There's been a small, but significant shift in my thinking, ever since I went to Texas and learned that I have a pitiful Southern accent and should raaahhlllly sllloooow dooo-ooo-wwwn maahhhh uuuusse of saaaahtain wooooords.
In Christian circles you hear a lot about purpose. What's my purpose in life? Is my life purpose-driven? What am I "called" to do? What is my life's assignment? In non-Christianese: why are we here?
Most significantly, our purpose as Christians is to glorify God, but we hear that a lot. Will someone please get down to the nitty gritty of it? What the hell does that look like on a daily basis? And that very question is where I have been stuck for quite sometime. No one has been able to give me anything practical. And then I traveled to the land of cattle and oil.
I have always believed that God gives us passions and abilities for a reason, that reason being for us to use them; but I guess I just needed someone to tell me more than that, to tell me that it's biblical, to tell me something helpful about it. And they did. They asked us to think about what we're good at, what we love to do, and they said those things matter. But this one question they asked has really stuck with me, in an I-think-about-it-all-the-time kind of way.
That question is this: What disturbs you, giving rise to your sense of justice?
I have considered this of late because I feel like I'm writing things that are more Jesus-y, and I feel averse to it. Not that I don't want to talk about Jesus, but that I don't want to shove him down people's throats. I really, truly, deeply loathe that. You could very rightly say that I am disturbed by that behavior. So I find myself feeling like certain Jesus-y things need to be said differently and so I say them, here on my blog, or in conversation.
What really gets me upset is the way Jesus is often presented. The way the Church as a whole has behaved. The way the Gospel is misrepresented. The way people think following Jesus means following rules, when it really means being set free.
So the shift in my thinking is that maybe I feel strongly about that for a reason, and maybe I express myself best through writing for a reason, and maybe finding my "purpose" isn't quite so much about finding, but a little more about understanding, embracing and going for it.
That last part sounds like a Nike commercial.
In Christian circles you hear a lot about purpose. What's my purpose in life? Is my life purpose-driven? What am I "called" to do? What is my life's assignment? In non-Christianese: why are we here?
Most significantly, our purpose as Christians is to glorify God, but we hear that a lot. Will someone please get down to the nitty gritty of it? What the hell does that look like on a daily basis? And that very question is where I have been stuck for quite sometime. No one has been able to give me anything practical. And then I traveled to the land of cattle and oil.
I have always believed that God gives us passions and abilities for a reason, that reason being for us to use them; but I guess I just needed someone to tell me more than that, to tell me that it's biblical, to tell me something helpful about it. And they did. They asked us to think about what we're good at, what we love to do, and they said those things matter. But this one question they asked has really stuck with me, in an I-think-about-it-all-the-time kind of way.
That question is this: What disturbs you, giving rise to your sense of justice?
I have considered this of late because I feel like I'm writing things that are more Jesus-y, and I feel averse to it. Not that I don't want to talk about Jesus, but that I don't want to shove him down people's throats. I really, truly, deeply loathe that. You could very rightly say that I am disturbed by that behavior. So I find myself feeling like certain Jesus-y things need to be said differently and so I say them, here on my blog, or in conversation.
What really gets me upset is the way Jesus is often presented. The way the Church as a whole has behaved. The way the Gospel is misrepresented. The way people think following Jesus means following rules, when it really means being set free.
So the shift in my thinking is that maybe I feel strongly about that for a reason, and maybe I express myself best through writing for a reason, and maybe finding my "purpose" isn't quite so much about finding, but a little more about understanding, embracing and going for it.
That last part sounds like a Nike commercial.
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