In 1995, an email popped up on my screen at 2:47 on a Tuesday afternoon. “Can you come to my office?” I’d built a department from nothing. Six-figure salary. Twelve-hour days, six days a week, closing partnership deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I walked down the hall expecting, if anything, more recognition. Instead, I got Scott. Someone from outside the company would now be my boss, and I’d help him find his footing in the role I’d earned.
I left that office stunned.
That night, alone in my home office, I realized this wasn’t about money. It was about identity. Everything I could see myself losing was position, recognition, respect. I knelt beside my desk and told God I was angry. I felt disrespected and betrayed.
Weeks later, a mentor named William asked me three questions in a hallway. Do you believe God is sovereign? Could this be part of His will for you right now? Might He have something better than what you can see? I’d spent two years teaching God’s sovereignty on a company prayer call. Now God was asking if I actually believed it.
Here’s what I eventually understood: God wasn’t against me having the VP role. He was against the VP role having me.
The prayer ministry I’d started two years earlier kept going, under my new boss, after I left the company, and at every company after that. People kept coming to Christ through it. None of that depended on my title.
Because purpose isn’t tied to position. It travels with you.
Scripture backs this up further than my own story can. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10, ESV). Good works don’t earn your purpose. They flow out of a purpose God already prepared for you.
Jesus said it even plainer. “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, ESV). Purpose isn’t found in striving to accomplish great things. It’s found in abiding, staying connected to Christ, who already lives in you.
So, ask yourself what I couldn’t ask myself in 1995. If your title disappeared tomorrow, would your purpose disappear with it? If the platform, the recognition, the plan all changed overnight, what would still be true about who you are and what you’re here to do?
If the honest answer unsettles you, that’s worth sitting with. Chapter 7 of Divine Gratitude: Joy Beyond This World walks through what I learned in that season, and how gratitude reframes purpose as something no reporting change can touch.
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