“Executives know too well the gulf between inspiration and application is sometimes decades-wide.”  ~ Ben Dobbin

Ever been zapped with inspiration, only to find a disconnect in your experience?   It doesn’t mean you heard wrong. It just means keep going.

Every so often, I’ll be grabbed by this headline. It must be one of those recyclable stories that newspaper men keep in their Rolodex of ideas.  A woman’ garage sale find is worth a million dollars… A 64 year old man buys a donut and the winning lotto ticket worth $1.7 million...

People like to hear about good luck. Especially the kind that is random.

If good fortune can land on anyone at anytime — then maybe one day, it can be my turn.

That was me as a little girl. I never got much mail, but there was always junk mail that nobody wanted. 

Unbelievers!  In my eyes, the envelopes stamped “Open Now” and “Urgent” in fake ink was a goldmine of sweepstakes to enter and win.

I’d open them up, check the boxes carefully and stick the gold stickers in the all the right places.  Dropped them in the mail.  And waited.

It took a few years worth of stamps, but I realized that it is very hard to be lucky.  Not to mention, seniors who lived in the mid-west seemed to have it in spades.

I grew up to live and work in the adult world and changed my strategy. 

Girl, the world is your oyster.  This is where you create your own opportunities and make sure it follows a plan.

Somehow, without being conscious of it, a strange hyrbrid of luck and self-effort quietly took seed in my journey of faith.

The Gulf

In Christian circles, the words “gifting” and “purpose” can mess you up.

It seems all the people who know their gifting are always telling others to discover it.  And the ones who don’t know what they’re called to are worried they can’t find it.

So, we figure we’ve missed the signs somehow.  We look back with 20/20 hindsight and shackle ourselves with guilt and regret.  We put together plans with the goal of reaching a destination called “Purpose”.

Faith becomes our Lady Luck and we hope she will get us “there”.  Somewhere.  Anywhere but here.

This can’t be further from the truth.

I’ve come to learn there is a gulf between the inspiration God gives us about His purpose — and the way it looks when we apply it to real life.

This gap doesn’t mean we’re off God’s radar.

This gap is where our faith operates.
Our purpose is found in navigating the everyday with that faith.

The Glimpse

Do you ever catch a vision of who God wants you to be?

You might respond like I do and expect everything will start to align with that flash of inspiration.  In actuality, what God means to do, is simply give us a glimpse of who we are becoming.

Inspiration isn’t meant to be a goal, but an encouragement, to motivate us to keep trusting that He is at work.

God is saying,

I hear your heart’s desire.  I’ve placed it there.
I’m at work in you.
Trust me.

So we do the hard work of faith, scaling trials and joys, without the ability to see how the dots will be connected.

God does have a plan for us, but He didn’t create us to obsess over it.

As people of faith, we can believe we are already living in it.  No matter what it looks like.

God’s purpose is for us to experience this kind of freedom — when we believe His plan is at already work in us.

Living in this freedom affects the choices we make every day.  It gives us the courage to do what gives us joy and peace, in whatever form it takes, in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Galations 5:1

Where It’s All Heading

Are you feeling the space to live inspired is too small for God’s vision?

Do you see a disconnect between what you imagine could be and what is your life now?

Don’t worry about where it’s all heading.

God is cultivating a life of meaning, in the shape of your heart.

God will bring His plan for you to fruition — through an array of seemingly ordinary circumstances, to show just how extraordinary your faith is.

As you trust that God sees and treasures you, your life will take on a special quality, that no plan or luck can impart.

You will develop the sheen of Jesus living in you.  And you will no longer doubt what your purpose is.

“The Kingdom of God is like a farmer
who scatters seed on the ground.

Night and day,
while he’s asleep or awake,
the seed sprouts and grows,
but he does not understand how it happens.

All by itself the soil produces grain.”

~ Jesus, Mark 4:27-29

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