smallest) in my father's house." [Judges 6:15]


With this attitude where we see ourselves with the wrong lenses we feel not adequate enough to take bigger responsibilities hence disqualify ourselves from our purposes. Reconnecting ourselves with our true identity is therefore necessary to be able to accept our purposes.


Culture is designed, when it’s under the influence of the devil to rob you of your uniqueness and make you feel by comparison to an unreal standard that you do not measure up. Our culture has not trained us to be responsible for our destiny. It has not taught us to be architectures of our own destiny so the majority of the people from an African perspective do not see themselves as responsible to what their lives will become.


Most people think that wherever their lives will end up is the will of God for their lives. Back from ancient traditional beliefs, those who succeeded did so because the ancestral spirits were appeased and failure and misfortunes was a result of unpleased ancestors. People would pass on skills and trades but not much the mentality of designing one’s desired future. Too much success would be associated with witchcraft activities. This shows why to some extend the social base in the system that we grow under sometimes work against us in pursuing our purposes. We have a responsibility whereby we create a new culture and system that allows those who are following us to be raised with a sense of purpose and responsibility. This is my own reason of existence and I am designing systems that will create this new culture starting with children.


Religion
Religion has also a part that it plays in encouraging or discouraging the PDL. Much of the preaching that came in the colonial era whether deliberate on not came addressing the focus of life as being going to Heaven. Most preaching would make going to Heaven as the primary end in life but failing to address the understanding that going to Heaven is a product of a decision of faith but the status and rewards that one gets in heaven is to the degree that one lived the PDL. People in heaven will be rewarded based on the works that they did and the best way of assuring that you are doing works worthy of rewards is in the good works along the line of your reason of existence.


The preaching that focused on going to heaven which was an incomplete gospel raised people who were of no earthly good. In this way religion robbed people of discovering how they could live fruitful lives for God. Still on religion, we are now invaded by a Prophetic phenomenon that is achieving good results of meeting the needs of people but sometimes at the expense of people living purposeful lives. The movement sometimes makes people rely on the Prophets and see them as ultimate saviors while they fail to discover the potential they have to transform their lives. This kind of thinking expects lives and development to be a product of miracles as opposed to purpose driven work.


The idea of Purpose Driven Living is now beginning to dawn on the church and with minimal understanding on the subject, purpose is defined in line with what one is supposed to do in their church services. People begin to think of purpose along the lines of only what they do in church. This is because they see the founder of the church as the one on a true purpose and the rest with the responsibility of furthering the purpose of the church leader. The gift of the Prophet becomes the only avenue of ministry yet when one identifies their purpose they are more empowered to support the ministry. The percentage of people whose purposes are directly involved in the church operations and facilitating the works of Pastors, Evangelists, Teachers, Prophets and Apostles is very small. The majority of the people have their purposes in the marketplace and when they are effective in that they are better empowered and positioned to win people into the Kingdom from there and also to support the work done by their churches.


It takes revelation to empower people on how they can fully live out their purposes, especially those who are in the religious sphere. The Kingdom of God is fully advanced as people find their way with Kingdom influence into the seven mountains/ spheres of influence which are Politics and Governance, Arts and Entertainment, Business and Economics, Media and Information, Education, Religion and Family. There is so much commotion on the religious mountain because it is the mountain where the idea of purpose has been discovered in the light of the Kingdom of God. People perceive living to minister the word as the only way to minister on a full time basis for the Lord. This has been worsened by the fact that this religious sphere is the only mountain where people have managed to use their spiritual gifts.


People are supposed to manifest spiritual gifts in all the spheres of life. Taking Models from Daniel interpreting dreams, receiving miraculous interventions on their bodies and surviving opposition, this was not happening in the temple but in the marketplace in politics. Joseph saw his gifts manifesting in the marketplace from the prison then in political offices. The same is the case for David. If people will understand the PDL not as it has been defined by the limited understanding of religious minds, many will not start churches but exercise their purposes as they solve political, economic, artistic, informational, educational and family problems.


Dr Lance Wallnau, a minister of the word and a life and business coach, in one of his sermons explains how he was under pressure to move away from the marketplace to ‘full time church ministry’ because of the religious thinking of the day that made people to think that as long as you were not serving full time in church ministry then you were not fully living a PDL. In that confusion the Lord began to reveal to him otherwise, how he was supposed to fulfill his purpose by engaging the church and marketplace ministry together.


To surprise him to the possibility of such, as someone who used to prophecy in church gatherings, one day he felt the same urge he would have when a prophetic word would come while he was in a major business strategic board meeting where he was working. The same way he would give a prophetic word, he gave a business solution in the meeting. After telling them of the business solution and strategy without revealing to them that it was prophecy, he described that as had never happened in any of such meetings, the chairman of the corporation stood and clapped hands for him joined by the rest of the board. The strategy was implemented and changed the returns of the company significantly. Religion still has strongholds that stand in the way for many to discover how they can serve the Kingdom of God faithfully in full time Purpose Driven Lives in the marketplace.


Unpleasant Experiences and Outcomes

People are afraid to fail because they allow failure to define them, but failure is not failure if you take it as a learning process and draw lessons from it and take the price you pay as school fees; it becomes a jewel on your road to success- Coach Tarie: The Wisdom Garden (Volume 1)


Many people have lifetime experiences in their lives that if not well handled with the right attitude which is the God attitude, will disqualify them. We all have our pasts and society can use it to disqualify us from pursuing The Purpose Driven Life (PDL). Experiences taken with the right attitude can be effective on helping us live purposeful lives, but with the wrong attitude can cripple us.


Most people have not been trained how to deal with failure. Failure is not embraced by many but the real truth is that failure is usually a key component of success to those who make it in life. Many people quit or are totally devastated after failing and end up losing the motivation to continue with pursuing their dreams.


In another book that l am writing, ‘Skill factor’, I teach about the ‘art of failure’ as a life skill that we were not taught in school but necessary for success. Society has not taught us to accept failure yet being able to accept and embrace it is a key ingredient to success. In an American study carried on self-made millionaires, they discovered that all of the self-made millionaires had been involved in an average of 18 other business before they got in the ones that made them millionaires. Going for at least 18 different businesses is a sign that they were able to pick themselves up after failure and never allowed failure to stop them pursuing their dreams.


No matter how many times you trip them up, God-loyal people don't stay down long; Soon they're up on their feet, while the wicked end up flat on their faces. [Proverbs 24:16] (THE MESSAGE BIBLE)


Do not let your experiences or failures be tools that society will use to stop you from pursuing your purpose. Do not also use them to disqualify yourself and be your own enemy. Allow me at this time to conclude on discussing how the social base can be a major contributor to you living the full PDL. As discussed, the social base is composed of Marriage and Family, The system of the World, Religion and Culture and all so past unfavourable experiences which can stand on our PDL path. If taken with the right attitude, the social base has good building blocks to fruitful and productive life. In the next insight I will introduce what I have called the Secret Code to Success that helps us unlock the right attitude to success. Let us continue the PDL journey together and create a new culture for ourselves, our counterparts and our children and children’s children.


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