Make Waves | You Do You!
Saturday, July 20th 2019
Following your purpose will make waves, but that’s a good thing!
Following your purpose will make waves, but that’s a good thing!
5 voices that refine your purpose:
Listen to your dissatisfactions.
Proverbs 1:32b NLT
Fools are destroyed by their own complacency.
Listen to those you trust.
Proverbs 18:1-2 ERV
Some people like to do things their own way, and they get upset when people give them advice. Fools don’t want to learn from others. They only want to tell their own ideas.
Listen to your gifts.
1 Peter 4:10-11 NLT
God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies. Then everything you do will bring glory to God through Jesus Christ. All glory and power to him forever and ever! Amen.
Listen to your passions.
Psalm 37:4 NLT
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.
Listen to God.
Psalm 139:13-16 NLT
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.
John 3:16 NIV
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you want can be liberating:
Knowing your priorities: The classified section of the Quay County Sun newspaper in June of 1978 contained this ad: “Farmer with 160 irrigated acres wants marriage-minded woman with a tractor. When replying, please show picture of tractor.”
Knowing exactly who you are and exactly what you want can also be scary, because more than likely, it means you’ve got to make a change, and change can be scary, changing things makes waves, but that’s not always bad…
But, how do you know what direction you should head out in, what changes do you need to make, how do you know what your purpose really is?
We’ve been taught to believe that dissatisfaction is a bad thing, and that we should do everything possible to avoid it. Shove it down. Ignore it. Act like it doesn’t bother us. Take a pill. Plaster on a smile. Buy something new, or decide that misery is part of “bearing our cross.” But above all, don’t consider that God might be using it to make us uncomfortable so we’ll want to swim in another ocean where our gifts can shine.
Don’t get me wrong; dissatisfaction can be a result of spiritual warfare (Eph. 6:10-12) and not an indication that we are out of God’s will. But it can also be a road sign that He has another purpose for us. So if you’re miserable in your current career or job, (and you have been for a long time), you’ve prayed, sought counsel from others, looked for guidance through Scripture, and you’re still miserable, consider that God may have another plan.
One of the biggest reasons we don’t listen to our dissatisfactions is actually complacency, we know we need a change, but we just don’t want to do it, it’s hard…
Our gifts are also road signs to where God is directing me. Have you ever considered your talents and gifts? Do you get a kick out of soccer? Are you a strategic thinker? A great listener? Can you motivate others to action with your words? Are you skilled at building things? I suggest making a list of the things and activities that interest you in which you excel. You can also ask yourself, “What’s the one thing that I do better than others?” This can also clue you in to your God-given purpose.
The gifts God gives us are like little seeds planted inside us, but for them to grow we have to use them. This means that if you can’t identify which “Gift Seeds” God has given you, try doing new things that interest you. Through these new experiences, God will reveal more to you about who you are and how He has called you to serve Him.