Orientation Recap
In a previous post, I introduced this series by sharing an experience I’d had winter backpacking in the Adirondacks. Being foolishly overconfident, I’d allowed myself to become confused as to my location. For a time, I was lost. Finding my way back to camp and safety meant regaining my orientation.
The same holds true for life. If we find ourselves having lost our sense of direction we must pay attention to three important points of reference in order to triangulate our position and move forward: story, desire, and journey.
The opening post of this series dealt with story. Far from trivial, you have been given a weighty purpose, an intensely personal, unique role within God’s great story for all human kind. By the wisdom, power, love and grace of God the storyline of your life fits into your calling, His purpose for your life.
The next point of reference in regaining orientation is desire.
Desire: a glimpse of who you truly are
Perhaps you have read in the Bible, in the book of Revelation, where God gives those who love Him a white stone. On the stone is a name. A name known only to God and the man or woman receiving the stone. Their true name.
My sense is that this name embodies who we are—not who we are now but who we are to become as God completes His work in us. As George MacDonald wrote, “With every man God has a secret.”
Gary Barkalow goes on to say in his excellent book, It’s Your Call, “Although the full and final description of our lives will be given on a future day, God is progressively revealing the answer… As we walk with God, He will reveal to us His secret about our created design and His intention for us, for our path.”
One of the more telling ways God goes about this revealing is in the desires He puts in your heart. “It is God who is producing in you both the desire and the ability to do what pleases him.” (Phil. 2:13 ISV) The God who made you in His image made you to reflect His glory in a uniquely individual way, providing hints as to your calling through desires planted in your heart.
Exploring desire is both daunting and thrilling! For some, you may find yourself delighted at how closely your life’s trajectory aligns itself with your desires. For others—the majority—you wonder how in the world you got so far removed from what you were once so passionate about.
Desire, together with story, provide two of three invaluable reference points by which we find our way out of the wilderness and grasp hold of our life’s purpose.
Michael
Does calling play the definitive role in your life it should?
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