Clarity, wisdom, discernment. These are all things I strive for. There are days when I wander around looking for answers which never seem to arrive. I’m forcing the time frame or become demanding with God or accusing Him of holding out on me.
I’m the type of person who wants the road clearly marked before I set out on my journey. I have to admit, this has changed a little bit over the years. When I was younger, I flew by the seat of my pants and figured something would turn out as it should. The problem is that when I was younger I threw caution as well as everything else to the wind to see where it landed.
As I get older, the responsibility of sometimes being the sole breadwinner for my kids and having difficulty of putting food on the table forced me to put forth a more cautious step forward. Gone are my days of letting God figure it out. I wanted clarity right now and I wasn’t taking another step forward until God stopped holding out on me.
This is not how God works. He wants us to step out in faith and then He meets us along our journey. God provides clarity when we trust Him with our path. This doesn’t mean we jump off the cliff and hope God helps us build the wings on the way down. Jumping off a cliff is stupid unless you have a parachute firmly attached to your back. We need to do things in His timing and not impose our will on Him.
God wants to provide us clarity. The author of confusion is the enemy. The enemy wants to create a fog around us so we cannot see the way to our God given dreams and keep us in place so we feel as if we can’t move forward until our path is clear.
This hits my heart close to home. I want to get back to being the carefree girl who threw caution to the wind and figured it out on my own path. This time around there is a difference though. The person I’m throwing caution to is God. He’s the one ultimately providing clarity for my calling and the path to my dreams.
God didn’t put the dream in my heart to snatch it away while saying “Just kidding!” or never to see it come to fruition. He is generous God who gives us dreams even bigger than we can imagine. We may only see the first piece of it and it’s up to us to step out in faith. However, there are steps we can take to gain clarity before we even take the first step on our journey.
Take out a sheet of paper. Yes, paper. As I stated in a previous post, we do some of our best clarity work by putting pen to paper. Write out what’s not working in your life and the lies you’re hearing from the enemy.
For example, the one I hear, is you’re too old to be starting a business again. You lost the business you created in your 20’s so what makes you think you can make a go of it in your 40’s when you have even less time and more responsibilities? This lie cuts my heart because I put everything I had into my consulting business when I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s. By all accounts, I was successful. I had a steady, small client base and won awards for my coaching work before coaching was even a mainstream thing.
Then I went through a divorce and the business name went to my exhusband per our separation agreement. I couldn’t imagine building another business while reeling from my divorce, being a newly single mom to my two small children and having a brand new job which provided excellent health insurance but didn’t make ends meet.
The lie whispered to my heart was that I would never own a business, coach, write, teach or speak again. It was out of the realm of possibilities. Stay safe in your job. Do not step out of your comfort zone. You need to stay right where you are at.
I believed this lie for 10 years. While, I’m still at the same job, my heart for rebuilding a business has changed. I have found clarity in my calling by finishing this exercise. So, now that I’ve identified my lie and written it down on paper, I shine the light of God’s truth on it.
In my example, the Bible verse, Jeremiah 29:11-13 (NIV) is the truth I cling to, which says, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
This means God has plans for me to prosper if I seek Him through prayer. My prosperity might not be monetarily or with a higher position, but it will be God’s plan which is better than anything I can come up with on my own.
Clarity comes from writing out our fears and facing them with God’s truth.
How do you keep clarity in your calling? Share it in the comments below to encourage others.
