How often do you find yourself asking the age-old question: What is my purpose in life? We know that God is calling us, just like Jesus called the disciples to come and follow Him, as I wrote about last week. But how do we know what God is calling us to do? Where’s the roadmap…or the specific set of instructions?

I should be honest and say I don’t really have an answer to that question. But I do have a theory. For some reason, God doesn’t choose to reveal Himself to individuals in the same way. I believe those people who hear a more distinct calling—like the 12 disciples—are quite rare.

For reasons beyond our understanding, God wants the rest of us to embark on our journeys without really knowing where we’re headed. In many ways, this “not knowing” becomes the greatest stretch of our faith.   There’s a plaque that used to hang in my old office with the following quote by Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” What better way to show our trust in God than to set out on this blind journey, confident that He will reveal Himself to us when the time is right? That He will reveal our purpose when we’re ready to hear it. So for those of you who come up blank when you ask yourself, what is my purpose in life? It’s ok. Maybe you’re not supposed to know what your purpose is just yet. Maybe it’s enough to say you’ll know it when you see it.

So…what do we do in the meantime?

To quote a popular phrase, “Keep on keepin’ on!” Just because God has chosen not to reveal His plans for you just yet, that’s no reason to go running back to the security of your fishing nets. For now, let the journey become your purpose. Let the journey become your calling. Commit yourself to leaving the seashore and following Jesus, wherever He might lead you. Commit yourself to taking the next step on the staircase. To the belief that Jesus is leading you to your destiny.

The next time you see a spider web, think about—comparatively speaking—how far that spider had to travel to complete the web. If you stretched all the tiny little lines and squares of the web out into a straight line, imagine how long it would be. But a spider doesn’t travel in a straight line. I read this in a book, once, and it really stuck with me: to make a web, a spider must continually return to a center point. Like a compass that always points North, this constant return to center is what enables the spider to create that intricate and beautiful spiral shape we are so familiar with.

So a spider is really taking a series of little journeys, always coming back to center. I challenge and encourage you to do the same. Keep your relationship with God at the center, and venture out on an endless series of little journeys…with each one, learning more about yourself and more about your purpose in life. This allows you to keep moving, even when you don’t have all the answers. And I absolutely believe that’s the way God wants it. He wants us to venture out on the journey without knowing exactly where it will lead. He wants us to be open to it. He wants us to learn, to make mistakes along the way, to keep on keepin’ on. And this becomes so much easier to do when you know you can always come back to the center—to God.

The only thing that God does NOT want is for us to give up the journey entirely. For it’s what happens on this journey that will give our lives purpose.