Audio Interview: "Do you listen to the desires of your heart?"

This is part-two of Loren Rosser's [Untangled Podcast] interview with me.

When it comes to God's will, many Christians settle for duty:  Just do what God tells you to do:  "God, just tell me what You want me to do with my life."  But God is asking, "What are the desires of your heart?  I've written cues to your calling within your heart's desires."

Loren and I also talk about the cost of following our desires. 

• There are forces set against you and your heart. 
• There are people who just aren't willing or ready to go with you.
• There are times when you'll feel like you're the enemy. 
• There are wounds from the past that need healing.  

But to bury your heart's desires leads only to passion-less resignation. 

A new word for pursuing the clarity of your calling...

I'm going to invent a new word:  lucidentity. 
It's a contraction of "lucid" and "identity." 

I was driving my kids to the pool today when I saw the license plate of the car in front of me:  "LUCID."  Certain words "pop" for me, and "lucid" is one of them: 

lucid:

"Clear understanding and perception."

"Evident, clear, understandable."

"Radiant, luminous."

The title of the new book about calling and identity I'm working on will likely be called, "Shimmer."  This idea of "lucidentity" ... of possessing a clear, top-of-mind, and radiant view of ourselves is second to none for me.  With luminous clarity, I want each of my friends to be able to say, "I know with greater clarity the indispensable role I play in God's Story than I did last year."

Dan Allender, in his book, "To Be Told," offers this intriguing question: 

What about God am I most uniquely suited to reveal to others?

Lucidentity:  In other words, you are awake to the "why."  You may not yet know the "how" but that's God's bailiwick.  Trust him for the "how."  Ask him to give you greater lucidentity as you discover what God is trying to reveal to others through the unique splendor of your life.

Similar postings:

Podcast:  Calling Series:  THE GLORY OF YOUR LIFE, with special guest, Gary Barkalow - author of It's Your Call.

Myths about your calling

MYTHS ABOUT CALLING:

Calling happens more quickly for others. 
No.  What we see as 'success' in another is merely the long and arduous accumulation of tears, testing and time.  We're merely seeing them on this particular summit.  Calling shouldn't be thought of in terms of months or years; but often, decades.

The journey of calling shouldn't be this hard. 
No.  As John Churton Collins says, a person often fails "because he thinks what is difficult is easy."

Your calling is only valuable when you're getting paid or recognized for it. 
No.  You know your true art and calling when you're willing to do it whether or not anyone sees it or pays for it. You do it because your heart won't let you do anything less. I've tried several times to quit: I couldn't. My heart wouldn't let it go.

Impact is measured by newsletter subscribers and social media "reach." 
No.  None of these existed when Jesus healed dying bodies or launched human history's defining revolution.  Paul and Barnabas received their direction from the Holy Spirit to "go there" or "avoid that town"  increasing the Gospel's "reach" and rootedness.  Technology can be a tremendous vehicle for delivering our message, but there is no substitute for the direct voice of the Holy Spirit and his outpowering of power.

Taking up your cross is the opposite of following your heart's desire.
No.  As a Christian, your heart is now alive with the very goodness of Jesus.  The desires of that heart are noble and ought to be pursued.  [Your 'flesh' may have other, ignoble desires, but we're talking about your new heart's desires here.] Taking up our cross and following our heart's desire are the same thing.  Following your heart's desire and calling may be the hardest thing you could ever pursue.  But that's what noble people do.

 You and your calling are already fully approved:  I can hear the Stadium of Witnesses roar with the Lion. 

Related posts:

Futility is a man's deepest fear

What does calling have to do with your heart?

Video:  'The Long Desire'

Podcast:  'Calling As a Journey:'  with guest Gary Barkalow, author of "It's Your Call"

Futility is a man's deepest fear.

Image-courtesy Kansas' "Leftoverture" album coverFutility plagues a man’s life more than anything else:

“My life is of little consequence.  My best efforts are in vain.  I will be an obscure footnote in History's appendix.  I long for significance, but suspect my efforts are a pebble's drop into a dark, hollow well.   My life will be a long testimony to failure.”

It is the lament of the writer of Ecclesiastes:

"Meaningless!  Meaningless!" says the Teacher...There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow."  - Eccl. 1:1, 11

We’ve come to expect that breakthrough comes soon and comes at a younger age.  We’ve looked to the exceptions to give us our timeline:  Citizen Kane, Orson Well’s masterpiece was written at age twenty-five.  Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 was composed when he was twenty-one.  Many of Picasso’s most celebrated paintings were done in his twenties.  [What the Dog Saw, Malcom Gladwell]

However, as David Galenson, who has studied our assumptions about creativity points out, there are many other cases in which genius peaked much later:  Robert Frost wrote 42 percent of his anthologized poems after turning fifty.  Alfred Hitchcock directed his films, “Rear Window,” “Psycho” and “Virtigo” between the ages of fifty-four and sixty-one.  Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn was published when he was forty-nine, and Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe at fifty-eight.  The master painter, Cezanne’s, finest work was done in his senior years.  [What the Dog Saw, Malcom Gladwell]

Malcom Gladwell calls those who peak later in life, “late bloomers.” [What the Dog Saw] For me, it offers an antidote to a man’s fear that his life won't amount to much:  breakthrough is a slow bang.  It is a long fuse that culminates in vivid splendor only after it has burned that slow, steady, coil upon tedious coil of fuse. 

But note:  the fuse still gives off spark and light at each moment leading up to the bang.

Developing a steady confidence. Lessons from a Navy Seal

Before his grueling Navy Seal training, Eric Greiten, author of The Heart and the Fist, got into the boxing ring.  He trained with a much more seasoned boxer and his coach, and this is his account of the first days of his training for the ring.

When we finished our day's work, I went into the locker room and took off my new gloves and my new hand wraps.  I held my hands splayed in front of me and looked at my knuckles.  The skin was torn from punching on the heavy bag.  Scar tissue would start to grow soon.  But for now, I savored blood on my hands, the small cut on my lip, the soreness in my jaw.  I had begun to earn the strength that comes from working through pain and it felt good.  I filled the sink with hot water and sank my hands.  When I pulled my dripping hands from the water, hints of fresh blood came to the surface of each knuckle.  ...I was becoming stronger and I liked it.

Deciding to enter the strict and discipled training of a professional boxer, Greitens says he needed to test himself:

" ...I needed to live through something hard and real to become better."    He noted that the other, more seasoned boxers had "a sure sense of how to walk in the world.  That was something I wanted - the steady confidence that comes from passing through tough tests." 

That "sure sense of how to walk in the world...that steady confidence" will often only come with bloody knuckles, cut lip,  and the wind knocked out of us.  But the strength will come, too.  When seasoned through suffering, a fighter can then handle opponents that once would have beat him silly.

Packhorse Christians

Lithograph image, courtesy Degrazia.orgWhen I was serving in the organized Church - first as a pastor, then as a contemporary worship director, it didn't take long for me to notice that utility replaced desire as an indicator of calling.  In other words, "You are here to do whatever needs to be done."  If there's a need, you will fill it.  If the leadership has told you to do it, you will, or risk being downsized.

Usefulness, replaced desire.  It didn't matter that you were endowed with unique desires that indicated a unique calling.  What mattered was that you filled a need - any need - that came across your path. 

I call this the "packhorse" model of ministry: 

"Just carry whatever load you are asked to, whether or not it has anything to do with your particular gifts, dreams, or desires."  All that matters is that the ministry machinery is kept going.

In the packhorse model, people get used.  You're a burro, a donkey for the organization.  It depreciates people who could be making a far greater impact doing what they were designed to do, and turns them into beasts of burden.  A tragic misuse and misplacement of divine giftings and desires.

The horse wants to run, but the organization wants to keep it tethered:  Mustangs don't belong in the corral where the spirit is broken and the steed is altered to become a drafthorse. 

We need permission.  This doesn't mean that we act alone, ignorant of the common good - It means we aren't simply a part of the machinery.  Your calling isn't about becoming more and more domesticated so that you can please the higher-ups. 

You will find your calling through your heart's deepest desires:  Pay attention to them, for in them God has tied ribbons to trees to mark the way back to the wild purpose of your life.



New video: "THE LONG DESIRE"

What have you done with your desires?  Can God be trusted with your deepest longings?  Can a Christian trust the desires of their heart?  Yes!

New video from THE GOOD AND NOBLE HEART MEDIA:

Podcast:  "THE LONG DESIRE:"
The podcast is paired with the video and is for those hungering to learn more about desire and their good and noble hearts.  God has given us permission to desire.  Our heart's longings matter to him.  Can we trust him with our heart's longings even amidst setbacks? Can obedience and desire co-exist?

This audio is excerpted from Chapter Nine of my audio book, Recover Your Good Heart. 



What is your war-craft?

I wear a ring on which is carved the Roman numerals CXLIV.  It stands for 144 ... Psalm 144.

Psalm 144, verse 1:
Praise be to the Lord my Rock,
who trains my hands for war,
my fingers for battle.

What I do - my mission, my artistry, my craft is my war-craft.  Through the music or videos I create, the intended effect is to disarm darkness through beauty and art; joining God in restoring the life that has been lost.  Art, done in partnership with God, is an act of redemption.

Through the pen and written word, my intent is to expose beliefs that keep people in the dark, bound like Lazarus in his grave clothes. 

What you do, both on and off the 'job' is your war-craft:  You may be a receptionist, an engineer, a web-developer, a poet, or a parent.  Your craft is dangerous...for good.

Your art is an act of war.  When God created you, he was declaring war because you are his redemptive act...his redemptive art.

Your craft and calling matter because they are opposed. 

So the question is,

"In what way is your calling, "artistry" or craft waging war against the dark? Who is it rescuing?"

 

Podcast: "Dialing in Your Calling" - Jim Robbins

"DIALING IN YOUR CALLING:"  Here's a glimpse into the process I've used over the last 10 years to hone my sense of calling. [13 minutes]

You can also read my post, "Dialing in Your Calling" here.

[Podcast theme music written and performed by Jim Robbins - Expressive Music Scores.]

Dialing in your calling

For me, it has been important to narrow my sense of calling as much as I can.  Truth be told, there will always been an unfinished sense of mystery to our calling, an inability to pin it down with 100% clarity.

Having said that, here's a bit of my thought-process:

Rather than saying, "I'm a teacher," or "I help people gain a better understanding of what the Bible says about them," or "I talk about the heart," I get even more specific:

"I like to challenge assumptions that impair and wound a Christian."  Or,

"I expose beliefs that shame and diminish Christians."

When I dial-in my calling more specifically like the above, it answers a couple of questions:

1.  Who am I trying to reach, or who are the people that most need what I bring?

2.  What, specifically, am I bringing or doing?  ["challenging assumptions that impair and wound," or "exposing beliefs that shame and diminish."]

There are even key verbs in those statements that resonate with me:  "challenge,"  and "expose."  And, as I look back over the last 15+ years, I've always challenged destructive "assumptions."

I can bring this calling to any context I'm in - whether paid or not, at home or with others.  That's the beauty of it. 

How would you dial in your calling?

Jobs are 'access points' not callings

Jobs and positions are only access points, not callings, to the people or places that God knows need our glory. ~ Gary Barkalow, It's Your Call - What Are You Doing Here?

Jobs [access points] are but one of many ways we bring our calling [our glory, the effect of our life on others] to the world.

Here's how I think of it:  Limiting the effect of your life [your calling] to any one job is like trying to funnel Lake Superior into an eye dropper. 

Gary's teaching on calling is far more helpful than personality tests and spiritual gifts inventories alone could ever be.  His book answers the questions the tests cannot, and gives you the missing clues to living from your hearts deepest desires.

Podcast - CALLING AS A JOURNEY - author Gary Barkalow joins Jim

PODCAST:  'CALLING AS A JOURNEY' - part 7 of 7 in the Calling Series with Gary Barkalow, author of It's Your Call - What Are You Doing Here?.  Jim and Gary talk about the nature of calling as a journey that unfolds with increasing clarity.

This podcast will be really helpful for those who look at someone else's life and assume, "I should be where they are. What's wrong with me? Is God holding out on me?" 

Listen to the entire seven-part series on Calling:  'THE GLORY OF YOUR LIFE.'

You are not a commodity - How we've reduced our calling to a job

As Gary Barkalow suggests in his new book, It's Your Call - What Are You Doing Here?,  your calling is not to a specific job, position, or ministry role.  It is broader and deeper than that. 

Though your job or role can certainly reflect your calling, it would be better to think of your calling as the weightiness of your life - the effect you have on those around you - the particular way in which you carry God's splendor into the world.  Your calling spills over into every role and relationship you have in your life, not simply what you call 'work' for 40 or 50 hours a week.

Pastors -- you are not called to be a 'pastor;'  although you might be called to shepherd people in their spiritual journey.  You can bring that shepherding and caring heart into each sphere of influence you hold.  It doesn't have to come with the role or title of 'Pastor.'

Teachers -- you are not called to the role or title or 'Teacher;'  although you might be great at bringing clarity and illumination to those around you.

Plumbers and electricians -- you are not called to be a 'Plumber' or 'Electrician.'  However, you may bring an ability to figure out how things work and how they can be repaired into every relationship and situation.  [You may also earn a living by doing what a plumber or electrician does, but your calling to bring your unique insight can't be contained in the hours you call 'work.']

Your calling cannot be fully contained and fulfilled by a job or position.  How could the weight of your life be defined by a list of functions or tasks?  Second, if finding your calling is tied to finding the right job or position, your calling would be limited to the extent of that work.  In a typical job, your life's purpose would be limited to forty hours a week. 

 - Gary Barkalow, It's Your Call

What do you do with your calling the other hours of the week?  Do you leave it at the office?  Of course not.  If you limit your calling to what you do for a paycheck, then you've made yourself a day-laborer, as Seth Godin cautions.  You've turned your value into a commodity -- reducing your worth to only those activities you get paid for:  equal pay for equal service.  Is that really the extent of your value?  Can you measure it by how much you're getting paid, or the hours you're putting in?  No!

Your calling is the brilliant effect of your life on others.  The unique splendor and perception you offer.  The way you see the world.  God is trying to tell the world something ... through you.  In you; as you.

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Feel free to Post a Comment below.

Related podcasts:  ORIENTATION - Calling Series, part one.  Special guest Gary Barkalow, author It's Your Call - What Are You Doing Here? joins me for this series.

Your greatest asset is your perception.

If you haven't thought of yourself as an artist, you should. 

An artist, in the broader sense of the term, is someone who sees differently. Artists have the ability to perceive things others don't. 

Your artistry unveils what is hidden and masked.

Your greatest asset as an artist is your perception.

• One artist sees the wound beneath the surface of his friend's addiction and knows how to join God in healing it.


• Another artist understands how to gather the people and resources necessary to tackle a project.


• A different artist can perceive beauty where others only see the mundane and common.


• Still, another artist understands how the inner life works and how people can be transformed into themselves.

What do you perceive that others may not?  What uniqueness of insight and perspective do you naturally tend to offer when you're around others?  What do you see that often remains concealed and veiled to others?

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Feel free to Post a Comment below.

Not threatened by the cage

My good friend, John, received a word-picture for me, a vision, while I was using the bathroom. 

Several years ago, we were meeting at our favorite breakfast place, and I had shared with him how confused and stuck I was feeling.  I wanted to move forward in my calling, but didn't know how.   The confusion had whipped itself into a white-out snowstorm and the car I was driving didn't have windshield wipers.   I felt like I had just blindly veered off the shoulder into a ditch, unable to get leverage or traction:  the wheels where spinning and spitting, with no hope of forward motion.

My friend, John, is not one who casually says he's received a vision for someone.  He's cautious about making such declarations, while listening for anything valid in what he might be hearing. Here's what he said when I returned from the Men's Room:

Jim, how trapped do you feel?  [Which immediately caught me off-guard.  I wasn't even aware that I was feeling trapped.]  Then he revealed the word-picture God had given him for me:

I see Aslan.  He's caged.  But he's not threatened by the cage.  He is struggling with patience... pacing.

Jim -- he's still Aslan, regardless of the cage.

I started crying.  Through this tailor-made imagery, God was conferring upon me an identity both noble and fierce;  and revealing that the lion's identity wasn't limited or defined by the cage.   Further, any sense of condemnation was absent:  rather than scolding me for feeling limited and impatient, God indicated that he understood my frustration and impatience. 

What are your 'cages' and what is God saying to you despite them?
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Related video:  Kingdom of Nobles

Feel free to post a comment below.

What you are called to is your 'art.'

Do you see yourself as an artist?

In a broader sense, an artist is someone who refuses the tired and mundane scripts being offered, in exchange for the chance to actually change people's lives. Really change people's lives.

The artist intends to reveal something through his art.  There is a declaration behind it.  [Otherwise, the art becomes merely self-indulgent].  The art is the access point to a deeper, somewhat veiled, reality.  It provokes us, stirs us, and tells us rumors of another world. The resulting creative work is the artist's calling card, a trail of breadcrumbs that lead 'further up and further in' to this other world.

Not all artists paint or work with clay. It's not so much the tools of the artist that matter. For one artist, the medium they work in, is relationships. For others, it's the ability to bring clarity into confusion. For another, it's the art of piercing the darkness with beauty.

It's how the artist SEES that matters.

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Recommended reading: 
Linchpin - Are You Indispensable, by Seth Godin.  Not a 'spiritual' book, but surprisingly reflects biblical values of giving without expectation, creative freedom, and the idea that all are endowed with genius that can change lives.

Be a Provocateur

How many Christians do you know whose presence stirs you? 

Spending time with a provocative [intriguing, remarkable, compelling] person leaves you with questions: 

"How have I [we] been drugged?"  so to speak.
"How does this new insight or revelation set me [us] free?"

And the questions will not let you seek the safety of mediocrity or the tedium of dullness. Yet, as disruptive as the provocateur's questions are, shame isn't the provocateur's goal:  Recovery and restoration are.

Provocateurs are...

"passionate change makers willing to be shunned if it is necessary for them to make a point,"

says Seth Godin in his book, Linchpin. 

Provocateurs are not willing to be cogs in a machine, or passive wallflowers.  They know their presence was sanctioned by God and that the effect of their life reveals something about God.  A provocateur's presence in your life is indespensible.

A provocateur's presence in a system is rarely tolerated because, like the Borg Collective in the Star Trek series, the Collective declares, "You will be assimilated.  Resistance is futile."  But the provocateur's perspective is ironically, the very thing the system needs. 

False scripts and expectations
Provocateurs are not willing to yield their God-given splendor to false scripts and expectations, nor are they willing to keep quiet simply because it's an unpopular thing to say. 

Note:  Provocateurs are not unkind.  They proceed with humility.  People are not their target: Disabling and destructive assumptions are.   If they provoke, it is to bring about a better day.  Inspiration and aliveness follows them.  They raise questions from which there is no retreat.

They do it because they love.

What is Jesus provoking through you?

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Related podcast:  "THE UNIQUE GLORY YOU BEAR" [with fellow author, Gary Barkalow]

New podcast - DEVELOPING THE HEART NEEDED FOR OUR CALLING - special guest Gary Barkalow joins Jim

DEVELOPING THE HEART NEEDED FOR OUR CALLING:
What qualities of heart are needed as we mature in our calling?  These are the qualities that will keep us from inadvertently sabotaging what we most truly want. 

Special guest, Gary Barkalow [author of the upcoming book on calling, It's Your Call - What Are You Doing Here?]  joins Jim for part six of their seven-part series.

*  You can listen to the other podcasts in the "Calling Series" here.

*  Download in iTunes.

New podcast - "DISCOVERING OUR CALLING" - Calling Series -- Part 5 - special guest Gary Barkalow joins Jim

How does God reveal our unique calling to us?  What's the pattern he uses?  Join special guest Gary Barkalow and Jim as they unpack how God brings us into a deeper clarity of our calling. This is part five of their seven-part podcast series on calling.

Gary is the author of the upcoming book, It's Your Call -- What are You Doing Here?  to be released in October.

Gary's website:  www.thenobleheart.com

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Download the podcast for iTunes here.

More podcasts here.

That story is too small for you.

How can you tell if the story you're living in, the script that you're following, is too small for you?

1. Life becomes about managing risk, more than audacious faith.


2. You'll borrow others' stories -- through pop-culture magazines, novels and reality t.v. shows -- because yours feels uneventful and boring.


3. You won't think of entering into the stories of friends and family -- getting to know their hearts, their wounds and desires -- because you're not even aware of how your own story has developed.


4. The nature of your prayers hasn't changed for years, perhaps:  stalled and sputtering, rather than asking the Father the sorts of things Jesus did.


5. You'll feel that the stories of the Bible are distant and disconnected from your own experience -- that your own story bears little resemblance to the distinctly supernatural interplay those of ages past enjoyed with God.


6. You'll feel disengaged from your own heart's desires -- perhaps even dismissing the life you most deeply want.  Or, your desires may be so deeply buried or denied that you're not even aware of them.


7. Perhaps the story you've adopted is too small for you.  Perhaps it isn't God's story for you.

God's heart is strongly for you:  listen to his tailor-made invitation for your life.