General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.” — Jeremiah 1:5 (NLT)
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.” — 1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” — Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“‘O Lord,’ I cried, ‘I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!’ The Lord replied, ‘Don’t say that… for I will be with you and take care of you.'” — Jeremiah 1:6–8 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” — 1 Peter 4:10 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Then the Lord asked him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A shepherd’s staff,’ Moses replied.” — Exodus 4:2 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.” — Romans 12:4–5 (NLT) General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.” — Jeremiah 1:5 (NLT)
God knew Jeremiah before he was named, had a history, or had done anything impressive or regrettable. Before Jeremiah was born, God had already set him apart and appointed him. Purpose preceded performance. The calling came before the credentials.
This truth and pattern we see throughout the Scriptures dismantles the version of purpose we’ve been handed. We’ve been taught that purpose is something you discover through self-examination and that it emerges from your strengths, passions, and unique combination of gifts.
While those things matter, they are not where purpose begins. Purpose begins with God. Before you had anything to examine within yourself or offer to others, He already knew what He made you for.
You did not stumble into existence. You were not an accident of biology or timing or circumstance. You were known, formed, set apart, and appointed. The question is never whether you have a purpose, it’s whether you’re willing to receive it.
What has been your dominant picture of how purpose is found?
How do you think God has shaped your identity?
Lord, You knew me before I knew myself. You formed me with intention and set me apart before I arrived. Show me the purposes You have for me this week. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.” — 1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT)
The church in Corinth had a gift problem. There was not a shortage of gifts, but a misunderstanding of what they were for. People were using their spiritual gifts to demonstrate their own spiritual superiority, to compete with each other, and to create a hierarchy of the impressive.
Paul’s correction was simple and devastating: you’ve misread the whole thing. The gift was never for you. It was given to you so you can help each other.
Think about an electric cable. It carries real, and potentially dangerous, power. But the cable itself is not the point. The cable exists to transfer power from the source to whatever needs it. A cable that hoards the current is not a good cable. It’s a fire hazard. The gift in you is the same.
It carries something real, from God Himself, with genuine power to change what it touches.
This is why isolation is so costly for the church. When people disconnect from the body, the current stops flowing. The thing God placed in you for someone else never reaches them. The gift arrives at the cable and goes nowhere. You were not given what you carry for your own benefit. You were entrusted with it for theirs.
What gifts, abilities, or experiences has God entrusted you with? And who around you might be the intended recipient of what you’re carrying?
Where have you been using a gift for self-display or self-protection?
Lord, what You’ve placed in me was always meant to bless someone else. Forgive me for the times I’ve hoarded it, performed with it, or simply left it unused. Show me who needs what I’m carrying today. Not so I can feel useful but so that You can reach them through my willingness. Let the current flow. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.” — Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
A retired pastor sat across a table and said something that revealed a confusion most of us share: “I don’t have a purpose anymore. I used to be a pastor. Now I’m just retired.” He had spent forty years doing the work of ministry, then when the role ended, he concluded the calling had ended with it. His purpose was the job. When the job stopped, so did he.
Ephesians 2:10 says: the good things God planned for you were planned long ago, way before the job.
Your calling is deeper than your current role. Your purpose is woven into who you are, not only into what you do. This means seasons of transition are inevitable. It could be job loss, an empty nest, a ministry ending, retirement; but these seasons are not the end of purpose.
They are the invitation to ask: what is underneath the role I’ve been living from? What did God actually make me for? Be curious about God’s next calling in your life.
Have you ever confused your role (a job, a ministry position, or a season of life) with your calling?
What happened when that role shifted? What would remain if the title were removed tomorrow?
If the good things were planned long before you arrived, what might God have been preparing you for in this current season that has nothing to do with your official responsibilities?
Lord, You made me because You love me. You didn’t make me for a job. You made me for purpose. Where I’ve confused my role with my calling, gently correct me. Let me find what’s underneath the title. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“‘O Lord,’ I cried, ‘I can’t speak for you! I’m too young!’ The Lord replied, ‘Don’t say that… for I will be with you and take care of you.'” — Jeremiah 1:6–8 (NLT)
Jeremiah said he was too young. Moses said he couldn’t speak. Gideon said his clan was the weakest and he was the least in his family. Isaiah said he was a man of unclean lips. These are not the objections of people with low self-esteem; they are the honest self-assessments of people who understood what was being asked of them and could clearly see the gap between the task and their current capacity.
God’s response to every single one of them was not: “Actually, you’re more capable than you think.” It was: “I know. I will be with you.”
He didn’t argue with their assessment. He redirected their confidence from their own ability to His presence. That is a completely different foundation and it changes what’s possible.
Most of us have been waiting to feel ready before we step into what God has called us to. But readiness is a feeling that almost never arrives on time.
Obedience comes before confidence, as a step taken on the ground of God’s promise rather than your own self-evaluation. Every person in the biblical roll call who did something significant for God felt unqualified before they did it. The feeling of inadequacy was not a sign that they had the wrong calling. It was a sign that the calling required more than they had, and God would supply the difference.
What is the “I can’t” that has been keeping you from stepping into something God has been asking of you?
What is one step of obedience you could take this week knowing that God is saying: “I will be with you”?
Lord, I’ve been waiting to feel ready. But Jeremiah wasn’t ready. Moses wasn’t ready. Gideon wasn’t ready. And You sent them anyway. Today I stop waiting for the feeling and start walking on the promise. You will be with me and that’s enough. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.” — 1 Peter 4:10 (NLT)
Frederick Buechner wrote that vocation is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Both matter because purpose was never designed to be purely self-fulfilling. A gift exercised with joy serves differently than one exercised under duress.
This intersection is the most honest diagnostic for purpose. Not “what am I good at?” — you can be good at things that drain you. Not “what does the world need?” — the needs are infinite and you can’t meet them all. But where does your deep gladness land in the world’s deep hunger? Where does the thing that lights you up from the inside happen to be exactly what someone else desperately needs?
For some people, that intersection is immediately obvious. For others, it takes seasons of trying and failing and trying again.
The point is not to figure it all out before you move. The point is to pay attention to where joy and need are meeting in your life right now and to be a faithful steward of whatever form of grace God has given you to carry.
Where does your deep gladness intersect with the world’s deep hunger? What do you love that also happens to be something the people around you genuinely need?
Is there a gift or a form of service you’ve been using out of obligation rather than gladness?
Lord, show me where my gladness meets someone else’s hunger. Help me find what lights me up from the inside and also lands in a place where someone needs it. Make me a faithful steward of the form of grace You’ve given me, and let the joy be part of the testimony. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Then the Lord asked him, ‘What is that in your hand?’ ‘A shepherd’s staff,’ Moses replied.” — Exodus 4:2 (NLT)
Moses had just finished explaining to God all the reasons his calling couldn’t work. Nobody would believe him. He couldn’t speak well. He wasn’t the right person.
Rather than arguing the point, God asked a simple question: what’s in your hand? A staff, a shepherd’s tool. Something Moses had been carrying for forty years, something completely ordinary, something nobody would look at and think: yes, that’s what God will use to part a sea.
God almost never starts with the impressive. He starts with what you’re already holding. The thing you’ve been carrying so long you’ve stopped thinking of it as significant. The skill you’ve had since childhood that feels too ordinary to matter. The experience you’ve been through that you would never have chosen but that has made you the only person in the room who truly understands what someone else is walking through. What’s in your hand is rarely what you would choose if you were designing your own ministry. It is almost always exactly what God has been preparing for this moment.
In your hands, a staff is a staff. In God’s hands, it parts water, draws crowds, and becomes the symbol of a deliverance that nations still talk about thousands of years later.
What have you been carrying so long that you’ve stopped thinking of it as significant? A skill, an experience, a story, a way of seeing the world?
What would it look like this week to put what you’re holding into God’s hands and simply see what He does with it?
Lord, here is what I’m holding. It’s ordinary. It’s been with me a long time. I’ve almost stopped noticing it. I give it into Your hands so that it can become something else entirely. Amen.
General • Taste & See That The Church Is Good •
“Just as our bodies have many parts and each part has a special function, so it is with Christ’s body. We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.” — Romans 12:4–5 (NLT)
Purpose doesn’t get lived in isolation. The thing that was placed in you for someone else requires someone else to be present. The gift that was given for the common good requires a common to give it to. The deep gladness that meets the world’s deep hunger requires a world. For most of us, that world is the people we sit with on a Sunday, the community we show up to on a Wednesday, the body we are being fitted into one ordinary moment at a time.
The church is not the building you attend on a Sunday. It is the community you practice purpose inside of. And it is the safest training ground for purpose that exists because when you get it wrong, you’re among people who are also getting it wrong and being made right together.
When your gift misfires, you’re surrounded by people who will catch what you dropped. And when it lands, you get to see it happen, right in front of you, in real time.
You were made on purpose. You were made with purpose. And you were made for a purpose that will outlast every role you occupy, every season you navigate, and every title you carry or set down. The staff in your hand is enough. The gladness you carry is enough. The calling that preceded your birth is still in force. The church is where you practice all of it together — imperfectly, faithfully, one step at a time.
What has shifted in how you understand your purpose — where it comes from, what it’s for, and who it’s designed to reach?
Lord, I was made on purpose, with purpose, and for a purpose. Show me the people You’ve placed around me. I bring what’s in my hand into the community You’ve placed me in and I trust You to do with it what I cannot. Amen.
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