Day 16: Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Welcome back to 31 Days of PURPOSE. Or if this is your first time reading this month, welcome! If you read my post yesterday, I hope you enjoyed reading my "review" of the other Ladies I'm blogging with for the month of July. We've committed to blog hand-in-hand (through cyberspace) every single day this month. It has been an experience that has far exceeded my expectations.

Well, I don't know if you're needing to regroup, but I sure am. Now that we're halfway through our 31 Day journey, I'm sensing the need to remind us of our desire, our goal, our purpose. When rebuilding the walls around Jerusalem, Nehemiah addressed the people at the halfway mark with one purpose: to remind them of their collective purpose. So bear with me for a moment while I review a bit, then we'll peek into the telescope to see where we're going.

This month kicked off with several days of various issues the Lord laid on my heart in the area of purpose. We discussed the following at length:

• We all crave purpose
• To find purpose we must consult our manufacturer -- God
• Our purpose is really about Him
• And it's about others too, especially those in dire need
• To discover our purpose, we must have a relationship with God and walk closely with Him

In Which Pill Will You Choose? and Choosing the Red Pill... Again I got a little more personal, sharing my journey to purpose in Christ, which has led me to trot around the globe a bit. And occasionally I veered away from the subject at hand when the Lord was impressing a powerful message on my heart. When writing Believing God, I think I got a small taste of the emotions that the prophets of old felt when they proclaimed the unpopular truths that God had charged them with. I was disheartened over the state of the Christian world. I couldn't bear to see one more soldier of Christ go AWOL.

At the third mark of the month, I felt the need to get practical with this purpose thing. So we've examined personal passion, talents and gifts. In Passion-Filled People we observed people -- all professing Christians -- that live their lives with great passion. (Can I just say that post was the most difficult to research and write? I don't think I'm called to write personality profiles for a living!)

After today I'll discuss more practical issues that will be helpful when we've already identified our purpose. And during our last leg of the trip we'll discuss what I call "Purpose-Stealers." So keep walking with me on this journey. You're not going to want to miss it!

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Today let's complete our time of discovering one's purpose. The last step we need to take would be to discuss our personalities. Now, to give this aspect of our purpose-finding journey justice, I'd probably need all thirty-one days of July. But I'm sure I'd lose most of you by day 3. So I'm going to give a minuscule examination of the subject.

There are many personality evaluation tools that have been used over the years. Some very popular ones are:

• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• 5-Factor Model (Big Five Personality Traits)
• DISC Assessment

Willow Creek Association's Network also addresses personality with a "Personal Style Assessment." This assessment reveals two factors of a person's makeup: whether they are task-oriented or people- oriented and whether they are structured or unstructured.

Our personalities bear a lot of weight when we pursue our purpose. For instance, a task-oriented person with a spiritual gift of teaching will exercise that gift differently from the people-oriented person with the gift of teaching. Likewise, a structured person with a passion for the homeless will carry out his or her passion very differently than the unstructured person with the same passion for the homeless. Shared passions, talents and gifts can lead different people to similar purposes, but the roads they take to those purposes will be largely influenced by their personalities.

Can you begin to see how intricate your purpose really is? Your purpose comes from God calling you to a special work to glorify Him and impact others around you, but several factors can take that calling through various twists and turns.

Can you see God's wisdom in this? He empowers His children with purpose, then shapes that purpose through all the good stuff He's put inside us. Our purpose is intricately designed by God for us. This sheds light on David's words in Psalm 139:

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Psalm 139:13-16

Doesn't this excite you? If so, why don't you pray with me as I, along with you, ask the Lord to reveal His intricate purpose for my life:

Dear Lord, I want nothing more than to honor and glorify You. Thank You for creating me in my mother's womb, and making me exactly the way You wanted me to be. Thank You for the many talents, spiritual gifts, and personality traits You've blessed me with. Thank You for giving me passion for You, Your Church and those who don't yet know You. Begin today to fill me with more passion for the things that You are passionate about. Continue to reveal the causes and the people that You want me to fight for. Make me a prophet in my day. Entrust to me a message to proclaim to the world. Show me the people that You desire for me to serve. And may I not shrink back in fear, but walk in FAITH, knowing that I am but Your servant, Your spokesperson, Your fearfully and wonderfully made child. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Purposed In Him,

Carla