We are blessed to have some real aha moments in our experience.
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Who are you?
What a question to really have to answer. We know that God says we are his children, the first fruits of his creation, made in his image, and even given dominion over this earth. But who are we? It’s one thing to be told and accept what we are told. It is another to realize for ourselves that same truth.
We are creatures of experience. That’s how we understand our lives. We trust God but we seek experiential understanding.
The flaw in most of our thinking is that God has not revealed himself or our purpose in our experience. If we will make the time to look at the stars, at the sunset, at the intricate design of a flower and its petals, at the ocean, or any of countless wonders all around us; only the coward will not confess the divineness of it all.
If we do the same with our experience, we are likely to have some aha moments ourselves. I had one several years ago as an elder. We were making sure that each of our standing committees had at least one elder that was currently serving on the session in each committee. The elder did not need to chair the committee, but needed to be there to facilitate timely communication. I naturally ended up on the education committee. Based upon my education and training experience this was a perfect fit. A year later part of the session rotated off and new elders came on. We did this drill again.
While I did not dislike serving on the education committee; my heart was in missions. Serving food, making food baskets, organizing distribution systems, and other activities where we as a church reached out and touched people in need was what I was drawn to. While I love to teach, organize training, write materials, rewrite materials, study the educational process, review training best practices, and other pursuits in this domain; I am an operator at heart. I need to be where the action—the love in action—is taking place or at least do something to support these efforts.
In this experience I realized that I had what the world would say my purpose was and what my heart told me my purpose was. I will give you three guesses (you won’t need the last two) to figure out who placed that desire for missions in my heart.
For today, make two big squares (boxes) on a blank page. Label one, My Purpose as Defined by the World. The second is My Purpose as Revealed by God. You have already guessed the rest. The first box is what the world says you should be. The second should contain those aha moments when God spoke to your heart through your experience and said, “you’re getting warmer.”
Start this list today but keep it handy as you will add to it over the next few days and if you are truly seeking your purpose, you will add to it for the rest of your life.
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