What’s The Point?

“What’s the point?” This question is what brought me into the roughest season of depression I’ve ever experienced. However, this question is also what brought me out of that season. If you can learn anything from those two sentences it’s that the answer to this question is important.

In this blog I want to help you pull away the fog to reveal the foundation of what you do, and if that foundation is poor, I want to help you develop a better foundation so you can avoid any potential depression that I experienced.

What Is Your Life About?

Sometimes it’s hard to know what our lives are about. The best way to figure it out is to take an inventory of your life. Here’s a bunch of questions that I think will help you evaluate your life:

How do you spend your time and money?

What do you set time apart for?

What do you talk about?

If you can find a common theme for all of these, then that might just be what your life is about. It might not be just one thing, but a group of things that you can formulate into an idea or a concept. But let’s dig even deeper.

If you have a job, ask yourself why you work there? What fuels that decision? Is it a desire for money, to fund a dream or other desires, to look good in front of others, to fit in, to find personal meaning?

If you were to die, what would you want people to remember about you? What do you want to accomplish before you die? What’s one thing you want to experience before you die?

The Dive For Meaning

Hopefully these questions have helped reveal what your life is about. Maybe you never thought about this before and all you know now is that there’s a bunch of things that you care about. That’s why we need to dive deeper.

You might not see it now, but I bet you that all these different things probably have one common theme. There’s an invisible goal all these element connect with.

For example, say you spend a lot of time playing Ultimate Frisbee, hanging out with your art friends, visiting with your boyfriend and girlfriend, curling up in a chair to read, and doing school or working. What could these possibly all have in common?

This is why we need to go beyond what you do into why you do it.

Say you play Ultimate because you are good at it and it’s fun. Maybe you hangout with your art friends because they understand a unique side of you. Perhaps you spend time with your boy/girlfriend because you love them and they are fun to be around. Say you read because you enjoy the adventure. Say you go to school because you want a good job.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of these, but did you notice the theme? At the center of all of these activities is you. You do these things because they either make you happy, feel good or provide for your needs. Even loving someone else because they make you happy or make you feel good is still focused back on your wants and needs. The invisible thread is you.

And this is beyond common.

What’s The Point?

It’s because I recognized that my invisible thread was me that I fell into depression. And here’s why.

One day, you will die, and no longer will “you” be able to be that thread. What’s the point of it all in the end other than to feel good now? All that you are doing and will do to reach this goal of making yourself happy will vanish into nothing.

Is that not depressing?

But there’s another problem. Things die when they become about us. If your relationship with your boyfriend or girlfriend is all about making you feel good, then it will die when you realize you are no longer getting as much out of it as you are putting in.

If you are turning to your friends or job for validation, then at some point they will fail you, and you will feel terrible.

No matter how you try to spin it, you will always be the center of your life. Even if you give away all your money to care for other people, deep down you are either doing it to feel better, take the guilt or conviction off your chest, or to look better in front of others.

In the end, what’s the point of life if it’s all about you?

The Only Other Option

There are only two options. Either you are the center of your life, or God is. We see this truth reflected over and over again in the Bible. From the fall, when Adam and Eve started relying on their own understanding rather than God’s, to King David who desired God’s will and King Saul who fought for his own fame and position and wealth.

The cool thing is, when God is at the center of everything, you can still care for yourself. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Not that you should only love your neighbor, but that you should desire to take care of your neighbor as you desire to take care of yourself. After all, God’s the one who invented the weekend so people could rest, and marriage so people could find deep and true companionship.

Finding That True Foundation

The more God becomes the answer to the question “What’s the point?” the better. Because God is the only true foundation. This is because he’s the only constant in our universe. He cannot fail us.

I know it’s easy to ignore your foundation and ignore this important question. And probably the reason why most people ignore it is because the answer is depressing for them, but it doesn’t have to be. You don’t have to keep distracting yourself from the truth of your foundation.

You can walk through life with confidence knowing why you are here. It’s possible to face the hard questions in life and walk away with certainty and joy rather than depression and anxiety.

This is exactly what happened to me when I made God my foundation.

Making God the center of everything is simple, but very hard. All you need to do to make him the center is ask yourself, “How can I make the point of this activity, relationship, job, dream, or degree be about God?” If you can’t make God the center of it, then toss it out or change it.

This is the first part, but making God the center of your life requires more than just fitting him in. We also need to seek out what God desires for us to do and then do those things. If we apply these two things to everything, then God will be the center of our lives.

The Challenge

The only problem here is that often times we don’t want God to be the center of our lives or the center of a certain thing. Sometimes we just want something so bad that we don’t care what God says so we do it anyways.

Now we need to be careful here. We can go through all these steps without making God the foundation. Sure we can make God the center and the reason behind all that we do, but we could do this because we want to feel good and we know we will only have that peace from God. In this case, God is one step away from being the true foundation. We are at the center and we are using God as a means to please ourselves.

This is such a tricky thing to identify and move past, but the best way to do so is love. Don’t do things God calls you to do because it will make you feel better, do what God calls you to do because you love Him. Remind yourself of all He made and all He did for you so you can have this relationship with him.

Additionally, it’s so easy to forget and fall back into the old pattern. It’s so easy to retake the center and turn something from being about God back into being about us. It’s a constant struggle and requires unity with God and being filled with His Holy Spirit to walk this path. But it’s a good path. One that once you start walking it you’ll realize you never want to leave.

This is living wilder.

 

If you want to hear more about how I escaped depression, check out my blog: How God Helped Me Fight Depression

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