Soul Vision: Make Your Life CountSample

Yesterday we talked about using past hurts to help focus your mission. Now take a personal inventory of your present life. What do you currently hold in your hand that can help direct your involvement in God’s vision? This process of discovery and execution requires thoughtful reflection and periodic reviews.

I encourage you to assign an undisturbed segment of time, perhaps a day, for personal life exegesis. There are two sides to the ledger of your present: resources and opportunities. On the resource side of your ledger fall your gifts, temperament, seasons of life, and other resources such as talents, education, family, friends, finances, as well as your interests, connections, and even hobbies.

On the opportunity side, you will observe needs and arenas for your involvement. Study the opportunities that God has opened up for the use of your gifts in the last year, last five years, or last ten years. Look especially at the service opportunities that God has created for you. These are the opportunities that you didn’t merit, maneuver, or manipulate. After all, God, the Giver of spiritual gifts, will match your gifts with spiritual opportunities. By looking at opportunities, an index to the kind of gifts that you possess will emerge.

You can also read opportunities from another angle. What opportunities has God given for you to develop your gift? What opportunities have you seized in becoming better in your service for the Lord? These are ancillary and circular, for as you seize opportunities, you will either find confirmation or negation in your gifting.

By the way, many Christians experience self-doubt concerning their giftedness. I know I do. Doubt about your giftedness helps your humility quotient in the face of exaggerated affirmation. Doubt calls for areas of gift development. Doubt enables your reliance on God before an opportunity. However, when you’re in self-defeating doubt about your gift, you will find that these unexplainable opportunities confirm the gifts God has given you. God would not continue to open up unsought opportunities if not for some measure of giftedness already present.