What is your delight, the desires you hold deep within? Do you feel you have a purpose to wake up every morning and hit the ground running—excitedly to your destiny? Or are you weary in ways that no amount of sleep can cure? Perhaps, you may not even know what you even desire anymore, nor what you really like and consider your favorites.
Maybe you have lost yourself in the process of living, ever searching for yourself, once again. You may not even know, nor can quite pinpoint the time that you went missing in action. I mean you are still here physically speaking, but your spirit somehow flew away and left you. You may be feeling bogged down and trapped within the life you are now leading. Purpose may have diminished followed by the drive to accomplish anything worth noting. The term success may not even appear anymore in your own personal library or vocabulary of beliefs, as you may think it would be near impossible to achieve anymore.
So, what is success to anyone really? Is it a fancy car, a huge house, an exploding career; how about money galore and as many men or women you can dream of? If that is success to you, you have missed the boat. Your spirit has not really left, rather, you left it.
Success is more about true inner joy and contentment at what you do in this life, your life. It is about the excitement that gets you up and going in the morning and difficulty leaving it for the day. It’s about something you not only talk about but actually do. Success is about doing what you were made for, what you personally, yeah you, were meant to do. Only you were designed for what you can do and when you find out exactly what that is, you will feel more alive than ever. You will be finally living and not just existing. Once you find real success you may find yourself exclaiming, “I was made for this!”
Success is then living a purpose driven life. It is living your own purpose by working at what you were born to do, what only you were made for. Success is doing the desire of your heart that leads to joy filled living. It is a realization that you were made for such a time as this that you are now living in.
But how do we find out how to really be successful? It is found in the work that we love to do. I’m not talking about a “job”, which is often referred to as J O B, meaning, J=Just O=Over B=Broke. What joy or success is found in that? You may think, well, some jobs pay very well. Yes, they do, but are they fulfilling? If you are in the right one, something that is meant for you, it can be very fulfilling. But, if you are just in your job because it’s a “job” and are feeling dragged out, sick of it even, resentful for even having to go each day, then there is no amount of money that can make that job a success for you because your apparent success is apparently killing you on the inside. It doesn’t really matter if your job pays well or gives you all kinds of accolades if your joy is being robbed from you. Why? Because something is still missing from your “everything” job. It’s called a gift.
There is a gift placed deep within you the moment you were being formed in your mother’s belly, that special incubator that you were fearfully and most wonderfully being made in. This gift, that is also called a talent or a dream, has a special key that only you hold. To unlock that treasure you first need to discover your key and unlock that door that is hiding your treasure, your gift. There are clues throughout your life that start very early on in childhood that hold the key to your unlocked treasure. Clues to give you ideas of what you like, what you love and deeply desire to do.
These special clues are also made especially for you. They are the little things that seem to disappear or at least go in hiding as you grow, thinking you’ve outgrown them. They are the things that others will call you a “dreamer” for, for even having them. Others mean well really, most of them anyway, but they don’t see what you can see because they are not you; you are. You are the only "you" that can see within, other than your Creator. Others can see glimpses on the outside, glimpses of how you light up when you are doing what you were made to do. They can see your face shine, hear your voice sing, notice the sparkle in your eyes, and how the room lights up when you are in your zone of your full potential. Your dream is yours alone that only ends up being smothered if you don’t let it out and live it.
Sometimes we hold a dream back for fear, fear of trying and failing, fear of trying and succeeding and fear of what others will say, especially those who may have belittled us for having them in the first place. But, we will never know our true potential if we just lock it all away and hide it deep underneath our innermost being within ourselves.
We truly cannot succumb to fear because its power is paralyzing, enough so to hold us back from reaching our full potential only to leave us with notions of “what if’s” and “if only’s”. Living a life of regret, for having not tried and ventured out, way beyond where our feet would normally take us to, only serves to hinder or impede our journey. Stepping forward in a leap of faith is sometimes one of the most courageous things we can do; trusting, though our eyes do not yet see what our heart does, as it has not yet come to fruition.
We may begin to wonder, ‘If others can see our potential, of how we may inherently excel at something, are gifted in a talent, or light up as we do what we were meant to, why can’t we always see it or even feel it?’
Reality is that you can feel it, if only you let yourself “feel” once again.
So often “adulting”, becoming an adult, can smother out the child within us, smothering our dream within, that gift, that talent, that we can make our life’s work, rather than just doing a “job”. When our gift becomes our work, our work becomes beautifully fulfilling and successful beyond normal success, because it awakens our soul and drives our spirit to really start living.
When we commit what we do, our gifts, our talents, our dream, that become our fulfilling work to the Lord, our Creator Who placed them within our hearts, then they will soar higher than eagles could ever fly. They will then have a momentum that is unstoppable, making our plans succeed; and that is success because we become filled with joy in doing what we love to do, what we were made to do.
Our purpose in life, once we discover it, is also likened to our assignment in life, something only we can do that helps others in ways that only we were made to. If we give up too soon or don’t act on what we love to do, our gift, making it our life’s work, it shrivels up on the inside as we shrivel up on the outside.
Once we can realize our purpose, our success can be determined. Once we understand that our success is governed by universal laws, meaning that they are universal and permanent--without change and without shortcuts, equal, anywhere as well as everywhere and inherently innate, then worry and fear lose their grip on us regarding venturing out, taking that leap of faith. Our only guilt comes if we break the governing universal laws of success by doing something morally or unethically wrong. In other words, if we do something that we know to be wrong, that can hurt someone else or hurt ourselves, even down the road meaning that it can come back to bite us, it most surely will; and that negatively effects success, our success leaving a trail of guilt.
Something we need to come to the realization of is that we were made to be free with promise; free of guilt, free of fear, free of failure. Failure, if we have experienced it, only leads to future success, if we learn from it. This freedom that we get to live in is made possible by the cross of Christ, the Son of God setting us captives free. We should no longer be held in the chains of fear, guilt, or any other power of sin. That is what deliverance and redemption is all about. We just need to accept and believe it as we believe in God’s immense love for us, through Jesus Christ.
Still think your missing something to succeed? Know that we already have, each and every one of us, the ability to succeed because God placed that ability within us when he formed us, giving us life. We are already fully equipped and ready. That ability is our gift, our talent, that we secretly dream about, that once we unlock it and work at it, live it and commit it back to God, we will find that we will succeed, finally finding true living and joy fulfillment within our lives. Now that's success!
Faith in Action! You are made for such a time as this; the time you are now in. You are fully equipped and prepared through your life’s experiences. Persevere and live courageously, doing what you were made for. Soli Deo Gloria
Delight yourself in the LORD; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4
Commit your work to the LORD, and your plans will be established. Proverbs 16:33
“For such a time as this”—taken from Esther 4:14
C. Rae Johnson
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