Happy New Year! I hope you've enjoyed time with family and friends this Christmas season. I also hope that Immanuel—“God with us”—is with you and your ministry, drawing people to himself.
I know it’s as cliché as it gets, but Jesus really is the reason for the season. Amid all that we do, we can never be reminded too many times that he is the greatest gift we will ever receive. While this post is about unwrapping the second greatest gift of your life, let's refresh God's goodness in first giving us Jesus.
Christmas reminds me of some old words—lines from one of the verses of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”:
How silently, how silently The wondrous gift is given! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.
It also reminds me of some much older words recited regularly by some of the churches I serve: “For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human.” For us and for our salvation . . . can we even imagine it? He bridged the gap between us and God; he paid the full, bitter cost of our sin to redeem us; he set us free from the devil, death, and hell; and he made us sons and daughters of God with him. What a gift!
But Jesus did more than that. He made it possible for each one of us to live out the unique purpose God planned before he even made us. If salvation is the greatest blessing God gave us in Christ, then the blessing of personal calling is right behind it!
I’m convinced that every believer can learn to know and name this blessing. That’s why Essential Life Design Skill #2 is to Discover Your One Thing. It means summing up a wealth of self-assessments with a clear and concise understanding of your special calling from God. Every month at Life Younique we see scores of individuals naming their special assignment from God and declaring their "one thing" in life. It doesn't have to remain a mystery!
I’ve just written a free e-book to get people ready to learn this skill. It’s called Clarity Spiral: The Four Break-Thru Practices to Find the One Thing You’re Called to Do. Here’s an excerpt from the book (coming soon!) about the Second Greatest Gift we’ve received from God and the decision it challenges each of us to make"
"The single most important decision in your life is whether you believe that God is who he reveals he is. The second greatest decision is whether you will do what God made you to do.
The portal to your potential is the belief that you were created do something that only you can do. It’s a remarkable idea to ponder: God has a special assignment for you to accomplish on earth. This truth is most clearly evidenced by Ephesians 2:10: “For we are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do” (CSB). This key verse of Scripture is rocket fuel for the journey of personal calling.
Imagine how crazy-good this truth makes your life! You are a one-of-kind design made by the most brilliant mind in the universe—God himself. Every day is an on-ramp to opportunities that put your design into action—with all of your personality, passion, gifts, and gumption. In any hour of your day, a door may open for a simple act that was prepared from before time began: speaking, deciding, touching, or building. In any moment of your week, God may orchestrate a conversation or a collision. He may prompt a prayer or a dare. He might ignite a moment that turns a frown around or a movement that turns a nation upside down.
Every day God draws the curtain and you’re on center stage of this thing called your life. God dreamed you up and gets excited about how he wants to use you. He prepared good works for you to do, like a mom whipping from scratch that favorite meal.
But Ephesians doesn’t say that you will walk in them. You are not an automaton or a stringed-up puppet. No, it says that you should walk in them. They are to be discerned and discovered, engaged and enjoyed. I like to say, “It’s your call.” It’s your calling because you were engineered with meticulous intent. But it’s also your call, because it’s not a given that you will experience your intent; you must choose it.
If this page were a mirror let me tell you what I see: you are a gold medalist at something. And by the way, the world is watching, waiting, even needing you to enter the games. Whatever that something is, I believe it is knowable and nameable. That’s what makes Younique truly unique. The process steps in The Younique Journey take you from a general sense that there is something for you to do to declaring your One Thing—the one thing that changes everything. That’s your Life Younique."
Since I claimed that you are a divine design, allow me to clarify that my confidence is not first in you, but in God. I find that a person’s own greatness is somewhat hard to believe in their own mind, and you may be struggling with my optimism about your talent. But consider: your Creator has put within you capabilities that he hand-made and skillfully forged. He is no typical artisan; he twirls a galaxy on his finger like a fidget spinner. His code for all living things—DNA—makes Apple’s latest OS look like first-grader fridge art. If you put Einstein and Shakespeare and da Vinci along with the next three geniuses you admire into one person, God is still infinitely more talented. You were made by a loving God with unfathomable resources and inexhaustible creativity.
You might consider him a master playwright too—with infinite genius, of course. He orchestrated the stage, the scenery, and the story of your life. No situation, no surprise, no sadness in your life is outside of his design and, yes, even his embrace. The stroke of his careful pen is writing an ideal story for you—a personal storybook experience that is grace-lined and gift-laden, guided by the goodness of God that is better than you can imagine.
As this series on the 7 Essential Life Design Skills continues this week, I will be releasing a digital version of the Clarity Spiral book FREE to all of my blog readers (now available!). (If you want a hard copy it will be available on Amazon for $9.99.)
Until you get your copy, I'll encourage you to get started planning this year by applying the single most important step in goal setting and then using these 10 goal setting life hacks.
If you are serious about this topic, you can also join me for a very unique opportunity to finish your list of 100 Life Dreams by Easter this year. That's right, while I check off one of my biggest bucket list items ever in Aspen, I will be hosting a #LifeDesignWithMe experience to get you stoked about dreaming big this year and for the rest of your life. The journey will provide the tools, training, time and encouragement to make a list of 100 things you want to do for God's glory in your lifetime.
Cory Hartman contributed to this post.
