About a year ago, I heard from God during a worship service at Charisma Church. It was about something I had wrestled with for a while and it was great to get some clarity. The plan was to write an e-book about it. I immediately started planning how I would accomplish this. I went out and bought colored index cards to start brainstorming an outline. This was a huge step for me because I never outlined any papers when I was in school. I hated outlines. I just sat down and wrote and usually got a good grade. Despite every professor telling me otherwise, my method seemed to work.
I spent a week and brainstormed ideas on index cards. I had a color for key concepts, Bible verses, personal examples and points I wanted to make. I came up with the 5 parts of the e-book and split the index cards into the sections they belonged. Then I wrote the intro to my book and sent it out to people to review it. About this time, something just wasn’t feeling right. As I thought about it, I realized I forgot my “why”. I forgot what my ultimate goal was. God has called me to impact the youth of the world and let’s be honest, most of them probably aren’t looking for an e-book to read.
I was missing the mark.
So where did that leave me? Did I not hear from God? Was something that I thought I heard so clear just something I made up?
It took me a bit, but I realized it wasn’t the message but rather the delivery that I was off on. I have passion and talent for writing, but even more than that I have passion and talent for speaking. When I was the Youth Director of Charisma Church and traveling a lot with our TV One Life Live events, I had lots of opportunities to move in this calling. But now that I have transitioned into a different role in the church, that platform had become a lot smaller.
I knew God had given me something to share and now I needed somewhere to share it. So I reached out to my father-in-law who is a pastor and shared my heart with him (they will always tell you in marketing it’s good to start with an easy ask haha). He was super excited and helped me set up a meeting with their youth pastor. They invited me to speak at a lock-in. This time it felt right. I felt super confident that I was moving down the path God was calling me.
The night of the lock-in came and I was pumped and nervous all at the same time. To me this was the start of something bigger than the lock-in. When the time came for me to get up there and speak, I got up there and did my thing. I prayed that God would use me in a big way and I believe that is what happened. My buddy Zeph was there and told me, “My favorite thing is that I came expecting to be there to support you and ended up actually getting something out of it because God showed up.” What is even cooler about that is he had heard my message before. Quite a lot because he edited the podcast of it.
That night was the exact opposite of what I felt as I read the feedback for the intro of my e-book. I felt like I was right where I should be. I felt like I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. I felt like I hit the bulls-eye.
It has been a long time in the making, but I am excited to be moving in that direction. I’ve set up a special page on my blog about my speaking. If there are some events or churches in your area that you think I would be a good fit for, I’d love to talk to you about it. You can get more info HERE.
I missed the mark. I fell off the horse. But I got back up and got back on and I’m excited to be heading down the path God has for me. I’m excited to see where He is taking me.
until next time…
Photo courtesy of Justin Ladia