Purpose Edition (January/February 2019)

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2019 OHBELOVEDONE.COM LOVE GOD. LOVE PEOPLE.
LOVE GOD.
by janell wood
I had found my purpose. I knew then that
I wanted my life to be characterized by
loving God and loving people.
I consider myself
a passionate
communicator. I love to
write. I love to tell stories. I
love to talk about Jesus Christ
and how he’s set me free. I love to
encourage others and laugh along with
them about life’s hilariousness (because
for real, life is crazy some days). I’m
thankful to be blogging every week and
co-hosting a mini podcast along these
lines.
I feel like I’m living an abundant
purpose-filled life.
When I was eighteen years old, a speaker
came to my university and shared this
simple phrase, “Love God. Love people.
Nothing else matters.”
It was a paraphrase of what Jesus said
when he was asked about the greatest
commandment. But somehow, when I
was eighteen, it was a total aha moment.
But then I kinda obsessed over this: how
would I do that exactly?
In fact, that became the big question. I
knew I loved to write and share from
my heart. That had been a passion of
mine since I was a little girl. But instead
of looking at God for answers, I started
looking at myself and looking around me.
I became overly focused on the HOW
instead of the WHO.
HOW would it look like to live a life
serving Jesus? Forgetting to ask the
question, “WHO is it I am I living for?”
I looked at how other people were doing
their things. And I started measuring my
performance with theirs. I felt insecure
about my story-telling abilities. Maybe I
wasn’t good enough? I felt frustrated with
myself about the desire to be seen. Maybe
I was just being a narcissist? I felt like I
was doing a bad job at x,y, and z because
my friend, so-and-so, did things a different
way.
Do you know what I’m talking about?
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