This week has been a highly tumultuous week. When you go on vacation, you know that the craziest days are those right before the trip and right when you come back. Thankfully they haven’t been too wild from a work perspective, however I have a monster load of tasks to complete for Torch right now. (That just means that the kingdom will be bearing monster fruit this week. ) However,  I wasn’t expecting to be so ramped up right now is relational conflict surrounding me. It is not that I am in conflict with someone else, but that I am in a spectator seat of sorts to some serious relational hurt going on with people close to me.
The reason I am sharing this is because, the type of conflict I have seen lately is that which I very much feel called to help eradicate. I’m not sure how many of you have spent time really looking at who God made you to be, but I would suggest it. I still am not 100% on much of the ultimate direction of my life, but over the past two years I have worked on a couple of exercises in finding the vision for my life. In doing that I discovered a few specific ways that I feel God has wired me, that I had never really put into words before. The Lord among other things has given me a heart for….

• People far from God
• Struggling Husbands
• Struggling Fathers

In examining my calling in these past two years, some outlying descriptors have changed. Some details of what exactly God wants me to do have changed, but not these three things. I strongly feel, serving these three groups are central to how God has built me from the inside out. The point of this post is not to go into so much detail about my calling, but to impress upon you the difference it makes when you know why YOU are here.
There are things that I want to do…There are dreams that I have….There are plans that I am making now…
But if you noticed, I didn’t mention those… It is because first I feel it is so important that we, as children of the ultimate servant, determine who God has placed us here to serve.

How do we do that? Here are three steps I suggest.

1. Humble Yourself.

First we must all agree on the fact that YOU and I were not built to serve ourselves. Really.

My biggest problem in my early adult years was that I had not figured that fact out. I was running out of bed every morning ready to enjoy a ME-FEST.  It is not about YOU! Some of you might be thinking that, well if I don’t take care of my desires, who is? If that is your thought might I point you to Jesus. He died for you, so that you would trust him for salvation and for all of your needs.

“Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4 NIV

You might be one who needs to look to Jesus for the first time. Today is a good day to start.
 

2. Examine your heart.

• Look at your passion. What do you love? What makes you light up?
• Look at your pain. What breaks your heart? What must be stopped in this world?

Looking at the intersection of your passion and your pain, you will find most likely find the center of your life’s compass. God has plans to use your passions and pain that you submit to him, to get His purposes on this earth completed.

3. Submit it all To Him

Offer your discovery to God. We do this because He created us and He has the right to overrule what our heart would tell us.

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” Jeremiah 17:9

We can be living out lies of the enemy for years, until one day we discover that we had it all wrong. If you’ve lived long enough, I’m sure you can remember some times when you thought with all that was in your heart you were doing the right thing, only to discover later that you were off track. Let’s prevent that and admit that the creator of something should be allowed to tell us what it is created for. You will not find an ultimate fulfilling purpose for your life that is in conflict with God’s will. He did not create you for conflict with Him.
Having completed these three, you should have an idea of a general area that you are called to. The who that is helped by what you are called to are your target groups. In the next post, we will take things a step further and discuss refining the calling and making decision based on the calling among other things.
If this is the first you’ve really thought about things like this I hope you are starting to see that God put you here for SOMETHING and something great. It is something that you are specifically called to do, that you are uniquely gifted to do.
 

YOU ARE IN DEMAND!

What groups are you discovering that you are called to serve?