Treasures of the Soul: Unearthing God's Purpose For Your Life

By Maggie Bellevue

The presentation of the main body of this book is based on a format that I conceptualized for ease of application of the principles which I consider fundamental to living a fulfilling life of purpose. I call that format The 7 'C's of Living In Purpose. In the order in which I present each of them as a chapter on its own, these are: Conceive, Confidence, Concentrate, Consistence, Commitment, Character and Celebration. Having made myself amenable to the divine assignment I was given to write a book that broadly discusses 'purpose' in as focused a manner as I could possibly make it, I still found myself burdened with the task of conceiving of a learning methodology which would render the entire text not just one that would occupy the average reader's leisure reading hours, but also one that would lend itself to an effective tool for the application of the knowledge provided in the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Total Publishing
• Release date: Oct 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781633022386

Maggie Bellevue

Maggie Bellevue is a visionary, mission driven, transformational leader and is the Co-founder and Pastor of Kingdom Empowerment International Ministries headquartered in the northeast section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Pastor Maggie, as she is affectionately called, has been engaged in ministry for over 20 years traveling throughout Africa, Latin America, Canada, and the Caribbean as a motivational speaker and transformational change agent. She is passionate about reaching out to the disenfranchised and marginalized populations of the world and is compelled to share God's love with all. Specifically, Pastor Maggie has worked to empower communities across the globe by advocating for people with disabilities in Haiti and throughout the Caribbean. During this journey, she joined with various government agencies and partnership organizations to fight for the humanitarian and educational rights of individuals with disabilities. As a result, she has garnered the distinction of being appointed as an Ambassador to the disabled in Haiti. Further a fierce advocate for women's rights; she conducts a variety of professional and personal development seminars and conferences to empower women throughout the USA and Canada.

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PROLOGUE

The Meaning of Purpose

When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

– Seneca

The word ‘ purpose ’ exists within two contextual meanings. The dictionary broadly defines it as the reason why something exists; an intended end, aim or goal, so to speak. It also has a connotation in which it is contextually defined in terms of one’s life or activities. Accordingly, one might refer to one’s actions as being carried out in a purposeful manner. In yet another, and perhaps more relevant regard to the objective of this book, there is an amusing twist to its meaning, for a life lived with purpose is a life lived with meaning ! That means purpose is what gives meaning to our existence by offering us a sense of direction, helping to guide our behavior and paths in alignment with our goals and objectives. That is why any reference to the discovery of purpose in your life is actually asking you to discover the real meaning for your existence. As Socrates, the Greek philosopher put it, The unexamined life is not worth living. There is a school of thought that defines success as the progressive realization of worthy goals. Yet, we also know that seeking success of any sort, whether vocational or material, purely for its own sake and nothing else, can ultimately render ones life empty, if not altogether meaningless. That is why the only way out of that dilemma is to seek a greater meaning or purpose to our existence and its attendant struggles. Put differently, we need to live with a sense of purpose in which we dedicate our life to a cause that is beyond us. Naturally, it also means living with a mission that fuels our motivation, and giving our life meaning and direction in such a way that we are inspired to make a significant contribution to the world.

Viktor Emil Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was a survivor of the Holocaust. It was his traumatic experiences as a concentration camp prisoner that led him to discover the importance of finding meaning in any form of existence, even a brutal one. In his famous book, Man’s Search For Meaning, he draws the conclusion that the lack of meaning in a person’s life causes an ‘existential vacuum’ that can only lead to despair. In other words, we are driven by the necessity to seek meaning in our lives by committing to a cause or purpose outside ourselves. More often than not, it is a lack of meaning in their lives that drives people to want to conform to others, seek fleeting and ineffectual pleasures or demonstrate superiority over others. For most people, it is only after the baffling and protracted feelings of meaninglessness that seem to accompany their so-called successes that they finally ask themselves questions like, What is the real purpose of my existence? Why am I here? What am I meant to do while here? and Who am I meant to be, and what am I meant to do? Mark Twain, known as the ‘father of American literature,’ once said, The two most important days of your life are the day you were born, and the day you find out why. Although this is quite true, we must forgive most people for the difficulty they have in answering these questions. Benjamin Franklin once said, The three hardest things in life are Steel, Diamond and the Discovery of Self. The attempt to discover the purpose for one’s existence is not an easy quest. It requires genuine commitment. It requires effort. Most of all, it requires a certain curiosity borne of the knowledge that one’s sojourn on Earth must have some deeper meaning beyond an everyday mundane existence. Yet, the greatest miracle in one’s life is the discovery of the true purpose for one’s existence. The second greatest miracle is the faithful pursuit of that purpose, for with it comes true happiness, wealth and fulfillment. As Nick Seneca Jankel once said, Our guiding light is our purpose. We cannot thrive until we discover it. There is stunning beauty in discovering this guiding light. It gives us a joy that shines brighter from one day to the next as we encounter challenges and situations that reveal more and more about our purpose. The only thing that can guarantee authentic and sustainable happiness in life is the faithful pursuit of purpose. All else is ineffectual commentary.

It is a matter of overwhelming importance for you to find your purpose. Many of us have found ourselves toiling on especially difficult, unproductive and stressful life ventures for the tragic reason that we have not taken out time to discover our purpose in life. The rewards of taking the time to find your purpose far outweigh any professional and financial benefits that may accrue from studying at the best schools, and getting the highest paid jobs. Without seeking and finding your purpose, all those seeming dividends of success will merely ring hollow at the end of the day. We have heard of many people who end up depressed and unfulfilled after working tirelessly for an entire lifetime in a field that ended up being at variance with a true purpose they never took the time to discover. Admittedly, some people seem to have possessed sufficient luck to find their purpose at an early stage of their life, either by accident or serendipitously. However, for the vast majority, this is not the case. Most of us are neither calm nor deliberate enough to devote time to digging deep for those treasures of the soul that come wrapped as the beautiful package called our purpose. The point arrives in a person’s life when the need to slow down and take stock becomes absolutely necessary, if only for the simple reason that it is in quiet contemplation that great things fashion themselves. Pythagoras, another Greek thinker, was the first man to call himself a philosopher. He said, Learn to be silent. Let your quiet mind listen and absorb. We need to slow down, instead of spending our entire lives jumping from one unfulfilling venture to the next in search of what makes us truly happy. The reason why finding your true life purpose should be such a critical mission is because it is your only guaranteed path to genuine happiness and contentment. Admittedly, some people are fortunate enough to stumble upon their purpose without necessarily enduring so much thought and soul-searching. But, this is an exception rather that the rule. The more realistic truth is that most of us have to deploy considerable time and deliberate thought to the crucial exercise of finding our life purpose.

Purpose is unique to one, and there are three main areas through which one typically connects with and expresses a purposeful life. The first area is a career or vocation that is meaningfully aligned with our personal values. The second area lies in aligning our relationship to our family, friends and our community with our personal values, while the third is the attempt to seek meaning and fulfillment through our spiritual beliefs. Some people align with their purpose in just one of these areas, while others align with their purpose in one or more, or all three. What is of overriding importance is to know your purpose and to live your life with it. Living with purpose means working, connecting with, and understanding your purpose so well that you can consciously choose to align with that purpose in one of more areas of your life as described above. Closely allied to your purpose are your values, and you will need to identify your core values in each area of your life, including your spiritual well being, work, family and friends. To live with purpose is to live with intention. Living intentionally means we have a plan for where we are going, and so we intentionally allow our values to guide us as we make choices and set goals for our lives.

Finding our life purpose is a divine exercise. It cannot be otherwise since that purpose resides inside of each one of us, being typically not something we consciously choose or something someone else can offer us as a gift. Purpose is something we have to coax to emerge from deep within ourselves through self-exploration. Purpose is not unlike a treasure that we have to dig deep to unearth. To discover purpose is to activate God’s plan for our lives on earth. God’s image is imprinted on our purpose. That means the image of God, and our purpose, lies within us. Essentially, God hid our purpose, locking it within us. However, He also ensured that the resources we need to unearth our purpose are available within us. There is a divine DNA that each of us carries. No one’s DNA is identical to another’s. In essence, each one of us carries a unique DNA that is coded by God in such a manner as to help unlock certain spiritual dimensions so that purpose can be birthed. That is why, to all intents and purposes, we are coded with hidden powers and hidden revelations that are ultimately the keys for the transformation of our world. But, we walk around unaware that we carry this enormous power, and this divine DNA. Our DNA is truly singularly unique. Our eyes possess certain characteristics that can unlock our cell phones simply through the recognition of those eye characteristics. Our fingerprints can open doors and elevators by virtue of their uniqueness. Our DNA creates a unique ID that gives us access to any facility we can possibly imagine. Our ears reveal sounds to us which guide us on our journey. Our voice has the transcendental ability to command both physical and spiritual realities. We are created with invisible and secret codes that can serve as the key to tremendous transformational change in our environment. In many respects, we are loaded weapons, and our only problem is that we are blissfully unaware that we are loaded weapons.

There are five reasons why you need to have and live a life of purpose. The first and most fundamental reason is that life purpose is the starting point of your life. That also means the first step in your quest to live your most conscious life ought to be the discovery of your life purpose. You may well be busy with a million tasks everyday yet be headed in no effectual direction if you don’t have a clear purpose. That is because your goals may be not be in alignment with your purpose. Expressed in graphic terms, as you ascend the ladder of life, it becomes imperative that you ensure that it is leaning against the right wall. How unfortunate it would be for you to pursue your current goals for the next twenty years only for you to find yourself in a state of total disenchantment with your final outcome, and to realize that this wasn’t what you wanted after all. Stephen Covey was right when he wrote, If the ladder is not leaning against the right wall, every step we take just gets us to the wrong place faster. Conversely, when you live with purpose, you also live consciously, since with a clear purpose, you can set the right goals and make the appropriate plans that will propel you to take the right daily steps on your way to creating your most meaningful, and best life ever. From the perspective of a seamless sequence therefore; Clear purpose → Clear goals → Clear plans → Clear daily actions.

Secondly, you develop a clarity on what is important and what is unimportant. Knowing your purpose allows you to differentiate between the important and the unimportant. Most of us are perennially caught up in activities that ultimately make little or no difference in our lives. Purpose allows you to immediately see which goals are important and which are not. The management strategy called the Pareto Principle states that 80% of your accomplishments will come from only 20% of your core activities. That means to achieve massive results in your life, all you need do is focus on 20% of your activities. The challenge, however, may be choosing the right activities to focus on. You cannot know what those 20% core activities are unless you are clear about what is truly important to you, and you cannot know what is truly important to you unless you know your life purpose. It is only when you discover your purpose that you can direct your focus to the really important things.

Thirdly, you will start to live a life of meaning. It is only when you pursue your purpose that your life assumes both meaningful direction and authentic meaning. Instead of wasting your time in a job you don’t love, you can now start working toward, and in a career that better fits your purpose. Instead of remaining exposed to toxic people who are totally incompatible with your purpose and goals, you can now seek those people who genuinely share those same values that can build your highest life. Instead of living life on a random roller coaster, you can deliberately create a life that has the highest meaning to you. You can now prove to yourself that life itself is nothing if not pure magic. It is when you find your purpose that you will as if you were born a fish, but for the first time in your life, you have jumped into the ocean to swim with your fish friends. Fourthly, pursuit of your purpose will give you an unbelievable burst of energy that will sustain your worthy efforts at actualization. The opportunity to pursue your life purpose will fill you with so much energy that each day simply becomes a cauldron of steaming passion for you. Each morning, you would leap out of bed, excited at what you will create that day. At night, as has been discovered with those who are pursuing their authentic destiny, you might actually dread going to sleep simply because you would much rather be living your purpose than dissipating eight hours into sleep! On the obverse, those who are robbed of the wonderful opportunity to live their purpose barely endure each day, even as they look forward to the temporary respite that the weekend affords them from the dreary weekdays, only to start the whole vicious cycle all over again on Mondays with agonizing resistance. If you perversely relish the prospect of pleasant weekends and vacations much more than what you do each day, you might seriously consider a review of your life and purpose, as it is fairly obvious that your current vocation is merely a means to an end. The time has come for you to pursue that which is of the highest meaning to you.

Finally, you will start to seek, and to achieve success purely on your own terms. Expressed in simpler terms, rather than see success as an end in itself, it might serve your purpose better to first identify what you truly care about, and then direct your energy into making that your ultimate reality. That is why purpose is so important. When you discover your true purpose, you will naturally want to devote your life to pursuing it since it is also the source of your greatest sense of fulfillment. You will also naturally want to spend time doing it because you sincerely care about it, and naturally, you will get better at it since you are effortlessly prepared to deploy to it all the time necessary to cultivate the experience and skills you need to succeed in it.

It now becomes pertinent to ask ourselves why most of us go through life without living our true and authentic lives of purpose. Most of us do not have the courage to pursue our purpose because of four obstacles that stand in our way. The first obstacle is the result of faulty programming in our early, formative years. The greater majority of us are tragically programmed from childhood to believe that what resonates within us as a genuine inner yearning is either a total impossibility or is not the right course for us. Our environment and experiences condition us into a negative reality. We become so emotionally and psychically paralyzed that we no longer recognize the huge potential that lies like a slumbering giant within us. Our negative thoughts totally incapacitate and debilitate us. We blissfully and ignorantly approach adulthood with this faulty mindset, and as our years on Earth accumulate, so do the layers of fear, insecurity and prejudice accumulate to subsume the jewels that are our natural passions, in much the same way that layers of sand, caused by years of bombardment by the ocean’s tidal waves, accumulate to submerge the precious rubies on the beach. Ultimately, our life purpose becomes so buried in our soul as to become not even remotely recognizable, and until our mortal forms become residents of the graveyard, with our unwritten and unsung music still inside us. That is the reason why the graveyard is sometimes sardonically said to be the richest place on Earth. Indeed, the graveyard is the richest repository of tragically unfulfilled human potential and raw genius.

The second obstacle is love for those close to us that can be so misplaced and misguided that we forget to love ourselves. We tend to shy away from hurting those who have the responsibility for guiding us in our early, formative years. We are in tune with our deeper yearnings, but we are loathe to offend those around us, and we choose to pursue the dreams they have for us to the detriment of our own dreams. We become so attached and loyal to the people we love that we cannot disappoint them to pursue our own calling. We tend to see the faithful pursuit of our life’s dream and providing love for others as mutually exclusive, instead of seeing them both as a manifestation of matters of equal importance. The tragic outcome of this tendency is that we end up leading the lives that such people prescribe for us. Yet, although they never really meant us any harm, they merely view us and our accomplishments as the expression of their own failures. Ultimately, however, if we insist on treading our own independent path, more often than not, they wish us well and offer us every support. We have to rid ourselves of the limiting beliefs imposed upon us by our so-called loved ones. First and foremost, we have to learn to accept and love ourselves to be able to discover and embrace our purpose for our own greatest good.

The third obstacle is that most of us exist in mortal fear of failure. Yet, failure is merely success turned inside out, very much like a shirt that is worn inside out. No one can possibly achieve one success after the other without some doses of defeat along the way. That is why patience and perseverance are such constant traits of people who have discovered their true purpose. Most of us do not know this, but God is actually committed to help us achieve our worthy goals, as long as they are pursued with love, purpose, passion and a total submission to His Will. The tragedy of our life journey lies not in falling, but in refusing to rise from the ground, and dusting our pants, ready to be lifted again by the power of our purpose and vision. It is in our victory over setback that we truly prove ourselves worthy of this miracle called life. Each hour and each day is merely a constituent part of our heroic and good fight. Life is nothing if not pure magic. When we have passed the tests it places on our path, it willingly lays down its weapons of opposition, allowing us to savor the joys of those treasures of the soul that make up our authentic purpose on Earth.

The final and fourth obstacle is, totally incredulous as it may seem, the deep-seated fear of the success and fulfillment that we seek. Oscar Wilde once said, Each man kills the thing he loves. It is true. Most of us are burdened with a guilt that is