"Purposefooled"

Dannah Gresh: Kelly Needham says it’s easy to assign too much significance to the things we do—our work.

Kelly Needham: We need to know that we’re valued, but that value cannot be attached to what I accomplish and what I can’t.

Dannah: We’ll hear where our true worth lies today on the Revive Our Hearts podcast. It’s July 21, 2023, and I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of A Place of Quiet Rest, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, can you believe we’re already finishing up the third week of July?

All this month we’ve been focusing on the idea that our identity needs to be found in Christ. The problem, of course, is how easy it is to look for meaning in places other than our relationship with Him. For example, in the things we do.

So here’s some questions to think about to tie into today’s topic:

• If you got laid off because of company cutbacks, would you start questioning your personal value?
• If you’re praised for a job well done, does pride start to well up in your heart?
• If your child completely derails and makes wrong choices, do you beat yourself up for not being a better parent? Do you worry about what others are thinking of you?
• If your kids are grown and gone from the house, do you feel like maybe you’re not worth much anymore?
• If you spend all day doing tasks like cleaning up toddler’s messes and feeding kids and doing the laundry, are you tempted to think that maybe you’re not as important as someone with a so-called “real” job?
• If you spend all day at a desk crunching numbers or designing brochures, do you wonder if there’s more to life?

Well, our performance, the things we do, can quickly turn into an idol. Of course, it’s important to do things with excellence, but sometimes our own sense of identity gets wrapped up in our work. That’s a problem Kelly Needham is going to address today.

Kelly is a wife. She’s a mom. She’s an author. She’s a speaker. And she’s coming out with a new book on August 1 that has a really interesting title. It’s called Purposefooled. (That’s one word—purposefooled.) The subtitle is Why Chasing Your Dreams, Finding Your Calling and Reaching for Greatness Will Never Be Enough.

Well, Kelly sat down with radio veteran and Revive Our Hearts’ board member, Bob Lepine, at our recent True Woman conference to discuss the ideas in her book. Let’s listen to their conversation.

Bob Lepine: Do you think it is common that your generation thinks life is all about vocation, that who you are is what you do?

Kelly: Yes, I think so. And I think that who you are is what you do has been taught to them.

Bob: By our generation?

Kelly: I don’t know. The books that are out there right now talking about purpose and fulfillment are primarily pointing to, “What were you uniquely designed to do?”

And I wouldn’t disagree that we all have unique contributions that God has called us to make. But the way that we have primarily been taught to think about our purpose has been, “What am I called to do? What specific unique contribution can I make to the world?”

I think there’s a danger in that because as soon as my purpose is tied to that specific set of activities, a vocation, or where it might be bigger than even a job—it make be a unique wiring or skill set, part of a side hustle that we have, an expression of something we do in a church context—as soon as that’s my meaning and my purpose in life, I feel I have to do that to be “okay.”

As soon as that is stripped from me, I lose my sense of meaning, identity and purpose. I think that’s the problem with it. We become enslaved to that type of work. We need it to be okay, versus being able to freely do what God’s called us to do.

Bob: So, can we disentangle purposeful, meaningful work and identity? Are those two separate concepts? Or do they mesh in some way?

Kelly: I think they are different concepts. I think that our identity is meant to be found in the person of God, as primarily a recipient of things He has for us. He tells us that to be great in the kingdom. Jesus pulls a child in His lap and says, “This is what it means to be great.”

He gives us this perfect picture of a person who is fine to be a recipient. Kids are fine to go, “I only need things. I’m fine to embrace that disposition. I have no shame about it.”

I think that posturing ourselves as children of God, recipients of what He has for us, just being the needy, dependent one in the relationship, is where we find our healthiest identity.

When that’s healthy, I’m now free to do the work God has set before me. Ephesians 2 says we “were created in Christ Jesus for good works that God has prepared beforehand so that we might walk in them.” But I’m free to walk in all the different kinds of good works He’s put before me because my identity isn’t tied to them.

I feel uniquely gifted as a writer, and I think that’s okay to admit. But writing is not the only good work God has set in front of me. He also sets neighbors in front of me to reach out to and care for. He sets prayer before me to do. He sets little children for me to care for and friends to reach out to.

I don’t maybe love all those types of works in the same way, but my identity, being rooted in God, not in my work, frees me to now do all the good works set before me despite how they’re connected to my unique skill set.

And so, I think the healthy identity being separate from work actually motivates more good works because we’re free from needing them to be okay.

Bob: So, what happens when we put too much weight in something that we may love doing and something where we see God’s blessing in what we’re doing? How does that get unhealthy in our lives?

Kelly: I think the first way that it gets unhealthy is we now are using the work to meet needs in ourselves. If I need this work to be okay, to find identity and meaning, if it’s what gives me value, it gives me a sense of a reason to get up in the morning; I’m actually doing this work for myself. I am motivated by needs within my own heart. And that has all sorts of distortions that can show up there.

It can allow us to make compromises, unhealthy ones, to continue to do the work. It can allow us to justify being unhealthy in our relationship with God or with our family and our marriages or in parenting relationships because this work is what I need to be okay.

So I make and justify compromises in my life because I’m so driven by this thing, that maybe I’ve told myself it’s good for other people—and maybe in some degree it is. But when I need it to be okay, I make compromises. Now I’m enslaved to it. I can’t say no to it.

Bob: Can you testify on this, Sister?

Kelly: I can, yes. I know very few people who don’t relate to this.

In earlier scenes of my life, especially when my husband was in a very public ministry that I worked alongside of . . . He was on stage doing concerts, leading worship. I didn’t have the same role, but I had a desire for them. I even had a unique sense of, “I want to disciple people. I want to do ministry.” I found meaning in that. That was what I was chasing to find a sense of purpose in my life.

What happened is that work became my master. I became enslaved to it. Any time a ministry opportunity would come up for me, I’m going to bend over backwards to make sure I can do that. Even if it’s unhealthy, even it compromises me, I am now doing that at the expense of health—physically, emotionally, spiritually. I needed this for me to be okay, to remind me that I have a purpose in life in this ministry, so I’m going to do this.

It caused conflict in our marriage. There were compromises that I made in my relationship with God. I was eager to do ministry but not meet with Him. That’s a problem that came from my identity and my purpose rooted in an activity that I felt called to do. God may have it for me, but it is not what my purpose is in life.

I was made for God and for His glory, to know Him and be known by Him. When that’s not right, work becomes a task master, a slave master that I quickly and easily bend to because I need it to feel okay.

Bob: It seems like the internet and social media have created almost an, “It’s essential that I be seen and that I have a public persona, or else I don’t exist.”

Kelly: Yes.

Bob: Do you think that’s right?

Kelly: Absolutely. I think the desire to be seen is a human desire that is natural and normal.

So, first of all, just to validate, I think that we are meant to be seen.

In Genesis, before the fall, God creates man and woman. It says, “He saw them, and it was good.”

To be under the watchful eye of someone is natural. Our children do that. “Mom, watch me! Look at me! See what I did!” We don’t see that in a child and think anything is wrong with that. We are meant to be seen by God.

But what social media is giving us access to is that we don’t have to look to God for that anymore. We can look to each other. That is a quick fix. It’s very attractive. We can get immediate measurable results back on how many people have seen us, what they think about their seeing of us. It gives us this immediate feedback to that need that we chase, but, again, it will always leave us wanting for more.

We’re seeing other people, and we are seeing their lives. There’s a comparative element there that wasn’t there in previous generations. I can not only know what my next door neighbors are doing (because I see them), I can now know what every human being in my life who I’ve ever met before is doing.

It’s overwhelming. We feel the same drive to go, “I have to put myself out there and be seen as well.” And not only that, I have to put myself out there in such a way that I can compete with what else is already out there and vie for the attention of others.

Again, we were meant to be seen, but not primarily by each other. That’s why Jesus said, “Don’t do your good works to be seen by others but rather, go into your closet to pray where your Father in heaven sees you” (see Matt. 5:16).

Over and over again, Jesus gives us God as an audience to remember that in our doing, in our activity. It’s just a misplaced desire for visibility, I think.

Bob: When we think about it in terms of vocational activity and by vocational I mean, “What I do in the workplace, in the marketplace, is who I am.” Therefore, advancement and recognition and honor and achievement, they either come and I’m valuable, or they don’t come, and I’m not.

Just talk about how that places in the hearts of people who are trying to figure out who they are in this culture.

Kelly: Yes. We do live in a culture that’s very achievement and accomplishment driven. The culture values that. “We’re Americans!” We value pulling ourselves up, accomplishing things—the self-made person. It is the value system that’s been set before us. So, I think in some measure we’re all going to be attracted to try to meet that standard.

The problem is not everybody can chase that. There is an entire community of people who are disabled, who are mentally handicapped. When we think about the rest of the world, there are people in places in the world that don’t have options like we have.

So, if it can’t be true universally, then it is not a truth. If achievement and accomplishment are something that we need to be okay, then we have excluded a large population of people around the world who will never be able to do that, then it is not truth.

And that’s my first problem with that as a way of seeing the world. That’s a privileged position to be in, to say, “What I accomplish will give me value.” There’s a lot of people that never accomplish anything, in that sense.

Bob: Right.

Kelly: But, it also makes our value and our worth very flimsy and very vulnerable if I need that affirmation, if I need that constant sense of climbing and moving up to be okay in my life.

So, what happens if:

• Illness and sickness comes in?
• You have an aging parent that you now need to step into a caregiver role and give up something else that you love?
• You have a child born with a disability?

Or, just things that happen, that God allows to happen. They come into my life and inhibit me from chasing achievement. Now I’m faced with a dire situation: if accomplishment and achievement give me value and worth, then these circumstances that God has allowed have now stripped me of that ability.

That’s a terrifying reality because we need to know that we’re valued, but that value cannot be attached to what I accomplish and what I achieve. It has to be found in a person, in a relationship with God. And when it is, I’m now free to magnify Good in whatever circumstance He has given me.

I think of a dear friend and mentor of ours who’s been a great mentor of ours, a discipler of us. He has taught me and my husband some of our most treasured tools for Bible study. He’s a fabulous preacher. For eight years now, he has been diagnosed with M.S.

All of his capacity for teaching, even for mentorship, the limits he has in even human interaction, he can only handle so much conversation. He’s now wheelchair bound. We have seen him be stripped of a type of giftedness, externally.

And yet, as that stripping has happened, the texts and the conversations that happen between him and us are things like him saying, “I am the Lord’s, and I belong to Him. Whatever He wants to do with me, I’m happy to be His.”

That is such a beautiful message and a contrary message to this culture of achievement to say, “My value is found in a Person, and He has purchased me by His blood. If He would so choose to strip me of these things, then so be it, because my value is in Him.”

That’s actually a really safe place to be. It’s really freeing to know that if I’m ever stripped of my ability to do, I will be okay. It makes me safer in the world. I don’t need that accomplishment, that approval. I don’t need to continue to climb to be okay. I have my value squarely set in a person. It frees me. It sets me free.

Bob: Some who are listening have come to an age where you start to peel off vocation.

Or where the kids leave home, and what’s been your vocation as a mom . . . I remember talking to empty-nest moms who said, “I got fired from my job when my last kid went to college. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore.”

Kelly: Yes.

Bob: How do we prepare our own hearts when that moment comes when we will have diminished ability—and all of us will—of not losing a sense of our own worth when that starts to happen?

Kelly: Well, I think that we can prepare for that now. I think we can prepare for those coming transitions we will all face, from being very busy, active doers in life, to those activities being stripped away—whether by life’s season changing, or by health changing, or just by age.

We can prepare for that in the middle of our activity by reminding our hearts: this is not who I am. I am not a writer. I am not a speaker. I am not a mom. That’s not my identity. I am God’s. I have these roles right now. I have these temporary vocations. Ask God to pry our hands open from them.

My prayer life sounds like that now. Even being at a conference like this, being in a moment like this, doing an interview, to go:

“This is wonderful, God, that I can do this right now. But I can do this because You’ve given me a voice to speak. You’ve given me a mind that can handle the capacity to research and write. You may strip those from me one day, and when You do, I’m still Yours. I want to know now that that is who I am, that is my life. That is what gives me meaning.

“Would You help me, God, know that right now? Would You keep my hands open to my activities and what You would set before me? Make me a free agent of Yours so that I am not driven by ‘I need to do these particular things,’ but I’m driven by You. God, what do You want for me? And if that’s to strip me of things, give me a yes in my heart.”

But I think it does start with us preparing our hearts right now rather than waiting until when that’s forced upon us by life. And then we just have that moment of freaking out. “What am I going to do?! I’ve lost everything that matters in my life!”

We haven’t, but it sometimes can catch us off guard because we’re just so used to associating who I am with what I do. Who I am is how I’m wired, and my unique skill set is what I was made for. And to teach my heart not. . .God says, “I’ve created you for My glory.”

Nothing else will satisfy but the very glory of God. No great work in the world is enough to scratch the itch of that deep longing for transcendent meaning than knowing Him. Fighting for that in a relationship with God now, I think, keeps us free and prepared for those transitions that will come so that they don’t throw us off.

Bob: We’re talking to a lot of people right now who are headed to their job, and they look at their job, and they think, I’m not contributing to anything. I work at the hardware store. Or, I answer phones at the insurance agency. There’s no sense of personal meaning or fulfillment in what they do.

And they think, “I wish I could be Kelly Needham and write books about Jesus and talk about Him. She has meaning and purpose in her life. I just work at the hardware store.”

Kelly: Well, I would say, I don’t know one human being in the world who doesn’t have things in their life that they have to do that feel pointless.

Who doesn’t have laundry that they have to fold and dishes they have to do?

They repeat every day, “Where are the socks? Why don’t they match?”

“Why is there dust again in this place? I have to dust this thing again.”

“I have to sweep the porch again.”

“My plants died because I didn’t water them.”

Whatever the thing is that feels pointless and meaningless, “Why am I doing this?” I think everybody, even the most glamorous lives in the world behind closed doors have those things. We need to know what to do with them.

If what we do gives us meaning, then all those mundane things are devoid of meaning because they don’t have any sense of movement, achievement, accomplishment, and they don’t use any of our unique skill sets.

Anyone with two arms can fold laundry. So what does that say about me if that’s most of my job right now? Or that I check people out at the hardware store, or that I answer phone calls. Anyone with a mouth and an ear can do that. So it feels devoid of meaning.

But then, if we look at how God teaches us to treat our activities, in the New Testament, in light of the gospel, in light of the best and biggest, most important news of the world. You see the New Testament authors look at their audience and say things like, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

Bob: Even folding laundry.

Kelly: Even folding laundry. If eating and drinking is in that list, then surely folding laundry is, because eating and drinking is even less impressive than folding laundry.

Who of us is not getting snacks and drinks from the pantry? It’s like, “Okay, if that’s something I’m supposed to do for the glory of God, then I’m also supposed to change my toddler’s diaper. I’m supposed to answer that phone call. I’m supposed to write that email back, or manage that calendar.”

Whatever the thing is, whether it uses our unique skill set or not, if God has set it before us today to do, then He also looks at it and says, “Don’t do it for the watchful eyes of somebody else. Don’t do it for even your sense of meaning. Do it for My glory and work hard at it, for My glory.”

We are called to have a different audience and a different aim behind our work. Then even our own sense of meaning and purpose, those things become now an offering of worship to God.

And He has seen fit to say, “That’s enough for Me.” Even if I can’t perceive anything meaningful has changed in the world because I chose to eat my lunch to His glory, I chose to fold laundry for His glory, I chose to sweep the back porch for His glory, if no one else sees it, if it doesn’t seem to accomplish anything measurable at all, if it doesn’t seem to have any type of impact whatsoever in the world, if none of that has happened but I have done it unto God who sees in heaven where a watchful audience of heavenly beings and saints are before us; then Lord, let that be enough for me. It’s enough for You. Teach me to let it be enough for me, and know that it pleases You.

Again, if the person of God is where I find meaning and fulfillment, then His pleasure becomes a higher measuring stick of accomplishment than even what is visibly produced on this earth.

I think that’s why I love stories like Mary pouring all of her oil on Jesus. The disciples say, “Why this waste?” They see something that could have been utilized in a much more effective way, much more impactful way. “It could have been sold and used for the poor. And look at the ways you could have utilized this thing? You just wasted all this energy on Jesus.”

And Jesus rebukes them and says, “No. It is good that she has done this.” And so much so that, “Wherever the gospel goes, this will be told of her.” Jesus takes a moment to say, “She understands that the right value system is one that sees Me honored and Me pleased as the highest value.”

And that, again, is so freeing, because now if I have boring work set before me today that I don’t like, I can chose to do it for the glory of God and know that’s actually accomplishing far more than even if I had a really unique job with really specific activities that fit specifically to me and seem to accomplish a lot. I don’t have that, but I have this. And God says that this is of more significant eternal value to work for His glory, even when no one sees it, than if I had the best, coolest job in the world.

Bob: What was the central message you wanted to make sure your readers would get from your new book?

Kelly: My hope from this book is to communicate that:

• You were not made for verbs, but for a noun.
• You were not made for doing.
• You were made for a Person.
• You were made in His image.
• Your very existence is tied to His.
• You were made to know Him.

Just to know the person of God will actually satisfy the deep ache for transcendent meaning that we have. That can be really hard to believe, because we can’t see God with our eyes. We can’t hear Him with our ears right now, but nothing else will do it. Nothing else will scratch that itch.

My hope is to convince readers that that is true. That God and God alone, knowing Him and knowing Him alone, will be the only thing that will give you a deep sense of purpose and meaning, which you need to live. You need a purposeful life, but it has to be detached from doing. It has to be attached to a person.

Nancy: What an encouraging reminder from Kelly Needham. She’s been talking with Revive Our Hearts’ board member, Bob Lepine.

The book she was just describing is titled Purposefooled. Yes, it’s a made-up word, but it makes a lot of sense—purposefooled. In other words, we can quickly become fooled into thinking our purpose, our identity, is attached to external, temporary things, rather than to the person of Jesus Christ.

The book will be released in just about a week-and-a-half. You can actually pre-order that book now. And for those who do, Kelly will be starting a four-week, online Bible study this coming Monday. In that study, she’ll be taking a more in-depth look at some of the Scripture passages that speak into the topics she discusses in her book.

You’ll find a link to the information about how to pre-order Kelly’s book, Purposefooled, and how to join the online Bible study in the transcript of today’s program on the Revive Our Hearts app or at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Dannah: Thanks, Nancy.

A quick thank you to our Revive Partners. That’s a special group of folks who support Revive Our Hearts each month with a donation of at least $30. In fact, our guest today, Kelly Needham, is a Revive Partner. So thank you Kelly for all your support.

If the Lord has used Revive Our Hearts to help you grow spiritually, and if He’s blessed you with enough extra to give, would you consider becoming a Revive Partner?

We’ll say “thank you” with a special welcome pack of great resources. We’ll send you a daily devotional you can use personally or share with someone else. There are a lot of other perks along the way.

We don’t want to take away from your regular giving to your church. This is just if you sense God’s leading you to give beyond that.

For all the details, go to ReviveOurHearts.com/donate. Click on top where you see, “Become a Revive Partner.” Or, you can always call us at 1-800-569-5959.

On Monday, Kathryn Butler is here to help us know how great stories in literature help us point our kids to the gospel. She’ll explain next week.

Until then, have a great weekend. I hope you’re able to gather with other believers and worship our great God this weekend. And then, be back on Monday for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is helping you attach your purpose to your freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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