No matter how hard we try; we can't make ourselves be someone else. Incentives, discipline, and accountability won't cure your personality and calling. There's nothing wrong with your design! God likes you the way He created you. Conformity to the expectations of others is not His goal. You are unique. John 12:43 NIV ...they loved praise from men more than praise from God. Our hearts are transformed when we have a good reason – the purpose God wrote in our hearts. Change doesn't come from changing our mindset and redoubling our effort. Change happens when we align our hearts with its purpose. Momentum comes when we realize that its God's purpose too; that heaven is co-laboring with us.
I just got back from 10 days in Europe. There is a great awakening happening around the world. It has different looks in different mountains. It's a shift from servants who need help, healing, and guidance to sons who have dreams, initiative and results. Here are a couple of examples. In corporate culture, people have been treated like sheep who can't be trusted, and managers saw themselves as needing to control and guide these huddled masses. That's shifting to a version of leadership that connects people with a shared purpose and encourages their entrepreneurial creativity, a realization that the contributor can do things the leader can't (respect). Thankfully, millennials won't work for autocratic managers – it's over!
People who tell stories engage us. Leaders who tell us our story move us. We lead people into their greatness when we connect them with their own story – it's a prophetic process – that you can do. People, organizations, corporations, and nations that are great are that way for a reason. They have connected the dots to the reason for their existence. Organizations or people that exist merely for themselves aren't worth leading. Idolatry of self is the biggest "miss" of our age. We all long for purpose – a reason to invest our lives in something bigger than ourselves. The good news is that we each carry a story that God has written in our hearts; it's a storybook that is transformational!
People have problems – Some are a bit self-inflicted, but resistant to change because they are there for a reason. And, people occasionally like those reasons more than they like your help. For example, wounded hearts try to lighten the pain with substances abuse that ends up being addictive. Said another way, the wounding is the root cause or purpose behind the problem. Sometimes problems have roots outside us; in our circumstances, our generational DNA or curses in our bloodlines. The resulting problem and coping mechanism are still resistant to change and still driven by a hidden purpose or power. Counselors and therapists can make a good living working on these kinds of problems because they often last a lifetime. Being a Christian counselor and waiving Bible verses at problems typically doesn't work either.
Over the last month, I've been part of a tribe of people moving from children who have entered the Kingdom to sons who inherit and possess their calling spiritually and practically. They have distinct ministry gifts, yet they prosper in businesses or vocations. Moving from God's child to God's son to an inheritance that belongs to you is a natural Kingdom progression of maturity. Right now, we don't just need to bind enemy activity; we are displacing enemy rule by standing up in our calling. The Father is placing sons in positions of influence to bless nations. It's a season in the spirit to volunteer.
One of the keys to the kingdom is knowing God works through voluntary sons, who in turn work out of the desires Father wrote in their hearts (Jer. 31:33-34; Heb. 8:10-11). There is a distinct authenticity that is readily apparent in sons connecting with their hearts. Plus, it's fun! The blueprint for our kingdom assignment is both in our hearts and God's heart. I'll find the same thing in both places. Is it easy to figure out what that is? No! Most people struggle, and many give up and never connect with either their hearts or God's heart in a way that causes their life, ministry, and vocation to become an integral story that produces fruit and leads to an intentional objective.
I had a natural father who encouraged me to pursue my dream. I never realized what a gift my dad was until hearing the stories of broken families and the shipwreck it leaves in personal identity. God can reverse all that, but it's not magic, and it often takes a spiritual father. The second motive for touching this topic is reformation. We are in the early stages of another reformation. The first one changed minds and gave access to the presence of God. The fruit was a renaissance that revolutionized the arts and an industrial revolution that changed cultures and living standards around the world. This reformation will be even bigger because it targets hearts with an invitation to work with God. It targets what God can do through you. The brilliance of this reformation is that it includes you. People don't need to be convinced that they are invited into this move. Something is already stirring in their hearts, and they want to know how.
There are seven promises in Revelation 2 and 3 to overcomers. The Greek work is nikao, which means to subdue. Gen 1:28 immediately comes to mind where Adam is given the commission to multiply, replenish the earth and subdue it. In Hebrew subdue is kabosh. Rev 2:7 – "to him who overcomes will I give"... 7 things. G3529 (nikao) = Subdue. Gen 1:28 – "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it." (kabash). Subdue = H3533 (kabash) tread down, conquer, subjugate. As sons we have a Father who wants us to put the kabosh on enemy strategies first and then give us some amazing promises second. I want to know how!
Why Purpose? It doesn't matter if I'm a millennial living paycheck to paycheck or a retiree traveling the world, life without a purpose beyond "self" is empty. For believers, the irony of life in the Kingdom is that when we seek "things" they (and our purpose) drift away from us. But, when we put His Kingdom "purpose" first, everything else gets added. Each of us has a purpose or book (Ps 139:16) in two dimensions: the first is our individual purpose that God has written in our hearts and the second is the Kingdom purpose of our nation. Knowing both is a lot of fun… it puts our life's direction on steroids.
Most of us think of our Father God as resting since creation and our challenge is to find our identity in the finished work of the cross so that life flows toward us in a miraculous way without exerting a lot of "self" effort. I want to suggest it's flawed theology… that our Father is working right now and, like Jesus, we can too. My Father is always at his work to this very day, and I, too, am working." John 5:17 NIV Playing a role in the Kingdom has an amazing feature. We find the presence of God in our mountain and in our work. The spiritual backdrop is that we abide in Him with prayer, fasting, listening to His voice, waiting for the stirring of the waters, flowing with His spirit, and co-laboring with whatever the Father is doing.
Follow Up
