How to End Your Day Feeling Filled with Purpose

There is a deep mystery to purpose.

While we as followers of Jesus can claim knowledge of our broad purpose — glorify God and share His good news — the everyday purpose gets lost in the weeds of ordinary.

And when our everyday purpose grows fuzzy from the mundane, we tend to lean into the negative emotions that arise. “What’s even the point of this day?” “What did I accomplish today?” “I don’t feel like this day had any purpose at all.”

Any of those sound familiar?

How to End Your Day Feeling Filled with Purpose

There’s a flaw to our logic when we dive into these thoughts: Our daily purpose is not dependant on how we feel or even on what we accomplish. We don’t end a day filled with purpose because of what happened throughout our day.

We end our day feeling filled with purpose because we’ve just spent an entire day in the presence of our Creator, our Savior, our God.

But in order to truly believe this and apply it, we must first let go of the need to fill our days with earthly purposes. We must even let go of the need to fill our days with the good things God gives to us — refreshing conversations with loved ones, a job well done at work, fun family time, quiet moments in nature.

Anything we place on the altar of purpose instead of God will never, ever satisfy us. Our days will always end in something missing. We will feel the pull of, “What was the point?” We will experience what we can’t quite put our finger on as to why we’re feeling unsettled.

If you’re ending your day sifting through what you’ve done and what you’ve accomplished, allowing those items to provide your day with purpose and worth, then you’ll end up in the weeds of purposeless ordinary.

But that’s not what God desires for you each day.

A Day Filled with Purpose

Can you imagine how Adam and Eve felt at the end of a day in Eden? Or how Enoch felt at the end of each day of faithfully walking with God (Genesis 5:22-24)? There are those few men and women in the Bible who, it’s safe to say, had a relationship with God that we ache to experience.

But have you ever noticed the normalcy of the day-to-day of these people? Adam and Eve had no other human interactions. They had their God-given labors, and then they simply walked with God in the garden. They spent their days basking in the presence of their Creator, being His friend, His companion.

We don’t really know what Enoch’s days looked like, but Scripture doesn’t reveal anything extraordinary about his daily life. He also walked with God, remaining faithful to Him to the point that God simply brought Enoch into His presence to end his earthly life.

God desires relationship with us. In the midst of our broader purpose of bringing Him glory, He desires for us to walk with Him. And this walk doesn’t necessarily mean grand, daily events. God doesn’t even want those things if our actions reflect impure motives (Micah 6:1-8).

A day lived where we simply walk humbly with our God is a day filled with purpose.

So how do we fight against our flesh that desires grand adventure more than the life God has given us? When our souls desire the grandeur of Heaven, how do we end our days feeling filled with purpose for the here and now?

Five Tips for Feeling Filled with Purpose

Instead of immersing ourselves in earthly tasks, let us immerse ourselves in God. What does this look like practically?

Start your day with Jesus in some capacity. Not all of us our morning Bible readers. If you have your time in God’s Word at a different point of your day, still attempt some kind of interaction with your Creator at the start of your day. He is the one who gives you each day, He provides you with new mercies each morning, and He lovingly desires to spend as much time with you as possible. Set up your mind and your heart to rest in His presence from the beginning of your day instead of waiting until it’s more convenient.

Immediately take your thoughts captive to Jesus, to Truth (2 Corinthians 10:5). This means either through prayer or Scripture, seek truth the moment you catch yourself feeling purposeless. Choose to believe that truth, asking for the Holy Spirit’s help.

Listen to Scripture, sermons, faith-based podcasts, worship music, etc., when you begin struggling with your daily purpose. If it’s difficult to point your mind in the right direction on your own, allow the wisdom of others to help guide you. It’s also refreshing and encouraging to fill our conscious with thoughts about God instead of with our go-to of politics or world issues or random books.

Take specific time to praise God throughout your day. It really doesn’t matter what you’re praising Him for, just take a few moments here and there to spend time talking to Him and praising Him. This will help you refocus on what’s actually important.

At the end of your day, take a moment and sit quietly in God’s presence, remembering how the God of the universe just spent a day revealing Himself to you in different ways, interceding for you, protecting you in ways you probably missed, loving you. Remember to whom you belong. Ask the Holy Spirit to remind you of the truth that what your day looked like does not equate to if your day held purpose or not.

Essentially, let’s spend our days coming before God in different ways, no matter how small those ways feel. When our minds and hearts choose to focus on God, our days will end feeling filled with purpose. Because we’ve spent our days with Him.

And when your day still ends feeling purposeless, tell the enemy to beat it — you live each day as a child of the King of kings, and He entrusted this day to you specifically. God wastes nothing. He does nothing in vain. His truth will never return void.

So even if your day feels lacking in purpose on the surface level, you can fall asleep knowing your purpose goes deeper than the surface. You walked with God this day. And that’s how you end your day feeling filled with purpose.