Better Than You Can Imagineনমুনা

The Promises of Adventure

In order to see God’s vision in your life and become part of God’s story, there are three promises you must claim. They are true for everyone, everywhere. We’ll unpack them in detail in this book, but here they are in a nutshell:

1. You have a gift only you can give. Right now, already in your possession, you have a little extra—a resource, a talent, an asset, a gift—ready to be given. You are blessed. You can be a blessing.

2. Someone has a need only you can meet. There is a problem, an issue, a hurt, a wound somewhere in the world that only you can heal, no matter how inadequate you may feel.

3. Joy is the journey where the gift and the need collide. Your inner satisfaction, your ultimate fulfillment, your life purpose, your true happiness will never be fully unlocked until your unique gift and the world’s unique need come together. God’s path for your life is a collision course; the intersection where your gift crashed into the world’s need is where you will truly begin to live.

Those three simple promises—the gift, the need, the journey—are the secret to opening your eyes to God’s vision. They are the keys that will begin to unlock God’s story in your life. They will transform an ordinary life into an extraordinary adventure.

Does that seem too neat and tidy to you? Do you think it sounds too good to be true? Honestly, it is too simple. Those three promises are indeed the beginning, but in order to tell the whole story, I need to add a fourth promise of the adventure:

4. Your journey to give your gift will break you … but it will also make you.

We will unpack this fourth promise more in a later chapter. I don’t pretend that following God’s calling means nothing but happiness and sunshine. It didn’t mean that for Jesus, and it doesn’t mean that for us. However, just as Christ’s path led Him through the cross to the resurrection, so the pain we experience in following God’s adventure leads us to true, abundant life.