The life I live...

The Question

I was in my 20's and had not given much thought to God's purpose for my life, so I was a bit unnerved when Lori asked me what my gifts were and what I would do with them.  'My gifts?'  I stammered.  'I don't really know.'

Lori shared how encouragement seemed so evident in my interactions with people.  From her question began my journey to seek God's purpose for my life. 

The Quest

As a child of God, wife, mother, nurse, daughter, sister, friend, and many other roles,  I recognized my ultimate purpose early in life:

"...to act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God."  Micah 6:8

I focused on that purpose, all the while seeking from God what He had in mind for me on this earth.  Bit by bit; conversation by conversation, I tried my best to live the way I should live in order to become who God intended.

The Quieting Truth

I chatted with a  young adult who told me he is learning to live the life of faith with increased trust in the One who authored that faith.  I shared with him how, for years, I lived my life of faith as though I authored and finished it.  But, time and grace brought maturity.  Learning along the way to emphasize being a woman of faith enabled me to become more and more a woman of faith.  Somehow, I thought from the doing flowed the being.  I know differently now.

Jesus says, "If you abide in Me..." it  will begin to happen.  Association - a constant link - with Him will produce dissociation - a consuming break - with everything in us that isn't of Him.  And when He makes us what  God the Father designed us to be, we are relieved of the task of trying to appear as something we thought we ought to be.  Jack Hayford in Moments with Majesty

I abide in Him; He abides in me, therefore, I can bear fruit; for without Him I can do nothing.  (My paraphrase of John 15:5)

I now live a life of grace, powered by the Vine.  How Divine.