You Will Never Find Your Purpose Without This One Thing [And nobody is talking about it enough]
Jun 03, 2026
Article By Charlotte Taylor
Can I just say something that might ruffle a few feathers?
Every course, every coach, every self help book and every Instagram caption telling you to find your purpose is missing something. Something so fundamental that without it everything else they are selling you is just noise dressed up in nice fonts and motivational language.
They are leaving out Jesus.
I know that might sound like a church answer. Like the kind of thing someone says when they do not have anything more practical to offer, but stay with me because I am not talking about religion here. I am not talking about a set of rules or a Sunday morning routine or the version of Christianity that makes you feel guilty for being human.
I am talking about a relationship. A real, alive, daily, personal relationship with Jesus Christ and I am going to make a bold statement that I believe with everything in me...
You cannot find your true purpose without Him. Not the kind that lasts.
Here Is Why Everything Else Leaves You Empty
You have probably tried the other things. Most of us have.
The personality tests that tell you whether you are a leader or a helper or a creative. The vision boards are covered in pictures of the life you want. The morning routines and the journaling prompts and the therapy sessions and the self discovery retreats and some of those things have value genuinely they do.
Here is the problem. All of them start with the same assumption that the answer to who you are and why you are here is somewhere inside you waiting to be excavated.
The truth is, it is not!
The answer to who you are is not inside you. It is inside the One who made you.
Think about it this way. If you want to know what something was designed for, what it was made to do and how it was made to function you go to the manufacturer. You go to the one who built it. You do not ask the product to explain itself.
You are not the manufacturer of your own life. God is. He did not just create you and then leave you to figure out the rest alone. He wrote a purpose into you before you were even born "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you before you were born I set you apart" Jeremiah 1:5.
That purpose is already in you. The only One who can fully reveal it to you is the One who placed it there.
What Jesus Actually Says About Purpose
People spend so much time searching for their purpose as if it is this hidden treasure buried somewhere they have not looked yet. Jesus was never vague about it.
He said "I am the way, the truth and the life." John 14:6
The way. Not a way. Not one option among several. THE way.
When Jesus says He is the way He is not just talking about the way to heaven. He is talking about the way to everything. The way to understand who you are. The way to clarity when you are confused. The way to meaning when everything feels pointless. The way to purpose when you cannot find the thread of your own life.
He is also The Truth. In a world drowning in lies and opinions and conflicting messages about who you should be and what you should want and how you should live. Jesus is the only standard of truth that does not shift with the culture or bend to the algorithm.
He is the life, not just life after death. Life now. The kind of life that is full and meaningful and deeply alive even on ordinary Tuesday afternoons. "I have come that they may have life and have it to the full" John 10:10.
A full life. That is what He came to give you, not a half life spent searching for something that was available to you all along through relationship with Him.
The Difference Between A Purpose You Find And A Purpose You Are Given
Here is something that changed everything for me when I finally understood it.
There is a massive difference between a purpose you find and a purpose you are given.
A purpose you find is one you construct from your own gifts, your own desires and your own ideas about what a meaningful life looks like. It might be good. It might even be great, however, it is limited by your own perspective and your own understanding and your own ability to see the bigger picture.
A purpose you are given by God, through a relationship with Jesus is something else entirely. It is a purpose that fits you perfectly because it was designed specifically for you. It accounts for everything about you: your history, your pain, your gifts, your personality, the specific corner of the world you occupy and the specific people you were placed on this earth to reach.
"For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10
Did you catch that? Prepared in advance. Before you were born. Before you made any decisions or mistakes or achievements. Before you had anything to show for yourself. God already had a plan for your life and He prepared it in advance.
That plan does not become clear through a personality quiz. It becomes clear through the relationship with the One who wrote it.
What A Real Relationship With Jesus Actually Looks Like
I want to talk about this because I think a lot of women have a version of Jesus in their lives that is not really a relationship at all.
It is more like an emergency contact.
He gets called when things fall apart. When the diagnosis comes. When the relationship ends. When the money runs out. When everything that was holding life together suddenly is not. He is gracious in those moments. He meets you there every single time without fail.
He was never meant to just be your emergency contact.
He wants to be your daily companion. The first conversation of your morning. The one you process your day with. The one you bring your ideas to before you bring them to anyone else. The one you sit with in the quiet when the noise of the world gets too loud.
Here is what happens when you actually build that kind of relationship with Him, everything starts to shift. Not all at once. Not dramatically but slowly and undeniably the fog starts to lift. The clarity starts to come. The pieces of your life that seemed completely disconnected start to connect in ways that make no logical sense but make perfect spiritual sense.
When you are close to God, when you are genuinely in relationship with Jesus on a daily basis. He starts to show you what He sees when He looks at your life and what He sees is so much bigger and so much more beautiful than anything you could have constructed on your own.
"For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11
He has plans. Specific ones. For you. Not generic plans that apply to everyone but personal intentional plans that were written with your name on them.
You access those plans through relationship. Through prayer. Through the Word. Through the kind of consistent daily communion with God that most people are too busy to prioritise until they are desperate enough to finally slow down.
The Practical Side Of This Because Faith Is Also Action
I want to be clear that I am not telling you to sit in a room and wait for God to drop a fully formed life plan through your ceiling.
Faith without action is dead James 2:17 says so.
Relationship with Jesus is not passive. It is active. It moves. It walks. It takes steps even when the whole staircase is not visible.
Here is what it actually looks like practically:
You pray with expectation, not just routine. Not the kind of prayer that is just talking at God but the kind that involves actually stopping and listening. Sitting in the quiet long enough to hear what He might be saying back. He speaks through the Word, through peace, through conviction, through the counsel of trusted people in your life and sometimes just through a knowing in your spirit that is impossible to explain but impossible to ignore.
You get into the Word consistently. Not because you have to but because the Word of God is alive "For the Word of God is alive and active sharper than any double edged sword" Hebrews 4:12. When you read it consistently it starts to read you back. It starts to speak to the specific questions you are carrying and the specific direction you need and the specific truth that your situation requires.
You pay attention to what God keeps putting in front of you. The recurring themes. The doors that keep opening in a certain direction. The problems you keep noticing in the world around you that nobody else seems to be addressing. The people you naturally gravitate toward helping. These are not random. God is deliberate. He is always speaking, the question is whether we are paying enough attention to hear it.
You take the next step even when you cannot see the full picture. Purpose is not revealed all at once. It unfolds. Step by step. Faith by faith. The woman who is walking in purpose is rarely the one who had the most clarity before she started. She is the one who trusted God enough to start moving before she could see the whole road.
Why This Matters Right Now More Than Ever
We are living in a moment where the world is working very hard to answer the question of purpose for women. The answers it is offering are convincing and everywhere you look.
Build your personal brand. Chase your passion. Manifest your dream life. Be your own god.
Women are following those answers in their millions and arriving at the destination they were promised and finding it empty. Finding that the thing they chased so hard does not satisfy the way they thought it would. Finding that purpose built on anything other than God is a foundation that eventually cracks under the weight of real life.
Jesus said it plainly "What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul?" Matthew 16:26
You can gain everything the world is telling you to chase and still have nothing that actually matters if it is not rooted in Him.
Anavé exists because of this truth. Every issue of this magazine, every article, every testimony, every teaching is rooted in one conviction. That women deserve the truth. The whole truth, not the version that has been edited to be more palatable or more culturally acceptable or less likely to offend.
The truth that Jesus is not one option among many. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. Every woman who is searching for her purpose whether she knows it yet or not is searching for Him.
Where Do You Go From Here
If you are reading this and you already have a relationship with Jesus, go deeper! Do not let it be comfortable and surface level. Press in. Pray more. Read the Word with hunger not obligation. Ask Him to show you what He sees when He looks at your life and then stay still long enough to hear the answer.
If you are reading this and you are not sure about Jesus or you have a version of Him that feels distant or religious or irrelevant to your actual daily life I want to gently say that the Jesus I am talking about is none of those things. He is the most alive, most present, most personally invested being you will ever encounter. He is not waiting for you to have it together before He shows up. He meets you exactly where you are.
The new issue of Anavé is available now free digitally because we believe truth should reach every woman regardless of where she is. Inside you will find stories, teachings and content rooted in exactly what we have been talking about here. Real women. Real faith. Real Jesus. Read it and share it with every woman in your life who is searching for something she cannot yet name.
Join us in Forge and War Room on Substack where we go deep into truth, warfare and what it looks like to walk with Jesus in the reality of everyday life. Not the Sunday morning version. The Tuesday afternoon, middle of the chaos, holding it together by faith, version.
If you want to sow into something that is genuinely carrying the Kingdom forward every purchase in the Anavé store goes directly toward advancing this mission. Your seed goes further than you know.
Purpose is not lost. It is not hiding. It is not waiting for you to become a better version of yourself before it reveals itself.
It is already written. Already prepared. Already yours.
You just need the One who wrote it to show you where it is.
That conversation starts with Him. ๐ค
With love,
Charlotte Taylor Founder & Editor, Anavé Magazine
"I am the way the truth and the life." John 14:6
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