Does the Bible have something to say about your purpose?

You bet it does! You were uniquely created by God. He knew you before you were born. He put you on the earth in a specific time and place. And He’s given you good gifts that He intends you to use for His glory.

IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED “WHAT AM I ON THIS EARTH FOR?” THIS IS THE EPISODE FOR YOU!

But if all of these things about God’s purposeful design in us are true, why is it so difficult to figure out what we should do with our gifts and our dreams? I’ll be responding to questions about purpose throughout the month of March, including what is purpose, who gives it to us, and why it matters.

In this episode you’ll learn:

💫To understand your life’s unique purpose through the lens of Scripture,

⚙️A practical tool you can use right now to gain deeper insight about your God-shaped dream, and

💛 How close friends/mentors can shed light things you may be unable to see about your gifts and strengths.

This conversation isn’t about finding a dream job or achieving some elusive calling—it’s about recognizing that God’s fingerprints are all over your intricate design. It’s about seeing how your specific gifts, passions, and even struggles are woven into His greater purpose.

Whether you’re feeling stuck, searching, or simply wanting a deeper understanding of your place in God’s story, this episode is a reminder that purpose isn’t just about what we do but about who we become as we allow God to work through us.

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Enjoy This One?

Here are some additional episodes with more food for thought on this topic:

Ep 208: Learning How to Trust God Even When You Doubt Your Purpose Apple | Spotify
Ep 205: How we Partner with God to Fulfill His Purposes in the World w/ Julie Holmquist Apple | Spotify
Ep 217: How You Can Walk Boldly in the Purpose God Has Given You w/ Carla Arges Apple | Spotify

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Grab your copy of the Life Purpose Mapping exercise here: https://www.merrittonsa.com/lifemap

Scripture:

The Parable of the Talents, see Matthew 25:14-30

For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.
We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach;
if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead,
do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.
~ Romans 12:4-8 (NIV)

God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
~ 1 Peter 4:10-11 (NLT)

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me
were written in your book before one of them came to be.
How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!
Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand
~ Psalm 139:13-18 (NIV)

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works,
which God prepared in advance for us to do.
~ Ephesians 2:10

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
~ Ephesians 1:4

In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him
who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we,
who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.
~ Ephesians 1:11-12 (NIV)

PIN IT FOR LATER:

The unedited transcript for this episode of The Devoted Dreamers Podcast follows:

A quick Google search using the title of this episode: The Truth About Your Unique Purpose as a Christian brings up a lot of thoughtful things:

…to let Jesus live His life in you and through you

…to remain a faithful servant of Jesus Christ

…to finding purpose in life by seeing the Lord

…God has His purpose for each and every thing that He created

…God often weaves purpose into the things we are passionate about

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks the question about purpose another way:

Q1: What is the chief end of man?

A: To glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.

And one of the ways we glorify Him and enjoy Him is by using the gifts He’s given us.

So today, on the Devoted Dreamers Podcast we’re talking about purpose!

I’m your host, Merritt Onsa, a Christian life coach. I’m kind of like the Joanna Gaines for women of faith who have big dreams about how God might reorder the second half of your life so you can use your gifts and life experiences to usher in beauty, redemption, healing and service to others. It’s not a redesign of your home that we’re working on. It’s a brand-new way to live—in freedom, free from fear, free from second guessing yourself all the time, and free from the lies that the enemy has used to keep you quiet and playing small in the past. Isn’t it about time more of us who believe in Christ started living that way?

I’m on a mission to engage 10,000 women worldwide to start taking intentional and purposeful steps that will bring their God-shaped dreams to life. If you believe in Jesus and you see his work in your life and you’re aware that you’ve been given gifts, talents and a life story that could serve and benefit others, maybe you’re among those 10,000. I hope that you are, because you’re here listening to a podcast about dreams.

Maybe you’re looking for a chance to see if your dream has legs. You want to try it on for size and figure out if it’s possible. You want to be inspired and encouraged that there’s hope for what you’ve been dreaming all these years. Maybe you’ve been too fearful in the past, or someone dashed your dreams with a comment that hit too close to home, or you just haven’t had time to figure out how to proceed.

Well, my friend, this is your time. This is your space. If you have big ideas for how God could use the gifts he’s given you and the years of your life that remain, and you have a dream that would serve others, let’s figure out how to turn that heartfelt hidden dream into real, actionable plans with impact for God’s kingdom work in the world.

The truth about your unique purpose as a Christian is that God loves you. He made you. You are his beloved. And one of the ways that we glorify him and enjoy him forever, like it said in the answer to question one of the Westminster Catechism is by taking what he's given us, the talents—if you remember the story of the talents—taking the talents that he's given us and using them rather than burying them, go read that parable if you have an extra moment today.

But what I want you to hear, if you are questioning what your purpose is or how God gives you purpose, or how to recognize God's purpose for your life, your purpose is to love him and be loved by him, to exist in the world as his presence towards others.

And there is plenty in Scripture. I've just got a couple of verses to share with you today, but there's plenty in Scripture about the gifts that God's given us and how we are intended to use them.

Romans 12:4-8 in the New International Version says, “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function,”—we don't all have the same gifts—“so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” So we all work together; our gifts work together. Verse 6: “We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.” Use the gift. “If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach. If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.”

God has given each of us unique gifts. He talks about the body elsewhere in Scripture about how the toe shouldn't want to be the eye—okay, I'm not quoting that—a certain part of the body shouldn't want to be another part of the body, because otherwise that piece of the body would be missing, would be absent, would be not utilized as he intended.

1st Peter 4:10–11, this is the New Living Translation: “God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have a gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ, all glory and power to him forever and ever. Amen.”

We have different gifts. Use your gifts. Serve one another with the gifts God has given you. It will bring him glory.

And as I think about the gifts that God has given us, that he knit within us in our mother's womb, in it reminds me of something very vivid that is happening in our small little Colorado church plant. We have eight pregnant women. We are a small PCA church plant, actually, now we have seven pregnant women because a baby was just born a couple weeks ago.

But I know 8 is not a huge number until I tell you that our church has maybe a hundred people. I don't know the current count, but, you know, you could assume that if a lot of those people are married couples, then about half of them are men. Maybe the other half are women. For sure, we have some singles, but there's also a good chunk of our church, maybe a third that are children. You do the math. Eight babies in one year is a lot for a church our size.

And with babies on the brain. Even though I'm officially in menopause now, I cannot help but consider the miraculous, the glorious, the messy process of bringing a child into the world.

As I think about these sweet mamas and mamas to be, I remember my own childbirth experience. And this is the only way. Childbirth is the only way humans come to life, right? There is not a plan B for how humans are made. There is not another way that they are born. We've figured out scientifically and in labs how to mix egg and sperm outside the womb and then implant it back in. But the nurture of human life inside its mother in order to be born into the world many months later, this is by God's design. And thankfully, there is not another way.

I remember thinking about this, having delivered my first child in 2015 and then preparing for my second in 2018, and thinking, isn't it wild with all the modern advances in the world, that this is still the only way that children come into the world? It's miraculous. God's hand is all over it. I don't know how you can not see God's hand all over it.

But you know those apps that declare the size of your baby? Like, this week, your baby is the size of an avocado. Or a few more months down the line, this week, your baby is the size of a melon. What those apps cannot do is know who your baby is going to be.

And what a beautiful mystery God has worked into the design of creating humans and of birthing human life. And God knows, not the apps. God knows who your baby is going to be.

“For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” These are David's words from Psalm 139.

It goes on in verse 15. “My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them. Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.”

Our God. Our Father in heaven knows us intimately. His thoughts of us outnumber the grains of sand on the beach. How precious to me are your thoughts, God. How vast is the sum of them.

What a beautiful mystery. That child is born and becomes, and continues to become all the days of her life.

And you, my friend, are one of those children that God knit together in your mother's womb.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

God prepared good works in advance, before we were born, before the creation of the world, for us to do them. And it brings him pleasure when we live from those good works that he prepared in advance for us to do.

And a couple more verses that I feel are significant as we think about this concept of purpose and how God created us and him putting us in a specific place and time. Acts 17:26, I'll read from the NIV, “From one man he made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth.” And here's what I want you to listen to. “And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands.”

God marked it out. He knew when you were going to be alive. He knew where you were going to live. It is not a mystery to Him. He knows.

And then Ephesians 1:4: “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world, to be holy and blameless in his sight.” And further down, verse 11: “In him we were also chosen, having been having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we who were the first to put our hope in Christ might be for the praise of his glory.”

We exist for the praise of his glory, to love God to make him known and to enjoy him forever.

Knowing all of this—and there is so much more in scripture about how God created us, the purposes for our lives. There's so much more. And knowing that. Have you ever wondered if you are missing out on something that God specifically designed you to do?

I was talking about this with a friend the other day about how our, at least modern society, and I think in America and maybe in other countries, I don't know, but we are kind of programmed to believe that we finish school, like elementary, middle and high school and then many of us go on to college or some sort of additional training and then we enter adulthood and the workforce and we're not really sure what we are meant to do.

I had this experience very vividly when I was 22 years old and called my dad and I was like, I have a college degree that you just paid a ton of good money for and I just can't seem to find any job listings other than answering phones that I feel like I'm qualified for.

And so if you've ever wondered if you're missing out on something that God specifically designed you to do and you're listening to the Devoted Dreamers Podcast, I think that you're in the right place because a lot of us wrestle with this: What was I meant to to do with my life?

You might be feeling like I was made for more than what I'm doing right now. And if understanding your life's purpose or nailing down specifically what your God-shaped dream is, if that's evaded you thus far, all hope is not lost. If you are still on this earth, God has a plan for your life.

And having come personally from the field of higher education, I'm a huge fan of these very practical tools that help us see things about ourselves that we might otherwise miss. Because we're too close to the subject to examine it without bias, we can't really see ourselves. Have you ever heard of the Johari Window? This is something I remember from psychology classes in undergrad. It's probably one thing I remember of not very many others, but how there are parts of us that we see and others see, and parts of us that others see and we don't see, and things that we know about ourselves that others don't, and then things that nobody knows about us.

So I have put together for you the Life Purpose Mapping exercise and I'm going to ask you this week, between this episode and the next, to spend some time mapping out your life. I'm going to ask you to break it into decades. You don't have to look at, like, 1992 and 1993 and 19... I mean, you might want to, depending on your age.

But what I'm asking you to look for in this exercise, keep it doable, but look at the decades of your life and identify the big turning points, the transitions, big realizations or decisions that you made, not just milestones: “I graduated from college.” Not just a milestone. I want to know. I want you to know. What were the significant events in your life that shaped you? They might be jobs that you held, jobs that used your gifts or not. It might be things that you've discovered energize you or things that drain you. Maybe there were some hurts or wounds in your past that left a mark that still impact you today. Those should go on the mapping exercise.

Experiences where you felt purposeful, like your gifts were being used. And then I want you to look for recurring themes throughout the journey. There's multiple pages to this set of worksheets, all based on seasons of your life, age, and decades. And so I want you to complete those for however old you are right now, and then go back and look for themes. Look for recurring themes in the journey of your life, the life that God knitted together in your mother's womb, that he gave purpose to from before the beginning of time. And I want you to begin to notice those themes, maybe even some skills or talents that others recognized in you that maybe you thought, not a big deal.

Like, people used to tell me often. I mean, a lot of those people were my mom, but, “Merritt, you're such a good writer.” And I kind of, like, blew it off, you know? Like, I had a teacher that said I wasn't really that great. And so I don't know if you're actually, you know, if that's actually true, but I want you to pay attention for those things.

In fact, as you do this, pray for insight. Ask God to open your eyes to things that maybe you haven't seen before. If you've done an exercise like this in the past and talk to people who know you well, ask them, what do you see me uniquely gifted at that other people don't necessarily have? That doesn't come natural to everyone. What do you see in me? So ask two to five people what gifts they see in you, and then add all of those to this worksheet.

I need to tell you how to get the worksheet. You'll find it at https://www.merrittonsa.com/lifemap

If you have struggled to understand your gifts, your purpose, the way those things intertwine to form a God-shaped dream or any sort of idea of how you might live out your life purposefully walking in the gifts that God has given you.

That link again is https://www.merrittonsa.com/lifemap.

Go download it. Go spend some time on that over the next several days and maybe even as you're going through this process. Show your work to a friend or a mentor or church leader, somebody who knows you well, and say, “Am I missing anything here? Do you see themes that I don't see?” Ask for their insights about your skills and your gifts. What have you seen me uniquely qualified to do?

Discovering purpose this is a journey, not a destination. So if you have done some of this work before, maybe go dig that out and pick up where you left off or use it to enhance the time that you spend doing this this week.

This journey though is a combination of ongoing self-discovery and revelation from God, so definitely soak this in prayer.

In fact, before we go, I want to pray for you in this process:

Heavenly Father, I just pray for this sister listening right now to this episode that you would reveal to her the significance of who you created her to be. Not that she would get a big head about it, but that she would rightfully acknowledge her creator and her existence as an image bearer of you in the world and that she would no longer or not at all diminish the gifts that you've given her, that you would actually help her to see them with insight, with introspection, with wisdom, with humility and a sense of awe of what you have uniquely wired her with and to do.

And she may not know the specific answers to what those gifts are for at this time, but God, I pray that she would know you more through this journey of exploring how you've created her and that it would cause her to marvel at you, at your beautiful creation within her and in each human around her. Thank you, Jesus. We love you so much for how you loved us through your sacrificial life, death and for your resurrection, that you rose again that we might also be risen with you. I pray all these things in your name. Amen.

Next week's episode is all about how personal experiences and unique strengths inform this journey of figuring out your God-shaped dream.

So be sure to tune in to that and we're going to apply what you learned about yourself in the Life Purpose Mapping exercise. So get on that: https://www.merrittonsa.com/lifemap

And for the last two episodes of this month I have a special guest coming to share about how she's living out her purpose as a Core Clarity Facilitator. If you've ever heard of the CliftonStrengths finder, Core Clarity and Core Clarity Facilitators help interpret the data about you from CliftonStrengths Finder.

So if you've taken that, pull that out before the end of March where you'll hear from my friend.

But she helps people understand what their top five talents are and to see how they work together with one another. And I just can't wait to introduce this friend to you. We are going to explore strengths and how important they are as you pursue the purpose and the calling that God has given you in this life.

My friends, tune in every week. Like I said, this is going to be a weekly show this year. Invite your friends. Share this episode and mostly trust God’s guidance for the dream that He has given you.

Finally, Daughter of the King, you were made for a beautiful purpose. Your identity and security rest in him, as does your dream, because the Lord is good and his ways are always good. No weapon formed against you will prosper because you belong to Him.

Until next week, stay faithful, keep dreaming. And remember, trusting God with your next step doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be scary. It means taking the step anyway. That’s what faith is.

You are welcome here among women braving those scary steps in faith, knowing our dreams matter because they are His.

Until next time, I’m Merritt Onsa, your dream coach and sister in Christ walking by faith with you in the dream.

Have a great week.

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