Life Direction

I fully believe that most people don't know what they want to do with their life. After 10 years of ministry and coming into contact with people of all walks of life, I've discovered that a disproportionate number of people fell into careers that they don't necessarily love and don't necessarily take advantage of their giftedness, their passions, or their design. Consequently they end up unfulfilled.

Ufortunately, it's not always an easy process to figure that out. How do you know what you're good at if you're doing something else? How do you know what you love to do if you're always chasing temporary reprieves from a an unsatisfied soul?

Every year our staff retreat begins with Pastor Rick spelling out what he's looking for in the coming year. This year he began the retreat by talking about a book he had read and that had gotten him excited. He followed his introduction with the following statement:

"You all will get this book and you will read it. Soon."

The Book is called "9 Things You Simply MUST DO to Succeed in Love and Life". And it carries the subtitle "A Psychologist Probes the Mystery of Why Some Lives Really Work and Others Don't".



Well, we got it. He ordered a copy of it for each of us. And I have to admit that am finding it as insightful as he said it was. (Not that I ever doubted it). In addition to carrying Pastor Rick's stamp of approval, it also carries the name of it's author, Henry Cloud, who wrote two other books that I have long considered some of the most helpful of any I've read: "Boundaries" and "How People Learn".

I'm on chapter 3 right now, which covers the first indispensible principle for life: Dig It Up. Dig up your passions. Dig up your talents. Dig up your frustrations and your success points. Don't be casual about it. Don't expect it to just happen. Find out what sets you on fire.

There are a lot of things that get me going. I love creating art. I love being creative. I love music and visual art and story. I love to write. I love to perform. I love to worship.

I'm learning about myself as I read. But I'm also learning how to express a lot of things that I had known intuitively. And I'll better be able to help others to find their passions.

And that may be the thing I enjoy most about my job. As an Arts Pastor, I work every day with people who have a heart for the arts but who have scarce time in their schedules to allow for the thing that brings them the most joy. They are lawyers and call center workers and IT guys and ladies who have to support their families and would love to spend more time on their passion, but where can that time be found?

To all of us I would say this - for the artist, it is not selfish to spend time on your craft. To the creative person, it is not selfish to spend time creating. On the contrary, it's worship.

A few years ago my computer suffered a nasty virus. When I tried to log on, all I saw was a black screen. In the background, though, it was working. It was sending out emails to people all over the world. It was being productive, in a fashion. It was making money for the smammers that created the code. But I built that computer with my own hands. I had a purpose for it and it was failing to execute its calling. Despite all the productivity for someone else, I ended up pulling the plug. I had to rebuild it's programming and start all over again.

The dreams - the design - is always there in our hearts. But we allow them to be pushed down so far that they never make it to fruition. Our creator has created us for a purpose. As an artist, it is to create. Our fears and failures and frustrations should never be allowed to hijack that design.