It was almost six years ago I attended a two day training event in which Joel Bauer challenged the group to consider answering the question, “What do you do?” This seems like a simple question which requires a simple, straight forward answer. The challenge however was not to spit out a one or two word response which identifies a job, or job classification like, doctor, lawyer, secretary, store clerk, or in my situation, minister or clergyman. I have spent many hours thinking, writing, rethinking, rewriting over and over attempting to come up with a short, concise, understanding and answer to that question. Each time I was never really happy with what I ended up with. Maybe I am just slow, but at the same time I wanted to understand who I was and what I was to do at a much deeper level.
I have lived with the understanding for more than 50 years that what I was to do was really related to my purpose and destiny in life. It was a calling. On one of the pages in my personal copy of Napoleon Hill’s book, The Law of Success, 1925 Edition, there is a plated page with these words, “A definite purpose is something you must create for yourself. No one else can select it for you and it will not create itself. Desire is the factor that determines it.”
I would question the author of this statement in regard to the Ultimate Source of our purpose in life, but I do believe it is our choice as to whether we will embrace and proceed with it. Our level of commitment and desire determines the possibility of its reality.
For more than a decade, in my younger years, I aspired to be a weatherman/meteorologist. I woke up to the reality one day that I was not gifted in the science of physics and this desire would never materialize. It was only in the last year that I understood my underlying desires of the “why” of those early aspirations were not abandoned through the four plus decades of pastoral ministry. What I did not understand over this long period of time was the purpose and depth of my “why” actually went far deeper than I imagined. It was only as I continued to probe and give consideration to greater possibilities that I reached an AHA moment of understanding.
So I continue to push you to never settle for less than pursuing your definite purpose and destiny. Continue to engage the process of digging deeper to unearth your “why” for being here on this planet. There will come your AHA realization when it is revealed. My desire and prayer for you in this coming year is, you will experience that moment and then passionately pursue its reality.