The next faithful step

Purpose isn’t always a destination to discover. Sometimes it is knowing what faithfulness asks of us today.

Purpose has become a remarkably large word. We are encouraged to discover it, define it, pursue it and, if possible, build a life around it. Businesses have purpose statements. Books promise to help us identify ours. Careers are expected to provide not merely employment but fulfilment, identity and evidence that our lives are being spent on something worthwhile. Christians add another dimension to the search. We speak of calling, assignment and God’s plan for our lives, language that can give ordinary decisions an almost unbearable significance. Somewhere, we suspect, there is a particular life we were created to live. Our responsibility is to find it.

There is something good in this desire. Few people want to reach the end of their lives believing they spent themselves on things that did not matter. A man wants his work to mean something. He wants to know that the years invested in building a business, raising a family, serving a church, developing a craft or contributing to a community amounted to more than activity. The older he becomes, the more insistent the question can become. Time, once apparently abundant, begins to feel finite. The question changes from What could I do with my life? to What am I doing with the life I have left? Purpose ceases to be the language of youthful possibility and becomes the language of stewardship.

Yet our preoccupation with purpose carries a risk. We can make it so grand that ordinary faithfulness begins to look insignificant. We wait for the defining opportunity, the unmistakable calling, the work that finally brings together our gifts, experience and convictions. We imagine purpose as a destination somewhere ahead of us and therefore regard the present largely in terms of whether it is moving us towards that destination. A job becomes a stepping stone. A difficult season becomes something to get through. Responsibilities that do not appear connected to the larger vision can feel like interruptions. We become so concerned with discovering what our lives are ultimately for that we overlook what faithfulness requires in the life we are already living.

The Bible is considerably less preoccupied with this problem than modern Christians sometimes are. Scripture certainly contains dramatic callings. Moses encounters a burning bush. Samuel hears his name in the night. Isaiah sees the Lord and responds, “Here am I. Send me.” Paul is stopped on the road to Damascus and his life changes direction. These stories are memorable precisely because they are extraordinary. Most of biblical life happens elsewhere: in fields, homes, workshops, families and communities, among people making decisions whose significance they cannot yet see.

David’s story does not begin on a throne. It begins with sheep. Before he leads a nation, he tends animals in relative obscurity, delivers food for his brothers and learns courage in places where nobody is keeping a record of his achievements. Ruth’s place in the biblical story emerges not from a grand strategy for significance but through loyalty to Naomi and the practical necessity of gathering grain. Peter and Andrew are working when Jesus calls them. Paul spends years making tents as well as preaching the gospel. Even Jesus spends far more of his earthly life in the apparent ordinariness of Nazareth than in the three years of public ministry recorded in detail by the Gospels.

Scripture repeatedly gives dignity to the small thing done faithfully.

That can be difficult for men shaped by a culture that admires scale. We notice the person who built the large company, wrote the bestselling book, leads the growing church, commands the room or changed an industry. We rarely hear about the thousands of decisions that preceded whatever became visible. Success stories acquire a retrospective neatness they did not possess while being lived. The uncertain years disappear. False starts become amusing anecdotes. Ordinary work is compressed into a paragraph. Looking backwards, the road appears almost inevitable.

Living forwards feels nothing like that.

A man in the middle of his life may have little sense that the pieces fit together at all. He may have spent years developing expertise in a career that no longer satisfies him. A business he expected to succeed may have failed. A relationship may have altered his plans. Children may have changed what he is willing to sacrifice for work. A move, redundancy, bereavement or unexpected opportunity may have placed him somewhere he never intended to be. He looks at the fragments and wonders what the coherent story is supposed to be.

At such moments, purpose can become another form of pressure. We assume there must be a master plan we are failing to perceive. We ask God for the ten-year vision when what we actually need is enough wisdom for Thursday.

Perhaps the difficulty lies partly in the question. What is my purpose? asks for a comprehensive answer to a life that is still being lived. It assumes we should be able to stand inside the story and understand its architecture while the walls are still going up. Most of us cannot. The significance of particular seasons becomes visible only later, and some may never make complete sense to us. A job that felt like a detour teaches something essential for work we could not then imagine. A disappointment changes our ambitions. A person encountered almost accidentally becomes a lifelong friend. A responsibility we would not have chosen develops a part of our character no success could have produced.

This does not mean that planning is pointless or that calling is imaginary. Men should think seriously about the direction of their lives. There are decisions that deserve sustained prayer, wise counsel and courage. Gifts should be developed rather than buried. Opportunities should be evaluated. There are occasions when faithfulness requires leaving something secure, beginning something uncertain or admitting that a season has ended. A man who never asks where his life is going can drift just as easily as one who spends so long searching for purpose that he never begins.

The distinction is between direction and control. We can have a direction without possessing a map of the entire journey. We can know the kind of man we want to become, the convictions by which we intend to live and the responsibilities we have been given without knowing precisely where those things will lead. In fact, this may be a more recognisably Christian understanding of purpose than the idea that somewhere there is a perfectly tailored role waiting to make us feel fully alive.

Jesus speaks far more often about faithfulness than self-actualisation. His parables praise servants who use what has been entrusted to them. His teaching repeatedly brings attention back to concrete acts of obedience: love God, love your neighbour, forgive, give, pray, serve, tell the truth, care for those who are overlooked, remain faithful with what belongs to another person as well as with what belongs to you. None of these requires us first to identify our life’s grand purpose. They can be practised before breakfast.

That is both liberating and inconvenient. It is liberating because we do not have to solve our entire lives before living them well. It is inconvenient because the next faithful step is often considerably less glamorous than the future we enjoy imagining.

A man may believe he is called to lead, while the next faithful step is apologising to his wife. He may have a vision for a business, while faithfulness currently means paying a supplier what was promised even though cash is tight. He may feel drawn towards ministry, while an ageing parent needs his attention. He may want to make a difference in the lives of men, while his own son is waiting for him to put down his telephone. He may spend months asking God whether he should change careers when the clearest thing before him is to stop doing mediocre work in the job he already has.

We naturally prefer the large assignment because it flatters our sense of significance. Small obedience rarely does.

Nobody applauds the man who keeps a promise that would have been convenient to break. There is no audience when he closes the laptop and goes upstairs because he told his family he would finish work at six. Nobody knows that he declined the opportunity because taking it would have required a compromise he was unwilling to make. The apology may never be mentioned again. The temptation resisted leaves no visible achievement. The friend telephoned at the right moment may never explain how much the call mattered.

Yet lives acquire their shape through precisely these decisions.

Character is not constructed mainly in the moments we would choose for our biography. It develops through repetition. A truthful man becomes truthful by telling the truth when lying would be useful. A generous man becomes generous through acts of generosity, many of which nobody sees. A faithful husband is formed through thousands of small decisions to honour a covenant, not through one dramatic declaration of devotion. A man who can be trusted with significant responsibility usually learned trustworthiness while carrying responsibilities that seemed insignificant.

This is one reason Jesus’ parable of the talents remains so challenging. The commendation is not, “Well done, good and impressive servant,” or even, “Well done, good and successful servant.” It is “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The servants are evaluated according to what they did with what had been entrusted to them. The principle is easily admired and rather harder to live, because it shifts attention away from the assignment we would like and towards the one already in our hands.

That can be especially important during seasons that feel small. Not every decade of a man’s life will be expansive. There are years of building and years of maintaining, years when opportunities multiply and years when responsibility narrows our choices. A new father may temporarily have less freedom than he once did. A man caring for ageing parents may find his world becoming smaller just when his peers appear to be enjoying greater freedom. Financial difficulty may require remaining in work he would rather leave. Illness, grief or family circumstances may make ambitious plans temporarily unrealistic.

We can resent those seasons because they do not resemble the life we thought we were supposed to be living. Yet purpose is not suspended simply because progress is difficult to measure. Caring for somebody who cannot repay us is not a diversion from a meaningful life. Raising children is not an interruption before we return to more important work. Keeping a household together through a difficult year may demand more courage than launching something impressive. Showing up faithfully when nobody is particularly interested may be forming qualities that success never could.

Sometimes the next faithful step is not forward in any conventional sense. It is staying.

That possibility deserves more attention in a culture fascinated by reinvention. There are certainly moments when courage requires leaving, but there are others when leaving is easier than remaining. The marriage that needs patient rebuilding, the business passing through a difficult season, the church community whose imperfections have become irritating, the friendship requiring an uncomfortable conversation: novelty can masquerade as calling just as easily as fear can masquerade as prudence. Not every closed feeling indicates a closed door.

Nor is staying always faithful. Loyalty can become avoidance. Men sometimes remain in situations long after wisdom has made clear that change is necessary because familiarity feels safer than uncertainty. This is why discernment cannot be reduced to slogans. The next faithful step is not always the obvious one, and it is rarely identified by asking which option causes the least discomfort.

This is where other men can become invaluable. We are poor judges of our own motives, particularly when we strongly desire a particular outcome. A friend who knows our history may recognise that what we are calling patience is actually fear, or that what we are calling boldness looks suspiciously like restlessness. He may remind us of commitments we made when emotions were quieter. He may ask whether we are running towards something or merely away from something else. Purpose becomes less intoxicating when discussed with people who are unimpressed by our personal mythology.

Good counsel does not make the decision for us. There comes a point when a man has to act. He gathers the facts, prays, listens, examines his motives and then accepts that faithfulness cannot remain theoretical. The telephone call must be made. The application must be submitted or withdrawn. The conversation must happen. The cheque must be written. The habit must stop. The first page must be written. The forgiveness must be offered. The help must be requested.

This is where our fascination with purpose can sometimes become an elegant form of procrastination. It is possible to spend years thinking deeply about what God might want us to do eventually while neglecting what we already know he wants from us now. We wait for clarity about the large question while ignoring obedience in the small one. We ask for a platform while being careless with the people already listening. We ask God for greater influence while being unreliable with the responsibilities that carry none.

There is a useful question for moments like these: What is the next thing I already know to be faithful?

Not the most impressive thing. Not the thing that guarantees success. Not the thing that resolves every uncertainty. Simply the next thing.

Sometimes the answer will be spiritual in the obvious sense: pray, forgive, confess, return to Scripture, seek counsel. Sometimes it will look entirely ordinary: finish the work, make dinner, arrive on time, tell the truth, go home, keep the appointment, answer the message, get some sleep. The distinction between sacred and ordinary becomes rather less convincing when we begin to understand life as stewardship.

There is also wisdom in making the step appropriately small. Men who become dissatisfied with their lives can be tempted towards dramatic correction. We want to quit the job, launch the company, transform the marriage, lose thirty pounds, read the Bible in ninety days and become a completely different person by the end of the quarter. Grand plans create emotional momentum. Ordinary habits create lives.

A marriage may begin changing because one man decides to listen properly tonight. A neglected faith may begin recovering because he opens the Bible tomorrow morning before opening his email. A friendship may deepen because he sends one message that says more than “We should catch up sometime.” A career transition may begin not with resignation but with one conversation, one course or one application. A calling may begin with serving three people well before anybody asks us to serve three thousand.

We often discover purpose retrospectively. The individual steps may have felt disconnected while we were taking them, but over time a pattern becomes visible. Skills acquired in one season find unexpected use in another. Pain we would never have chosen becomes compassion we could not have learned from a book. Relationships formed without strategic intent become central to work we had not yet imagined. Doors close and redirect us. Things we thought were endings become preparation.

Joseph could not have understood the architecture of his life from the bottom of the pit. Peter could not have seen Pentecost from the courtyard where he denied knowing Jesus. The biblical story repeatedly reminds us that a moment can be significant without the person living it understanding its significance.

Perhaps ours can too.

This should produce humility about the stories we tell concerning our own lives. We are always interpreting unfinished material. The setback we currently regard as disastrous may remain a genuine loss; Christianity does not require us to pretend pain is pleasant simply because God can redeem it. But neither do we know everything a particular season may yet produce. Meaning is sometimes revealed only after enough of the story has been written.

In the meantime, we have today.

That may sound smaller than a purpose statement, but it is where every purpose must eventually be lived. No man loves his family in the abstract. He loves particular people through particular acts on particular days. Nobody becomes a man of integrity in theory. Integrity appears in decisions. Faith is not demonstrated primarily by the ambitions we describe but by what we do when obedience becomes inconvenient.

Perhaps a meaningful life is therefore less like unveiling a master plan and more like laying stones on a path. Each one can seem unimpressive by itself. Some are placed confidently; others with considerable uncertainty. There are stretches when the direction is clear and others when we can barely see beyond where we are standing. We may occasionally discover that we have walked in the wrong direction and need to turn around. Grace allows for that too.

But eventually there is a road where once there was only ground.

One day, if we are fortunate, we may look backwards and see a coherence we could never have designed from the beginning. We may understand why certain doors opened and remain puzzled by others that closed. We may discover that some of the work we considered most significant mattered less than we imagined, while small acts we barely remember changed somebody else’s life. We may realise that purpose was present in seasons we spent wishing away.

Until then, perhaps we can release ourselves from the burden of having to understand the whole story.

We can ask what has been entrusted to us, pay attention to the people already beside us, listen for the wisdom of God, invite good men to tell us the truth and do the next thing we know to be faithful. Then tomorrow, if it comes, we can do it again.

A life can be built that way.

One faithful step at a time.