Discover God's Dream For You By Jennie AllenSample

Threads of Places (Part 1)

Our places are not an accident. Your gifts and stories will be used in many different places over your lifetime. We have freedom to dream about our places; there is great purpose in using our gifts in corporations, nonprofits, state school systems, churches, and neighborhoods. Our God does not separate secular and spiritual. He just wants you to participate in his story wherever you are and with whatever you have.

Joseph demonstrates this beautifully. He spends twenty years unjustly enslaved and in prison, yet Joseph never lost faith, and instead lived intentionally. Joseph received his place as God’s will and worked hard for God’s glory despite severe limitations and suffering. God had shown him he would do awesome things with his life, so rather than worry about being stuck in prison or as a slave, Joseph did great things wherever he was.

From Joseph’s life we learn it’s not about where we are, but how we execute God’s mission for our lives wherever we are.

Places will never fulfill us, but can serve as the fertile ground for God to make himself known through us. And if we each played our part, from Africa to Dallas, we would get to heaven and know that in our little place, we were a part of something too big to ever conceive of while we were here. Because, you know, we aren’t really in our true “place” yet. The place we were made for is coming; no place feels quite right until we are home.

I want to come to the end of my life and see how God was able to move into time and space through me. I want to see many moments that will last forever, many moments when I sat in boring or painful places that I preached anyway. I want moments no one else saw but that God used to build his kingdom. If I am to go on living and breathing here, I want it to be worth it.

It’s not our places, it’s what we do in our places.

Respond:

What are your places, and how are you seeing God work in them through you?

Are you discontent with your places? Do you want a change? Either way, do you think that God is leading?

Adapted from Restless Bible Study Guide by Jennie Allen