Discovering your destiny (part 2)

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “The mass of men lead lives
of quiet desperation.” Though Thoreau
was probably not a Christian, he recognized that life was valuable, and should
be treated as such. Thoreau lived by
this creed:

I wanted to live deliberately.

I wanted to live deep and to suck out all the marrow of
life

To put to rout all that was not life

And not when I had come to die

Discover that I had not lived.

As another writer said, “I don’t want to get to the end
of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as
well.”

Melinda Wallace asked, “Are we asking for quality from each
and every minute we spend? Jesus thought
our life worthy of spilling His blood for; are we devaluing His blood with a
lackadaisical approach to life? “Few
people set out to live a mediocre life, but many arrive there. Why? Simply because they take the path of
least resistance.”

It takes courage to reach for one’s destiny. Far too many Christians have been derailed
from the journey God planned for them, merely because they naively expected a
smooth trip on this side of heaven.

Eugene Peterson skillfully captures God’s heart in this in
his translation of Matthew 25:26, 27 in
The
Message: “That’s a terrible way to
live! It’s criminal to live cautiously
like that! If you knew I was after the
best, why did you do less than the least?”

Let me ask again:
What legacy are you leaving? How
have you multiplied your ministry? How
have you touched lives?

Impact and legacy start with listening – listening to God,
listening to those whom we serve and listening to those to whom we’re
accountable. Some of us have buried our
talents because we’ve failed to listen.
We need the patience to wait on God for vision and then the fortitude to
live out that vision one day at a time.