I think I am finally understanding the meaning and purpose of starting with Why!
Start With the Why
I am consistently focusing on the how. How do I get there? How do I make it work?
But the Bible says the why comes first.
Hebrews 12 talks about Jesus going through the cross because of the joy waiting on the other side.
The how was awful. The why made it something he could endure.
Proverbs 4:23 says guard your heart above everything because everything you do flows from it.
Your deepest reason for doing things drives your whole life. Get that right, and a lot of other things start to line up.
From here, it helps to look at someone who actually experienced this and lived their life following this advice.
Joseph Didn’t Plan His Way to the Top
Let me walk you through Genesis 37-41.
Joseph was 17. His dad’s favorite kid, chosen by God, and Joseph wasn’t quiet about it either.
He told his brothers about dreams where they all bowed down to him, and his brothers hated him.
To be fair, he may have given them some reasons to.
But everything eventually fell apart.
His brothers threw him into a pit and sold him as a slave.
He ended up in Egypt working for a man named Potiphar. He worked hard, ran the whole house, and then Potiphar’s wife lied about him.
He landed in prison. He helped a fellow prisoner called the cupbearer, who forgot about him for two full years.
Three times he got knocked down hard, but he never turned bitter. He never quit. He just kept serving well wherever he was placed.
What I find interesting is that his character gave him status in each situation.
He ran Potiphar’s house. He ran the prison. Which likely made the day-to-day easier. But it didn’t fix the real hurt. He was still away from his family. Still lied about. Still forgotten by someone he helped.
And yet when he finally stood in front of Pharaoh, he didn’t take the credit. He said the answer comes from God, not from me.
The pride got knocked out of him somewhere along the way.
What remained was the gift, standing on its own, free of the man’s ego.
By chapter 41, he’s running all of Egypt. Not because he worked the system. Because he was faithful in every small thing and trusted God with the parts he couldn’t control.
The Attack Became the Path
Here’s the thing I kept coming back to.
When Potiphar’s wife lied about Joseph, it looked like an attack on God’s plan. Maybe it was meant to be. But look at what it actually did.
It put Joseph in a prison where he met the cupbearer. The cupbearer eventually remembered him. That memory brought Joseph before Pharaoh.
The thing meant to take him out became the exact thing that moved him into position.
Romans 8:28 says God works all things for good for those who love him.
But Joseph still had to keep choosing to do the right thing at every single turn for the whole chain to hold.
What I Heard Frankl Say
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish doctor who survived the Holocaust. He watched people in the camps and tried to understand why some made it, and others didn’t.
It wasn’t always the strongest people who survived. It was the ones who had a reason to keep going.
He wrote about it in Man’s Search for Meaning.
What I heard him say is this:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and chase it, the more you’re going to miss it. Success has to come as a side effect of giving yourself to something bigger than you are.
In the long run, success follows you precisely because you stopped chasing it.
That’s Joseph in the pit.
He wasn’t trying to become the ruler of Egypt. He was just trying to be faithful to God and useful to whoever was in front of him. The rest followed.
What I Heard Ziglar Say
Zig Ziglar used to say you can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.
But here’s the thing, this only works if you mean it.
You can’t fake caring about people and expect the law to work for you. The motive has to be real. The moment it becomes a trick instead of a genuine way of living, the whole thing falls apart.
The Bible has been telling us this same truth. Jesus didn’t say, “Go perform service.” He said, ” Love your neighbor.” The heart behind the action is the key.
D&C 130 Calls It What It Is
Doctrine and Covenants 130:20 and 21 also teach this truth.
Every blessing is tied to a law. Obey the law, and the blessings follow. No exceptions. No favorites.
The blessings are already attached to the right actions. They’re just waiting for someone to line up with the law that releases them.
Joseph didn’t get lucky. He obeyed the laws of honesty, faithfulness, and service. The blessings followed him everywhere. Even in prison.
When life feels unfair, the question isn’t, why is God holding out on me. The better question is, which law am I not living yet?
What I Heard Proctor Say
Bob Proctor wrote in You Were Born Rich that if a person will let go and trust God, having faith that whatever needs to happen will happen, then all things become possible.
What must happen will happen. At the right time, it will happen.
He also says God is just and will always work toward your ultimate good.
But here’s the warning he gives. This is based on your heart, not your words. Saying the right things without meaning them doesn’t move the law.
Don’t get me wrong, words do have power.
The book Hung by the Tongue makes that case well. But words only carry real weight when they come from a genuine place. A formula said over a bad motive is just noise.
Joseph couldn’t control his brothers, Potiphar’s wife, or the cupbearer’s memory.
He let go of what he couldn’t control and stayed faithful to what he could.
God did the rest.
So What’s the Point of Life
I think it’s simpler than most people think it is.
Love God. Love people. Serve wherever you are.
That’s it.
Your job/career is just one of the places where you do it. You can serve people as a developer, a plumber, a janitor, or a billionaire.
Joseph did all of those in one lifetime. The thread running through every season was the same.
Show up. Be faithful. Trust God with the rest.
Mark 10 records Jesus saying whoever wants to be great must be a servant. He said he himself came not to be served but to serve.
If that’s how Jesus defined his own life, I don’t have a strong argument for defining mine any differently.
And 1 Corinthians 13 wraps it up. Any talent, gift, or achievement without love behind it is worth nothing.
Love is what gives every other purpose its value.
The Wrap Up
Here’s the short version of what this all adds up to.
- The why comes before the how. Know your purpose, and the hard parts become something you can get through.
- Blessings follow laws, not luck. Line up with the right principles, and the outcomes follow.
- Let go of what you can’t control. Stay faithful in what’s right in front of you.
- God works toward your good when your heart is in the right place.
- Success and happiness are side effects. Serve people well, and they tend to follow on their own.
Joseph lived all of this before any of these men wrote a word about it. A Holocaust survivor, a Texas salesman, a Latter-day Saint scripture, and a Hebrew slave from thousands of years ago all say the same thing.
It’s not a theory. It’s a law.
Build your life on it. Then let me know what you find.
