Who Am I? Pt. 3

Just knowing who you are isn’t enough, you do need to know what you are going to do and how to go to about fulfilling your purpose. There are people that know their purpose, and despite of that, they are currently not following God. Because they could not overcome the obstacles in the way of their purpose.

There are levels of belief. First there is non-belief. The next level is hypocrisy, you say that you believe but you really don’t. Hypocrisy is conscious. Then there is mental ascent, where you truly believe in that thing, where you tell everyone that you should do something, but you do absolutely nothing about it. It’s very easy to give mental ascent to something.

When you get to the place, where you know what God made you to be, you need to find out, when the next step is, and what that next step is. What do you do? How do we overcome the obstacles of being who God made you to be?

Judges 6:11-16

Gideon has an encounter with God, he doesn’t know who he is, he is hiding, and he encounters God. God shows him who he is, Gideon thought that he was nothing, that he was the least of his family, and his tribe was a nothing tribe. God tells him that he is a mighty hero. Gideon’s creator tells him who he is meant to be.

Your destiny is not going to happen automatically. So many people hear a word from God, and they know what their purpose is. But they think that they are just going to be able to sit around and wait for God to do that. Gideon saw an actual visible angel; you would think that if you saw an angel, you would be pretty certain that it is actually going to happen.

3 Things that you must do to become who God wants you to be.

1. You must overcome fear. Gideon had to overcome the fear of himself, and over the cultural fear that surrounded the entire Israelite civilization this isn’t the kind of fear that comes from a single defeat, it comes from being defeated over and over again. You are going to have to take some steps that are scary. Fear will paralyze you while the life that God created for you will pass you by. Gideon had to crawl out of the wine press in which he was hiding, and overcome the lies that he had been told about himself.
   
   
   James 2:17 “Faith without works is dead” If we have faith that something can happen, but we never actually act upon that nothing is ever going to happen. There is a difference between Faith and mental ascent. Jesus knew he had the power to heal, but unless he asserted that power, u nothing would have changed. You can say that you believe all you want, but unless it results in action, it is going to do nothing.

2. You have to find your passion. Everyone has at least one thing that they are passionate about. There are two things that you can do with the passion, you can either turn bitter when things aren’t going the right way, or you can turn the passion into completing your purpose. Your passion is connected to your purpose. You have to shape and control your purpose, you have to take your passion, and turn it to positive action. Your purpose will always involve the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:37-40), and the Great Commission (Mark 16:15). Your purpose and your vocation are two different things. If your purpose is to build orphanages in Africa, that isn’t necessarily your vocation. Your vocation could be designing software. A job that you work, might not be your purpose, vocation is what you do so you can do your purpose.

   
   

3. To be who god has created you to be, you must let your purpose be too big. Judges 7:1 God will never call you to do something that you can do in your own strength. God will always call you to do something that is too big, that the only way that you can accomplish it is through Christ. God is not interested in being limited by your strength. God wants you to great things, things that are big in his eyes. You know you have found gods purpose when you think that it is impossible.

God is a god of one in a million. God may call you to do something that others have tried and failed, but God is not concerned with odds. The things He calls you to do will always be too big, and they will always be scary. The success of our purpose is not tied to our ability, it is tied to our trust and faith in the power of God.