You wake up. You go through the motions. You check the boxes: career, family, responsibilities. You’re doing what you’re supposed to do. Yet somewhere deep inside, a question whispers relentlessly: Is this all there is?
If you’re reading this feeling unfulfilled, despite your achievements, efforts, and doing everything “right,” you’re not alone. And more importantly, that restless longing isn’t a flaw. It’s a compass pointing toward the truth America’s founders understood and staked their lives upon: You were created for a purpose that only freedom can unlock.
The Tyranny of Unfulfilled Potential
Here’s a sobering reality our founders grasped: Tyranny doesn’t just steal your rights. It steals your destiny. When government controls your conscience, dictates your thoughts, or limits your potential based on birth or belief, it doesn’t just oppress you politically. It prevents you from becoming who God created you to be.
This is why they pledged everything, “lives, fortunes, and sacred honor,” to establish a nation where you could sit “under your own vine and under your own fig tree, and no one will make you afraid” (Micah 4:4 NIV), Washington’s favorite verse, quoted over 50 times in his writings. They understood what modern Americans often forget: Freedom isn’t just about rights. It’s about reaching your God-given potential.
When the founders cited Scripture 34% of the time in their political writings, more than all Enlightenment philosophers combined, they weren’t engaging in empty religious rhetoric (reference: Were our Founders Really Christian? Hillsdale College Professor Mark David Hall). They were building a nation on this bedrock truth: The same God who “endowed” you with “unalienable rights” also endowed you with unique gifts, a specific purpose, and the burning need for freedom to fulfill it.
Do you know what purpose God created you for? Do you understand your destiny?
It starts with recognizing the gifts God has given you: your spiritual gifts, natural abilities, personality, experiences, and the passions written on your heart. These aren’t random. They’re divine appointments.
You didn’t choose your parents, where you were born, your natural talents, or your deepest passions. God chose them for you. And here’s the liberating truth: You’re responsible for making the most of what you’ve been given, but you’re not responsible for gifts God didn’t give you.
If you’re not musically gifted, God won’t judge you for not singing like Josh Groban. If you don’t have an engineer’s mind and an entrepreneur’s drive, He’s not calling you to become like Elon Musk. But He is calling you to steward your unique combination of gifts “for the good of others.”
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10 NIV).
The question that will echo in eternity isn’t “Were you as successful as your neighbor?” It’s this: “What did you do with what you were given?”
“So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Romans 14:12 NIV).
For Such a Time as This
Consider Esther, an orphaned Jewish girl in ancient Persia. God gave her three specific assets: intelligence, physical beauty, and an engaging personality. In an empire where women had virtually no power, where Jews were despised outsiders, where speaking up could mean death, these seemed like pleasant but ultimately inconsequential gifts.
Until they weren’t.
“Now the young woman pleased him and won his favor… So he set a royal crown on her head and made her queen” (Esther 2:9, 17 NIV).
God positioned her uniquely. When a genocidal decree threatened to annihilate her people, her cousin Mordecai issued a challenge that echoes through the millennia: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14 NIV).
Esther chose purpose over safety. “If I perish, I perish,” she declared (Esther 4:16 NIV).
And she saved a nation.
Here’s where America’s founding vision connects to your personal unfulfillment: You cannot discover, develop, or deploy your God-given gifts under tyranny.
Imagine Esther in a society where she couldn’t speak freely, where her faith was illegal, where her identity was controlled by the state, and where her choices were dictated by rulers. She never becomes queen. The Jewish people are annihilated. Purpose dies in the prison of oppression.
This is why the founders, deeply shaped by biblical truth, created a constitutional order with separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. Because, as James Madison wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” They understood human sinfulness, including the sin of squandering gifts, avoiding calling, and choosing comfort over courage.
They also understood that humans bear the image of God. “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). You weren’t created to merely exist. You were created to steward gifts for eternal impact. But you can only do that in freedom.
The American Experiment: A Laboratory for Purpose
When President Washington wrote to the tiny Jewish congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, all 2,000 Jews in America with virtually no political power, he made a revolutionary declaration: “For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”
Washington understood what you need to grasp today: Freedom isn’t a gift from government. It’s a gift from God that government is obligated to protect. And that freedom isn’t for selfish indulgence. It’s for sacred stewardship.
The founders abolished slavery in eight northern states between 1777 and 1804 (reference: Northeast States Abolish Slavery). They banned it in the Northwest Territory (reference: What Was Banned in the Northwest Territory?). Why? Because enslaving a person doesn’t just violate their rights. It obliterates their purpose. When you’re property, you can’t fulfill destiny.
When you’re controlled, you can’t create. When you’re oppressed, you can’t offer. When you’re enslaved, whether literally or through crushing regulation, ideological conformity, or governmental overreach, you can’t steward the gifts God gave you.
This is why they pledged their lives, not for abstract political theory, but for the sacred right of every person to discover and fulfill God’s purpose for their existence.
- Parent juggling work and family, feeling like you’re failing at both. That restlessness isn’t weakness. It’s your soul crying out for purpose beyond mere productivity.
- Professional climbing the ladder but feeling empty at the top. That dissatisfaction isn’t ingratitude. It’s God calling you to align your gifts with His kingdom purposes.
- College student drowning in options yet paralyzed by indecision. That anxiety isn’t abnormal. It’s the weight of potential seeking direction.
- American patriot watching the country drift from its founding principles. That grief isn’t pessimism. It’s the Holy Spirit grieving the squandering of sacred freedom.
Your unfulfillment is a gift. It’s God refusing to let you settle for less than the purpose He created you for.
But here’s the critical truth: Discovering that purpose requires the very freedoms our founders fought to establish and that each generation must protect. Remember, Christ died “so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15 NIV). When you’re enslaved by fear, you can’t fulfill your purpose. When Christ sets you free, you can.
When you stand before God, and you will, He won’t compare you to anyone else. He’ll ask about you:
- What did you do with your intelligence, your creativity, your influence?
- What did you do with your personality, your experiences, your platform?
- What did you do with your resources, your relationships, your opportunities?
- What did you do with your freedom?
God gave Esther specific gifts for a purpose: to save the Hebrew people from genocide. How might God use your gifts to benefit other people?
Your gifts aren’t for your glory. They’re for God’s purposes and others’ good. And you’ll only discover what those purposes are in a society that protects your freedom to seek, to question, to create, to build, to speak, to worship, and to become.
For Such a Time as This
Mordecai’s challenge to Esther echoes to you today: “Who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?”
Your education, your career, your influence, your resources, your experiences, including your pain, your failures, your struggles, are not random. God has sovereignly placed you with specific gifts in a specific time for specific purposes.
The question is:
- Will you risk comfort to fulfill your calling?
- Will you steward your gifts for God’s glory and others’ good, or squander them on self-advancement?
- Will you protect the freedoms that make purpose possible, or passively watch them erode?
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1 NIV).
Christ didn’t die to make you comfortable. He died to make you free. Free from sin, free from guilt, free from fear of death, and yes, free to discover and fulfill the purpose for which you were created.
The founders understood this and built a nation where that freedom could flourish. They gave you the political architecture. Christ gave you the spiritual emancipation. God gave you the gifts.
What you do with them is up to you.
Esther could have stayed silent and safe. She chose risk and rescue. The founders could have accepted tyranny and comfort. They chose sacrifice and liberty. Jesus could have avoided the cross and escaped suffering. He chose death and delivered freedom.
Now it’s your turn.
You were created for such a time as this. Live like it.
Praise God, you can live free. Free from fear, free to fulfill purpose, free to become who you were meant to be.
The question is: Will you?
MindWolves 