We are currently featuring guest posts from a several of the women who are leading breakout sessions at WHOLE.

Today’s post is from Lori Fairchild, author of the Everyday Truth blog, which aims to help parents capture the everyday moments to teach their kids about Jesus. She is leading The Search for Significance breakout session at the WHOLE.

It’s important to know that at WHOLE, every woman who leads a breakout has personally experienced the topic she’s addressing. These are real women who have found wholeness in their specific area of brokenness. There’s hope for whatever you’ve faced or are currently facing and for that friend, sister, mother, etc. that you don’t feel equipped to help today.

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Breakout: The Search for Significance
Leader: Lori Fairchild

Significance. The word looks impressive. It sounds impressive when you say it. We all want it. But most of us aren’t sure what it is.

We all want our lives to have significance. We want to matter. When we’re gone, we want to know that we left something of importance on this earth. We want to know that the things we spend our time on and the things we pour our hearts into matter to more people than just us.

In our quest to feel significant, we often find ourselves pouring our hearts and our time into things that are only fleeting. We spend hours choosing the right dress and doing our make-up before going out for the evening so that others will tell us how good we look. We obsess over getting their kids into the right preschool, the right soccer program, the right college so we can feel as if we have succeeded. We stay late at work finishing up a project instead of going home to our husbands because we want to feel appreciated and receive the accolades of our colleagues.

We search for significance in all the places that the world tells us it can be found – in our looks, in our jobs, in our kids. Only to find out it’s all a lie.

We can’t find significance in any of these things. Oh, we might gain momentary satisfaction, but we won’t find lasting significance. Because our worth doesn’t come from any of these things. Our value comes from only one place – God. And only when we realize that will we find significance.

God tells us that we are beautiful in His eyes. He calls us His masterpiece (Ephesians 2:11). No matter what the world thinks, God thinks we have value. And we don’t have to have physical beauty, perfect kids or the most overtime hours for Him to value us. He values us simply because He made us. We are His creation; therefore, we are significant.

In our quest for significance, we often gloss over the things that are important to God. In our rush to climb the corporate ladder, raise great kids or have the perfect body, we miss opportunities to help the poor and hurting, feed the orphans and sit at God’s feet. In looking for significance in the approval of the world, we miss it entirely in the things of God.

We will only truly find significance when we realize our worth to God and we seek to follow His plan for our lives. What does God require of us? What will lead us to significance? God tells us in Micah 6:8 what He wants from us: “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (NIV).

Acting justly, loving mercy and walking humbly with God coupled with the truth that we are valuable to God will lead us to a life of significance. We won’t have to stumble through life looking for significance in all the things the world offers. We’ll have significance in the confidence of knowing that God loves us and that we are doing the things that He considers important.

Stop striving for significance. Instead sit at the feet of God and let Him fill you with significance, simply because you belong to Him.