John Murphy:
This is the Rock House Center Podcast and I'm John Murphy.

Beth Murphy:
I'm Beth Murphy and our podcast today is about discovering your life purpose. I have certainly asked it and I've heard it said ever since becoming a Christian that I just want to know God's plan for my life. Or people express it as wanting to know God's calling. Certainly it's a theme with our counseling clients at Rock House that they want to know, there's this pull, there's an internal pull to know God's life purpose.

John Murphy:
There is a lot of desire and a lot of frustration as well around the question of what God's plan is for an individual's life. Pretty common conversation among not only our clients, but just Christians in general. Everybody wants to know what God's plan is for their life. There are frustrations around it in some specific categories where people are wondering what their purpose is and question why it is that after years and years of thinking or praying and asking God about it, why it is that they don't know. And there are those who thought they really knew and they acted on their best understanding, only to really be frustrated with how the pursuit turned out, because it didn't turn out as well as they thought it was, or the fullness or the fulfillment that they were looking for didn't really materialize. And then there are some who have even gotten to a point where they're frustrated with God and they're mad at him because they feel like they were on God's track and maybe just never really came together or they had a really disappointing outcome or some sort of struggle came along, which they link to the whole question of calling. And they find themselves pretty frustrated and sort of sideways with God.

Beth Murphy:
Certainly with clients who come to Rock House, it may be struggling with any number of different things. But there's a common theme underneath it that they've given up on what they thought was or just even given up on the pursuit of finding God's calling, His purpose in their life. And that giving up sometimes leads people to then give up on their faith or walk away from God or distance themselves from God through disappointment and in this sort of yearning, sometimes a burning quest to know what's their purpose. It's posed sometimes as a question about meaning, value, worth, goals in life, why am I here, bigger picture of life. There are all kinds of ways it gets expressed, but there's clearly an undercurrent yearning to understand our life purpose.

John Murphy:
And we're going to get into that and how we actually can come to know our life purpose, but I do just want to pick up on the one thing you said about worth. That is so important and it really adds to the level of frustration and the yearning, the sort of unfulfilled yearning that people can have because they've got their worth wrapped up in this whole idea of what their purpose is. And that's an important disconnect that needs to occur if that connection is being made and people are living in that connection because knowing and fulfilling your calling does not establish worth. It establishes satisfaction and establishes a lot of very positive, fulfilling, deep things. But as far as worth being associated with purpose, those need to be disconnected because we need to understand that our worth cannot be established by us or any work or anything that we do. We have to understand that our worth is absolutely and completely established from one source and that is God's love for us, and He is not about performance-based love. So the whole idea of performing in a calling, that that is going to have something to do with validating God's love or validating salvation or any of those things is a misunderstanding, and it creates a lot of frustration, and it adds to the level of angst that people suffer when they feel like they can't connect with their purpose because they're not being able to, in their mind, connect with getting the worth that we all need to be at peace.

Beth Murphy:
That is tremendously important, and is a source of a lot of why the quest becomes painful for people at times, because they feel like they're on a quest to establish their worth. That giant disconnect is a starting place for answering this quest is just what you said, which is disconnecting the two here, and resting in, receiving the worth God established for us, just when he chose you and set you apart and has made it clear that you're precious in his sight, that he delights in you just as you are, not dependent on anything you do, achieve, or accomplish. There is a way, or may be best described as a process that's in scripture that shows all believers the way to knowing God's purpose for your life. There are many scriptures that point to the answer, but a couple stand out as very directly telling God's people how to discern our life purpose.

John Murphy:
There are so many scriptures that point to this, but I think the ones that really stand out for me that are just so clear, and I love it when you can find a scripture that's laying that out in very simple terms. And again, just want to say all these scriptures are quoted out of the Amplified Classic Bible. The first one is Romans 12:2, Do not be conformed to this world, this age, fashioned after or adapted to its external or superficial customs, but be transformed, changed by the entire renewal of your mind, by its new ideas and new attitude, so that you may prove for yourself what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God, even the thing which is good, acceptable, and perfect in his sight for you. This is the foundational understanding that God has this plan and it is about us being transformed. And we'll talk a minute about transformed into what. But through the transformation process, we've come to a place of understanding what God's will is. Well, if we're trying to figure out what our purpose is, obviously level one, the purpose of all people is to progressively understand God's will so that they can understand the leading that reveals their purpose in their life. So level one, do not be conformed, but to be transformed so that you'll understand God's perfect will. The thing that really relates specifically is the very last phrase here in the scripture that says, Even the thing which is good and acceptable and perfect in His sight for you. What you're seeing there or hearing there is a reference to a specific plan for your life that He has for you, and it comes as the second phase of first understanding His will. So transformation, sanctification, purification, all of those words that relate to change, those are the concepts that as we engage those things and those things that are occurring in our life, we're able to ultimately come to a place of understanding God's will and God's plan for our life.

Beth Murphy:
People express those thoughts, boiling it down to, I want to have a more Christian life, I want to be more like Jesus, just be a better Christian. Well, that is the result of pursuing this track of transformation. There is no other way there. It's not going to happen because we discipline ourselves into it. If that were possible, then we wouldn't need a Savior who saves us and transforms us. Getting into the depth of the meaning here, Romans 8:29, that big picture plan for your life is He wants to make you like His Son inwardly. 29, again Amplified Classic, For those whom He foreknew, of whom He was aware and loved beforehand, He also destined from the beginning, foreordaining them, to be molded into the image of His Son, and share inwardly His likeness, that he might become the firstborn among many brethren. This is an enormous concept, and of course, is the only faith where the truth is revealed of who God really is, because we're worshiping the real God. He wants us to share, to inwardly share his likeness. That means his character, not acting like him, not having a to-do list where I'm going to try to look like him through the decisions I make that cover up my inner being. He wants to change us inwardly. So as we're inwardly sharing in His likeness, the fruit of our life will resemble His life, just as a natural result. It's the resting in Him version of how the fruit of our life changes. So the more that we are like Christ, we'll understand God's will and His perfect and pleasing personal will for our lives. And the fascinating thing about it is, back up to Romans 12:2, that this whole thing of knowing, discerning His good and acceptable and perfect will for you personally, it isn't knowable until you're in this place described by Romans 8:29, where you're on a transformation track, where He's changing you to be more like the character of Christ inwardly. That is what empowers us to have any understanding of what His will for our lives would be.

John Murphy:
I think it's important to pick up on this word, destined from the beginning, foreordaining them to be molded into the image of His Son. It is clearly a calling. It is clearly something that God has foreordained. It is clearly a plan that God has for your life. And so this phrase, He has also destined from the beginning foreordaining them to be molded into the image of His Son. So there you go. There's another very clear understanding of that there's a direction here, and what the ultimate target on the wall is, is for us to share inwardly the character of Christ Himself. Now we're not in this on our own. If you look at Romans 8:28, it also goes on to say that we are sure to know that God, being a partner in their labor, all things work together and are fitting into a plan for good to and for those who love God and are called according to His design and purpose. Well, what's the design and purpose? He is foreordained. Mold us into the image of His Son. That's the design and purpose. And God is a partner in this process. So it's important to recognize that this is not something that we are to labor in on our own. This is something that we are to go to God for and to engage Him from a perspective of trust and faith and allow Him to make these changes and to trust where He's taking it and how He gets us there. The other important aspect of the, I guess the tool that I want to reference is, or the entity or the energy or the emphasis that God places on us or in us is the Holy Spirit. He said in 2 Thessalonians 2:13, the Scripture says, God chose you as his first fruit for salvation, okay, that's the first step, through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit. So what we can see here is that the Holy Spirit, who has been dispatched to us and is within all Christians, is in a constant work of sanctification. So again, God is working this process of having us become transformed, to become sanctified, so that we understand his will and more specifically understand the specific aspects of the call he has for our life. We are not alone in this. The Holy Spirit, which we want to be sensitive to and cooperate with in this process, it's not about us going off on our own in our own strength and our own energy trying to pull this off. It's just like everything else with God. If He's got a calling on your life, He's the one that's going to make that calling come through. Our job is to trust in and lean in and lean on Him to accomplish that.

Beth Murphy:
A basic mindset that will get you on down the road to transformation is to be open and willing, or even just outright inquiring, pursuing knowing, asking God how your heart is unlike the character of Jesus, and ask for God to help by revealing the gap to you. We think of it like kind of a gap analysis. We've got our hearts, and none of us have the heart of Jesus, so all of us have traits that differ from the character of Christ. He's all about forgiveness, truth, love, oneness with the Father, humility, no idols, total trust in God. Well, all of us have some of the opposite of those things by virtue of being fallen people who need a Savior and need to be sanctified. So asking God, step one, for the humility to open yourself up, to allow the Lord to reveal it to you. Just what is it that I need to open up to you, Lord, so that you can progressively change me, mold me, cleanse my heart, give me the forgiveness of Christ, the humility of Christ, the oneness with God, the trusting in God, the no desire for dependency on things other than God, where God wants to have us dependent on Him. So pursuing God by opening yourself up to reveal the gap between your heart and the heart of Christ.

And then the greatest barrier to getting access to your personal life purpose comes from the opposite of that. Basically, stiff-arming God's changing process, His transforming process. The proposition of our faith is that we are to be changed inwardly to have more and more of the heart of Christ. The more that we resist that, because we don't want to look at ourselves and we want to kind of look at whatever exterior we've created, well, that's a barrier to knowing your purpose. Not trusting God's plan over our plan for purpose, which is of course a snag in every aspect of our lives where we get a strategy and we want to control our life for that strategy. We even want to control God. We want to impose our specification on God to have a purpose that I like or that I understand or is what seems like would be the obvious or logical thing I want to pluck out and have that be my purpose or maybe I'm sort of envious of somebody else's purpose. And so I'm trying to get God to go on a certain track. All of that, that's just us. That's our control and that's us creating all these barriers to the rich, gratifying, wonderful place of just, I think of like getting on God's moving sidewalk, just get on His track and let Him take you down that moving sidewalk, moving you more and more toward the purpose that He preordained for your life before He fully formed you in your mother's womb. Just trusting in Him, He's got the big plan in mind, He is the Creator, He is the big plan source. And that's who you want to trust.

John Murphy:
I think I just want to relate a little bit from a personal experience in terms of how this has all played out in our lives, or I'll just speak to mine and you can give more specifics on yours. But the whole reason that we founded Rock House Center is because of a sense of purpose that this was the direction God took us. But that didn't happen just because we woke up one day and we were saved, and then the next thing we got was a purpose. It took many years, and it really began with our personal transformation. And for me, the thing that most moved me and most was a life-directing thing was when I had my first experience with transformation through forgiveness. Through that forgiveness, I had a tremendous amount of depression lifted off of me, and that's part of my story, is that that's really where it all, transformation really started for me, obviously after salvation, which we know is the first fruit of the working of sanctification. But after that, there was the time in which I was able, through God's strength and the desire to honor Him, was able to break through and forgive a lot of people that I didn't want to forgive. And the result of that was a tremendous amount of depression lifted off of me, years of life of depression, really. That was a wonderful experience, and wow, the faith is really powerful and how great I was the Lord.

But the other thing that came with that was a real hunger for other people to have what just happened to me. There was an interesting thing that occurred there where there was a change in me from a transformational perspective because obviously after forgiveness, I to some degree reflected more of the character of Christ in that. That was the outcome of that. But then there was this thing that followed up, which was a hunger to have other people experience what this was like. And then as more and more transformation came over time and the more things that I realized that were about my heart and I went to God with and got and repented of and He was able to shift the way life felt. It just increased and increased and increased until ultimately the book was written and then we moved into counseling other people and founding Rock House Center and all those events. That was a progression, and it all started with a transformational movement within me individually, and then it was the progression of that, and as that progression occurred, the clarity that I need to move away from corporate jobs like I had in the past, working for two public companies, and moving into a full-time trying to help people experience what it is that I experienced and wanting this for them. Clearly where we are today is because that was a transformational thing, I began to more and more reflect to a smaller degree, incrementally, over time, more of Christ's character inside in terms of what motivated me. I was more able to understand God's will and then the clarity of the direction of Rock House Center and bringing this to other people. That's the story of kind of how you end up on your life purpose. But it didn't start with just asking God for life purpose. It started with recognizing a need I had to deal with a heart condition, a character issue of mine, and that over the years it turned into the understanding of where the purpose came from. So that's one person's experience and how it all came to be, but this really does validate this process that God has laid out for us to be transformed, to be sanctified, and to progressively understand what His purpose is for us.

Beth Murphy:
Likewise with me, certainly a starting place in God getting access years before any clue of a sense of life's purpose. But just starting on the transformation process certainly was the initial forgiveness breakthrough that also was tied to freeing from depression and from terrible headaches. But I would say too, as we went through the years, kind of a second stage rocket breakthrough for me was the realization of my enormous level of dependency on other people's opinions to try to establish a counterfeit sense of worth and value. And the realization, I remember where I was sitting when the realization came to me, that that had owned me for my whole life and that that was a cause of my suffering in that season of my life where I was just miserable in a certain situation and couldn't understand why I was so miserable and where in the world it was coming from. And the Lord kindly revealed to me the depth of my dependency on external things to try to validate worth, which is a pointless, empty strategy that always leads to despair.

John Murphy:
I think it's time to offer up a prayer and invite anybody in who would like to begin this process in their life, or maybe they want to accelerate it, or they may already be in part of it and maybe don't even recognize what aspect of the transformation that's already occurred. But wherever you are, it's helpful, I think, for anyone to engage in this prayer, just asking God to help accelerate, help understand, to remove some of the barriers and to tune our heart or make our heart available for God's work to transform us. So if this whole idea of transformation and sanctification as a progression to accessing your life and understanding what your life purpose is, I invite you to engage in this prayer right now. Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me perfectly. And thank you that your love is the true and only source of my worth and significance. Thank you for having a perfect plan fill my divine need to know and operate in your purpose for my life. I declare that only your plan can fill this need. Please forgive me for any way I have been unwilling to submit to your plan. Lord, open my heart to reject any part of my character that does not reflect the character of Jesus, and is willing to accept Your plan to transform my life. Please forgive me for putting requirements on Your plan, or seeking any other purpose to try to fill my divine needs than with the plan You have for me. Father, I praise you for how trustworthy you are, and ask for you to give me the energy and the desire to submit to your plan. I pray these things in the name of Jesus, amen.

Beth Murphy:
Amen, and if you want to go deeper, we've got a great video right on this whole concept that develops it much more thoroughly. It's called Divine Purpose, and you can watch it at no cost, just send us your e-mail address to divinepurpose@rockhousecenter.com so that we can send you access to this video.

John Murphy:
Yes, it really is a deep dive. It's over 50 minutes long, and we would love to share it with you.

Beth Murphy:
Thanks for joining us today, and please share this as a resource for anybody that you think would be blessed. And of course, give us a call or send us an e-mail at Rock House Center if you want to know anything more about our services. Thanks and bless you.

John Murphy:
Thanks for joining us. Goodbye.