Issue #9 Featured Artist: Philip Oswald
The Pop Up Meal: Purpose in the Random
Video Transcription
Hello Bible + Pop Culture team, my name is Philip and your crew has asked me to talk about purpose. And that’s a good one! And I would ask you a quick question first, have you ever had to make a meal with all of the wrong ingredients? You know, just, all you know is that you’re hungry and you have to figure it out. Have you ever had to do a construction project with all of the wrong tools? And maybe you don’t get to go to the hardware store, you just have to look through the scrap pile, and you don’t have any plans, you’re just figuring it out. I would say that life and purpose is a whole lot more like that than it it’s the perfect Thanksgiving meal or the perfect house built with the perfect plans. And here’s the thing- I think that life is a lot more fun as soon as we learn to accept that it is more like the pop-up meal than the Thanksgiving meal.
Think about this, Thanksgiving, yes, you have all of the right ingredients. Yes, you’ve been working on it, the table looks perfect, the family’s all here, you’ve been preparing and everything. But that meal has tons of anxiety and fear, and preparation. To me the hardest part, it has tons of expectations. Right? That it's supposed to look and supposed to feel like it did last year or two years ago when it was so much fun. And now all of the sudden, instead of enjoying it, all we’re doing is trying to make it look like we think it should look.
Compare that to, what if our purpose is more like the pop-up meal where life throws at us different things but we learn to find joy in the creation and in the moment, in the randomness of it. And, the best part of it is when God does something really cool in our lives through that random, unexpected moment. We don’t get the glory, He does. Because we’re looking at it, and we’re just saying this was just so much unexpected fun. And we’re not looking at it saying, look at what I have created with everything within my power. That gives me glory and the other gives God glory.
And also, it gets rid of the anxiety and the fear because I’m no longer trying to create this moment and this expectation. Instead, I’m just looking at it and I’m laughing and I’m living in the moment and I’m walking through it just amazed at how much fun I’m having in spite of my rando circumstances. And life will give us random circumstances- cause as soon as I or we think we are in control, it’s going to throw us a curveball. Maybe all those curveballs are meant to point us back to our Creator. And maybe when we make it through those curves and those tough situations, maybe when we make it through, it points everybody that looks at our lives not to us, but it points them to God. Right? Think about that.
So, maybe you’re today trying to live towards this ideology or this pipedream- and I would challenge you to find your purpose right now. With the ingredients that you’ve been given and be comfortable with it and laugh about it and live into it, right?
So, just so you know, I am a pastor professionally, it's weird, like I’m a professional Christian. I kinda hate that actually. It's a weird thing, but it's true. I am a pastor and that is the main thing that I do in my life. So, I’m a worship pastor too. So I do the music and the artistic side of things, the creative side of things. So many people would say that my purpose is found on Sunday morning, it’s lived out on Sunday morning when I’m leading worship for the church and I’m pointing people to God. And I would say “yes, it is a little bit.” But I would say, probably for me, I know that my real purpose is found in the day to day. It’s found in my breakfast burrito that I get, my Super Sonic burrito, that I get from Sonic every morning. And I talk to the girl, Cassie, who just happens to be working the window every morning. It’s not found in the rehearsal where I rehearse my band for my job, but found when we go to the open mic night that we go to after rehearsal. And we sit in and we jam with people, other musicians in town. We laugh and we have a good time with them. That’s where my purpose is found, is in my life being lived with others.
Now, here’s the thing: when you’re a Christian, this will make you, this makes me cringe. People will try to say, “Oh, I’m going to meet people because I’m trying to make them a Christian like me.” That’s so cringy to me because I don’t want to be living my life loving people with a purpose, an agenda to make them like me. That’s super cringy, to go and say, “My goal at Sonic every morning is to make so and so that serves me a Christian like me.” No, no, no. My goal is to go to Sonic and get the Super Sonic burrito and become friends with that person because I think she’s awesome. And that’s it, period. Now, if she comes around some day and says, “Philip, what church do you go to? I’d love to go to it.” Well, cool.
My purpose in going to meet her every morning is not to make her be like me. My purpose in going to the open mic night is not to make everybody at that bar a Christian. My purpose is to be me, to love God, and to love everybody around me. And I believe that by me doing that, I actually am loving God. And I am showing them God. As soon as they feel like I am trying to make them a “Christian,” like me. Oh my gosh, like, that is loving people with an agenda. And that loses all its power and all its love. And that’s not the point.
My point is to be a follower of God in the world. And when people come to me with any kind of need or they’re looking for anything, I can tell them how I found that in God and yes, that does point them to Christ. But that has nothing to do with me. That has to do with God. I am a light in this world, period. So, does that make sense to you? I hope it does, because loving people with an agenda is not my purpose. But being a person in the real world, living life with people and loving them and laughing with them and getting to know them and what makes them tick, that’s my purpose.
And guess what? My life has been spent with many people in this world, coming to me, talking to me about the hope that I’ve found in Christ. And that’s cool, that’s really cool. So I hope that as you listen to this, maybe if you have been putting your hope and your purpose into an ideology or to live up to some expectation or some perfect dream, a pipedream, maybe you can let go of that and start to calm down and start to look at your purpose being revealed in the now, right in front to you, in the conversations with your brothers and sisters, your kids, your families, in the conversations with the random person at the random restaurant, that you can see your purpose in the way you do your job. And you do it well. That you start to see that your purpose is not some pipedream ridden with anxiety, this expectation to live up to. Instead, open your eyes and look at what’s happening all around you. And with every tick of the watch, every countdown of every second of our lives being lived out, every moment that we use, we are living out our purpose, so easily, so effortlessly, because it was never us doing the great things in our lives, we're letting God do them. And so that everybody that looks at us they point to God and not us, but point to him and not me. That’s the goal. Let’s live it out. It's happening right now, all around us.
Resources
We’ve created a free downloadable PDF to explore the article deeper. It contains discussion questions about the topic in general terms that will give you a jumping-off point for beginning a conversation.
The second page contains a way to see the topic from a biblical perspective.
And finally, to go deeper into the subject, we have chosen a few curated resources to explore from other authors’ and thinkers’ research or perspectives.
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