Orientation Recap
In previous posts, I introduced this series by sharing an experience I’d had winter backpacking in the Adirondacks. In short, I got lost. Finding my way to camp meant regaining my orientation.
The same holds true for life. Maintaining orientation means paying attention to three important points of reference: story, desire, and journey.
Part 1 of the series dealt with story. You have been given a weighty purpose, an intensely personal, unique role within God’s great story for all human kind.
Part 2 of the series dealt with desire. The God who made you in His image provides hints as to your calling through desires planted in your heart.
The next point of reference in regaining orientation is journey.
Journey
The progression of where you have been to where you are now and then to where you will yet be is a journey of becoming, an intensely personal adventure whose goal is that of increasing likeness to Jesus Christ—a transformative experience promised in Scripture.
We, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.” (2 Cor 3:18)
Throughout the Bible we see example after example, from David to the apostle Paul, of God’s defining and patient work across the panorama of an individual’s lifetime. David was a shepherd boy watching over his father’s herd before he was a king. Paul was a zealous persecutor of followers of the Way before, at just the right time, God chose to reveal himself in a manner that would direct Paul’s passions into calling’s divine channels. In both cases, journey plays a prominent role.
As Gary Barkalow, author of It’s Your Call, points out, in your pursuit of calling you need to:
- Recognize the weightiness of your life, that God has created you with a purpose unique to who you are and supportive of your role within in his great story.
- Hints as to your purpose can be found in your heart’s desires.
- The transformation of these desires into effective expressions of your calling is a process over time, a journey of overcoming and becoming.
Journey, together with desire and story, serve as key reference points, beckoning you out of the wilderness to grasp hold of your life’s purpose and live your calling.
Michael
Does calling play the definitive role in your life it should?
Better understand what calling is and why it is so important with our Calling Primer. Download it for free.