After spending a great deal of time studying the bible and interviewing different people, award-winning television host and Christian author Beth Townsend shared a biblical approach to finding the God-given calling of people.
Townsend told CBN News' The Prayer Link that she was supposed to write a book, compiling the interviews she made with different people, sharing their purpose in life. Yet, she revealed that along the way, as she has gone deeper into the words of God, she learned that God has another purpose with the work that she had.
She recounted, "Twenty years ago, I felt like God called me to write a book. Many times, we think God's purpose is this or God's purpose is that and we set out thinking that if God called me to do it, it's going to be easy, it's going to be simple and it's going to be quick. Not so much."
"But God's plan for my book was that those interviews were not to be about them, it was about what they could teach me."
"In the book, I share purpose principles that changed my life. Every person that I interviewed changed my life. It was a divine appointment from God Himself ... not for me to have a best-selling book. For me to learn a principle that not only I needed, but other people needed. They're life-changing principles," she continued.
Despite having a good career, Townsend wasn't aware of her life's purpose until decades of searching continuously, by interviewing prominent athletes, political leaders, entertainers, humanitarians, philanthropists, and authors. Just like any people, she said "Everybody wants to know who they are." Yet the author learned to start the approach backward.
"If you know who you're not, who God's not called you to be, you then begin to emerge and have complete freedom to walk in the giftedness, in the fullness of the Spirit," Townsend explained. She pointed out that most people thought of trying a lot of things as being influenced by nowadays culture. She noticed that people would often say "Maybe I should do that," after seeing what other people were doing.
However, people would be burnt out asking God, "Where is it that I gifted?" She argued that by knowing and eliminating the "Nots" in people's lives, it would be easier for them to know what they will become.
She also recognized how people were still work in progress. She said, "I had been saved, but I didn't know what being a Christian was really like. I thought, you know, I think that's a God thing - purpose." Though people might make mistakes, she pointed out that people "shouldn't allow those errors to lead to regret."
"We all come from a broken family. We've all pretty much created a broken family because we're in a broken world," she noted. "You have to accept that there are just some things."
"[The] purpose is a process ... it's not perfection. So, we have to know we're going to make mistakes," she continued. "So much that we feel the consequences of is our own poor decision so I lived the consequences of many of those."
