Purpose. It’s something that every human being longs for. Whether we realize it or not, most of our lives are spent searching for it. Searching for something that tells us who we are, why we’re here, and where we’re going. And for a long time, I thought purpose was something that I had to build on my own.
So, I chase the things of this world that will give my life meaning. Whether that be achievement, success, discipline, goals and ambitions, and just overall doing everything in my own glory. And from the outside, it probably looked like I was moving forward. But forward doesn’t always mean fulfilled.
On the inside, I still felt really empty. I believe that if I just worked harder and achieved more, eventually I’ll feel whole. But no matter how much I added to my life, something was still missing.
Then 2024 came around and it humbled me. There are so many things that happened during this year that have shown me that I can’t do life on my own. I was in the stock market feeling ambitious and feeling like I can make a lot of money, but I ended up losing it all.
During the same year, I lost both my dogs in a span of four months. And my GPA during the fall of 2024 has dropped to a value I’ve never seen before. Even though I studied the most and for the first time in a long time, I felt completely alone. I spent so much time trying to control my life that I didn’t know what to do when it started slipping out of my hands.
In November 2024, my perspective started to change.
I found Jesus Christ for myself and for a little bit of background information, I grew up in a Christian family. I grew up attending church and I grew up attending retreats, but my faith was never personal. It was always secondary to my friends and family. The turning point for me was during Thanksgiving Day in November of 2024.
It was 3:00 a.m. and I saw the Bible in the corner of my room. A voice in the back of my head was telling me to pick it up and start reading it. I remember a pastor back in my college telling me that Romans was a great book. So that’s where I started. I started with Romans 1, not knowing it would change my life.
My saving verses Romans 1:21-22 says:
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools.”
After I read this, I reflected and I realized that this is exactly how I was living. I thought the way that I lived was the best way to live. And I thought that I was smart. I thought I was wise. But in actuality, I was a fool.
I learned that the struggles that I’ve experienced during 2024 came from living life on how I wanted to live. I realized that living life on my own terms will only lead to more hurt and pain and that I can’t do life on my own and I’m prone to sin and failure. And I felt God’s grace again cuz even in that place, God met me. He met me when I was broken and when I was dirty. Not when I had everything together. Not when I deserved it, but when I was suffering and struggling.
Romans 1:21 says,
“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.”
That’s exactly how I was living. I grew up Christian my entire life and I knew all the stories, and I knew God and I knew that he existed. But I did not respect him or honor him until God really showed me through the experiences that I’ve gone through and the struggles that I faced.
God showed me that he’s a God of discipline, but also of God of love. And he will put experiences in your life to humble you and to show you that he is real. Now, where am I at today?
In February 2026, my life didn’t suddenly become easy, but it became anchored. For the first time, I started to understand what it meant not just to know about God, but to lean on him, to trust him, and to build my own personal relationship with the father.
I started to understand the gospel that I was never saved by my own strength and my own doing, but by his love and grace and mercy alone. Slowly my life stopped being about proving to myself and to other people and started becoming about surrender and through that surrender my newfound identity as a child of God.
Now what does that mean in a practical sense? I still have ambitions. I still have goals. Goals of going to med school, goals of becoming an Iron Man, training goals, and just goals in general that I want to achieve throughout this life. But the reasons why I’m doing these goals changed. It’s no longer about building my own kingdom or my own glory, but it’s about living in a way that honors God and using the gifts that he has given me to point it back to him.
Now, by no means I am a perfect Christian. I still struggle with sin every single day. Pride, lust, envy, greed, idolatry, etc., and fall into temptation every day. And the things that I said in this video, I may not follow all the time, but I know that God still loves me and shows me that there is still so much to learn about him.
Following God isn’t always comfortable. The way God wants you to live can be so much different from how you want to live your life. It takes obedience and trust, even when you don’t understand, in order to follow him. I still struggle with this, too. But every single day, God is showing me what it means to trust him and how to be obedient towards him.
Now, there are a lot of things said, but if you were to take away one idea from this video, it would be that God loves you no matter what. God loved you so much that he sent his only son Jesus down in human form to die for you so you could have eternal life.
God is knocking on your heart every second of your life. He wants to heal you from any depression, anxiety or struggle that you are facing currently and give you unexplainable peace and joy that I felt personally too.
Now if you are hearing this and you are bitter, I understand because I was once in your shoes too. But I know that God has a plan for you and will reveal himself to you through experiences or people you will meet in your life.
God Bless you!!
Sean
