When a woman learns about the Embracing Purpose program for the first time—that it is a self-discovery tool for discovering God-given purpose—questions often arise. What’s self-discovery got to do with purpose-discovery? And isn’t self-discovery rather secular and self-centered?

I love those questions because they give me the chance to explain something that is fundamental to the process: To discover your purpose you must know who you are. You must know how the Creator designed you as a unique individual to partner with Him. Problem is, most of us don’t know who we are. We must look beneath the surface to become self-aware—not for the purpose of being self-focused, but in order to give ourselves away in ways that stretch far beyond us.

At an early age Jesus knew exactly who He was. When His frantic parents lost him in the crowd leaving Jerusalem after celebrating the Feast of Passover, they finally found Him in the temple. His mother scolded him saying, “What do you think you’re doing, scaring us like this?” He responds, “Didn’t you know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” Jesus had figured out who He was and where He had come from, and that informed everything He did.

Throughout scripture Jesus asks questions, not because He didn’t already know the answers. He wanted to deepen others’ self-awareness about who they are, what motivates them, and what they believe and value. He was the consummate asker of tough self-discovery questions.

Consider what Jesus did when His disciples urged Him to send away the massive crowd that had grown hungry after a long day of listening to Him. Instead of complying, Jesus tells them, “You give them something to eat… How many loaves do you have? Go look!”

The account, while literal, serves as a metaphor for us. Jesus wants us to feed the hungry and to do that we must take stock of what we have. We must look into our lunch sacks and into hearts—our internal wiring as well as our life experiences—to see what we have that will help the hurting among us. Then, as in the Bible story, we are to offer what we have to Jesus so that He can bless and multiply it.

This is the stuff of miracles. Purpose begins with figuring out who we are and where we’ve come from. Only then can we begin to envision where God wants us to go and what He wants us to do. Purpose.

Can God speak to us of our purpose without self-discovery? Sure He can. But I have found that we’re often hard-of-hearing until we know and learn to truly appreciate how magnificently He designed us, long before we took our first breath. Self-discovery is critical to the process. It is the secret sauce that separates Embracing Purpose from other resources on finding purpose.