This year be who God called you to be and even if you don’t know who/what that is yet and you are still discovering who you were made to be live in what you do know until you grow into the woman God created you to be. The  Lord said to Jeremiah “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you…” Jeremiah 1:5. The Lord wants us to know the same thing today. God has something awesome for you to do but you can do it until you are willing to fully BE IT.
Right after I finished my 2015 vision board post, all of a sudden fresh faith just jumped into my spirit and I heard the words, “Own it!”
I thought, “Wow! What could that mean?” And then immediately I knew what it meant. The Lord called me to be an evangelist. I remember the day in 2010 that I was walking on my lunch break and I heard the voice of the Lord as clear as ever say in my spirit, “I’ve called you to be an evangelist.” Though He had been preparing me though many other signs, dealings and instructions I had no idea what that would look like or how it would happen. All I knew was that I had heard from God. That night I went to church and as my pastor was exhorting us during worship he said, “the Lord has called some of you to be evangelists.” I took that as my confirmation because it wasn’t something he would say lightly.
Living Authentically Means Living Beyond Your FearsÂ
However, I never fully embraced what I knew God called me to be. Instead I skirted around my calling afraid that people would not believe or accept that the Lord called me to preach His Word, afraid of failure, afraid of success and afraid because accepting my calling would mean completely giving up control. (I don’t even know why I thought the things I did, probably the spirit of fear or maybe because I wasn’t ready)
Fear does not come from God. In fact the Bible tells us God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love and a sound well balanced mind (2 Timothy 1:7).
I told myself I could be a life coach and really help a lot of people or I could just be an author and start taking my writing more serious and build my blog. I could be a Bible teacher because I love to share God’s Word and have the gift of exegesis: the explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture. There would be nothing wrong with doing any of those things accept that God clearly and specifically told me to do something else. I do them but they are secondary to my calling. I choose to focus on them because I could control and foresee how to be successful at them, and not wanting to think of myself more highly than I should I thought that they would be easier for people to accept coming from me.
Fear of people or what they might say, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of the unknown, fear of yourself, fear of the devil, don’t let any fear stop you this year.Â
When we won’t embrace God’s call and obey Him we live unauthentic and discontented lives.
How do I know? Because I tried it and the Holy Spirit was always there with that still small voice to stop me from fully embracing other things but also leaving it up to me to fully embrace the right thing. So I ended up never fully embracing anything over the past several years.
The Truth
We only get one life. If you choose not to do what God called you to do you will make many mistakes and waste valuable time.
If we don’t claim the promises of God openly and unashamedly we can never possess them which is true ownership.
There came a time when God told Abram to change his name to Abraham and embrace his calling. The Lord had spoken to him many years prior but he had to wait for God to tell him to begin to speak it into existence and as he did God performed His Word as He had promised. (see Genesis 11-21)
This year I plan to pursue my calling. No, I still don’t have all the answers but I’m no longer willing to pursue anything other than God’s preordained purpose for my life. He said own it, so I’m owning it. I will still write books, blogs and Bible studies but I am an evangelist and I plan to spend the next year learning what that means for me, getting comfortable with the name change and learning to embrace it. It is refreshing to finally speak it.
Beloved, my prayer for you this year is that you would do the same, live authentically, unashamed and unafraid!
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