Our final ingredient for financial success is purpose. Without a purpose, your emotion and your efforts will lack meaning. Without meaning, your efforts cannot be sustained for any length of time. Simply put, you won't have the staying power you need to win with money in the long run. Being successful in your finances is a marathon, not a sprint.
What is the purpose behind your desire? What is the vision that gives you endurance? Is is grounded in selfishness or selflessness? We lose ourselves in order to find ourselves. If the purpose of our success is simply for our own benefit, our own edification, our own advancement, our own glory, our own profit, we may still achieve some measure of success, but we will not be content. And we know from last week that contentment is the key, the one thing, the root of our financial success. We will not find fulfillment in our successes.
As believers, until we find our purpose in Jesus Christ, we are running a useless race. When we understand that He owns it all, and that we are just stewards of all that He's given us, we become motivated to be good managers. It's not really ours anyway! The goal is to understand what HIS purpose is for us, and align all of our passions and plans up with that. Then we will find what we are truly longing for, then we will begin to realize success in terms of the Kingdom instead of the kingdom.
How do you discover your purpose? There's a great book called "Chazown", by Craig Groeschel, that can help you discover the God-given purpose for your life. It walks you through the process of understanding your core values, your gifts and talents, and your past experiences, only to find your purpose at the intersection of the three. Knowing your purpose will help ignite your passion and supercharge your plan to bring you incredible success.
