Hi Beloved,
Something to share with you from this book which i am currently reading.
Chapter 2 "Unpack your Bag"
He has filled them with skill (Exodus 35:35 JB)
You were born prepacked. God looked at your entire
life, determined your assignment, and give you the tools to do the job.
Before traveling, you do something similar. You consider the demands of
the journey and pack accordingly. Cold weather? Bring a jacket.
Business meeting? Carry a laptop. Time with grandchildren? Better take
some sneakers and pain medication.
God did the same with you. Joe will research
animals... install curiosity. Meagan will lead a private school... an
extra dose of management. I need Eric to comfort the sick... include a
healthy share of compassion. Denalyn will marry Max... instill a double
portion of patience.
"Each of us is an original" (Gal 5:26 MSG) God packed you on purpose for a purpose. Is this news to you? If so, you may be living out of the wrong bag.
I once grabbed the wrong bag at the airport. The
luggage looked like mine. Same size. Same material. Same color.
Thrilled that it had emerged early from the baggage catacombs, i yanked
it off the carousel and headed to the hotel. One glance inside,
however, and i knew I'd made a mistake. Wrong size, style and gender.
(Besides, my pants would be too short with stiletto heels.)
What would you do in such a case? You could make do
with what you have. Cram your body into the tight clothes, deck out in
other-gender jewelry, and head out for your appointments. But would
you? Only at the risk of job loss and jail time.
No, you'd hunt down your own bag. Issue an all-points
bulletin. Call the airport. Call the airlines. The taxi service. The
FBI. Hire bloodhounds and private investigations. You'd try every
possible way to find the person who can't find her suitcase and is
wondering what gooney bird failed to check the nametag.
No one wants to live out of someone else's bag.
Then why do we? Odds are, someone has urged a force fit into clothes not packed for you.
Parents do. The dad puts an arm around his young son.
"Your great granddad was a farmer. Your granddad was a farmer. I'm a
farmer. And you, my son, will someday inherit the farm."
A teacher might. She warns the young girl who wants
to be a stat-at-home mom, "Don't squander your skills. With your
gifts you could make it to the top. The professional world is the way
to go."
Church leaders assign luggage from the pulpit. "God
seeks world-changing, globetrotting missionaries. Jesus was a
missionary. Do you want to please your Maker? Follow him into the holy
vocation. Spend your life on foreign soil."
Sound counsel or poor advice? That depends on what God packed in the person's bag.
A bequeathed farm blesses the individualist and
physically active. But what if God fashioned the farmer's son with a
passion for literature or medicine?
Work outside the home might be a great choice for
some, but what if God gave the girl a singular passion for kids and
homemaking?
Those wired to learn languages and blaze
trails should listen up to sermons promoting missionary service. But if
foreign cultures frustrate you while predictability invigorates you,
would you be happy as a missionary?
No, but you would contribute to these mind-numbing statistics:
- Unhappiness on the job affects one-fourth of the American work force.
- One-fourth of employees view their jobs as the number one stressor in their lives. \
- Seven out of ten people are neither motivated nor competent to perform the basics of their job.
-Forty-three percent of employees feel anger toward their employers often or very often as a result of feeling overworked.
Feel the force of these figures. You wonder why
workbound commuters seem so cranky? Fully 70 percent of us go to work
without much enthusiasm or passion." Most wage earners spend forty of
their eighty waking weekday hours trudging through the streets of
Dullsville.
Such misery can't help but sour families, populate
vars, and pay the salaries of therapists. If 70 percent of us dread
Mondays, dream of Fridays, and slug through the rest of the week, won't
our relationships suffer? Won't our work suffer? Won't our health
suffer? One study states, "Problems at work are more strongly
associated with health complaints than any other life stressor - more
so than even financial problems or family problems."
Such numbers qualify as an epidemic. An epidemic of commonness. Someone
sucked the sparkle out of our days. A stale fog has settled over our
society. Week after week of energy-sapping sameness. Walls painted gray
with routine. Commuters dragging their dread to the office. Buildings
packed with people working to live rather than living to work. Boredom.
Mediocre performance.
The cure? God's precription begins with
unpacking your bags. You exited the womb uniquely equipped. David
states it this way: "My frame was not hidden from you when i was made
in the secret place. When i was woven together in the depths of the
earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me
were written in your book before one of them came to be" (Ps 139:15-16
NIV)
Spelunk these verses with me. David
emphasizes the pronoun "you" as if to say "you, God, and you alone."
"The secret place" suggests a hidden and safe place, concealed from
intruders and evil. Just as an artist takes a canvas into a locked
studio, so God took you into his hidden chamber where you were "woven
together". Moses used the same word to describe the needlework of the
tabernacle's inner curtains -stitched together by skillful hands for
the highest purpose (see Exodus 26:1, 36:8, 38:9). The Master Weaver
selected your temperament threads, your character texture, the yarn of
your personality- all before you were born. God did not drop you into
the world utterly defenseless and empty-handed. You arrived fully
equipped. "All the days ordained..."
You... knit me together (v. 13 NLT)
I was woven together in the dark of the womb (v 15 NLT)
I was... intricately and curiously wrought [as if embroidered with various colors] (v 15 AMP)
Don't dull your life by missing this point:
You are more than statistical chance, more than a marriage of heredity
and society, more than a confluence of inherited chromosomes and
childhood trauma. More than a walking weather vane whipped about by the
cold winds of fate. Thanks to God, you have been "Sculpted from nothing
into something" (v15 MSG)
Envision Rodin carving The Thinker out of a rock. The sculptor chisels away a chunk of stone, shapes the curve of a kneecap, sands the forehead...
Now envision God doing the same: sculpting the way you are before you even were, engraving you with
an eye for organisation,
an ear for fine music,
a heart that beats for justice and fairness,
a mind that understands quantum physics,
the tender fingers of a caregiver, or
the strong legs of a runner.
He made you you-nique.
Secular thinking, as a whole, doesn't buy this.
Secular society sees no author behind the book, no architect behind the
house, no purpose behind or beyond life. Society sees no bag and
certainly never urges you to unpack one. It simply says, "You can be
anything you want to be."
Be a butcher if you want to, a sales rep if you like.
Be an ambassador if you really care. You can be anything you want to
be. If you work hard enough. But can you? If God didn't pack within you
the meat sense of a butcher, the people skills of a salesperson, or the
world vision of an ambassador, can you be one? An unhappy, dissatisfied
one perhaps. But a fulfilled one? No. Can an acorn become a rose, a
whale fly like a bird, or lead become gold? Absolutely not. You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be everything God wants you to be.
God never prefabs or mass-produce people. No slapdash
shaping. "I make all things new," He declares (Rev 21:5). He didn't
hand you your granddad's bag or your aunt's life; He personally and
deliberately packed you.
When you live out of the bag God gave you, you discover an uncommon joy.
for too me, you are a shinning star that radiates from within( & far from shooting/ falling)