When God Says, What If? How Your Purpose Will Impact The World

Chapter 10 - The 3 Most Important Things

Throughout this book I have tried to share the lessons God has taught me in a way to make them useful in your life. It is hard to summarize many years of studying and walking with God using so few words. I almost feel like I could write for the rest of my life and still have more to share.

But there are three main things that I really believe we need to do in order to have the life we were meant to have. Isn't that what we really want anyway? To live our lives in a way that fulfills the purpose that is hidden deep in our hearts? To wake up each day excited for what will come? To spend our days accomplishing more than we ever could have thought possible, yet not really feeling like it was work at all?

My drive to find my purpose became so loud in my heart that I just knew that I would never have true peace without it. It became almost life or death to me, and when I now go back and read Deuteronomy 30:19, I now understand it truly is life or death. I either choose God's life, His way and all that it unlocks in my life, or I choose death, which is living a life without peace and without ever knowing my one true reason for being. I now understand fully that any life we try to live without God is not living at all.

I also know that there is one thing that scares me more than walking forward in faith, it is the fear of getting to the end of my life and having nothing but excuses and regret. That scares me more than I can ever explain. I can't imagine never using my gifts, never really testing my capabilities. I can't imagine this inner drive to know God better ever quieting inside me, so for me, I have decided that following God will be my life.

Throughout this book, I tried to build on three main ideas that I believe will bring us to our best life possible.

1. Say yes to God.

2. Find the unique plan that God has for your life.

3. Use your unique gifts to serve others in love.

While these are three simple steps, I believe they will take a lifetime (at least for me) to master. But isn't that what life is anyway? Deciding how to live and then using the accumulation of time as productively as we can? We count life in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years. How we measure its passing is up to us. We can do it in haste, in frustration and barreling through life as I had done, or we can instead seek God and His ways for us and go through it in peace.

I don't know about you but I want peace. I want joy. I want happiness. I don't just want these during vacations, at parties, and when everything is going my way. That is easy. I want to have peace even in the valleys, even when things are hard, even when everything I thought was solid begins to crumble. I want happiness in my heart just because I am granted a new day, just because I can see and hear and use all that I am to extend love. I want joy in everything I do, not just when my circumstances agree, but joy as the default emotion that emanates from me when I get squeezed or pressed down by problems and challenges.

I want the best life that is available for me, the one that Jesus gave up His life for me to have. And at the end of my life when I stand before Him, I want Him to know that I used everything I had been given to the best of my ability to serve each and every person I encountered with love.

So how about you? What will you choose? Will you join me? Will you take that first important step and say yes to Him, yes to your purpose, and yes to all you were created to be? I pray that you will. I pray that you will feel something come alive inside that you may have tried hard to ignore before, just like I had done, and just like so many we encounter every day.

Be the person you were created to be. Find your unique gifts. Nurture them, understand them, grow with them, and then extend all that you are out into the world in love. You were created for greatness, and the rest of us who need your purpose out in the world are waiting. I promise to you, my reader, to bring the best me out into the world. The me that I was created for. Will you join me?