Is This God's Vision For My Life Or Mine?

​I have recently gone a new direction in my professional life. It's a direction I felt God calling me to go. But there are times when I make this new direction complicated. Very complicated.

Mostly—when I start asking God to give me directions to places he's called someone else to go and not me.

I recently heard Steven Furtick say, "I want to give God the destination and then let him give me the directions because that's what I do on my maps app."

That one hit home.

We live in a world where it's easier than ever to input an end game in life and then have a computer reveal precise instructions on how to get there. This can lead us to wonder why I can't hear God's instructions so precisely.

Well, turns out if our end game is an end game that is someone else's calling and not our own, God isn't much enthused about giving us those directions.

As I've embarked on my community speaking and training and educating journey, it's easy for me to look around at 'more prominent' folks doing this work and start asking God to give me directions to do THEIR work.

Too often we see something others are doing that we'd like to do and we start interpreting that as OUR calling. Then, we get frustrated with God because he's not showing us the way toward a calling that was never his calling on our life at all.

Over the last decade, God has been very intentional about putting people and situations in my life that have made it clear what I'm supposed to be speaking and writing about. Experiences that have made it clear the kind of settings I'm supposed to be teaching in. Only when I start looking around and seeing what others are doing do I start questioning if God has given me enough guidance to do what I'm called to do.

When I find myself longing to go places without ever asking God if that is where he's called me to go, I am at risk for wanting directions to my desires and not God's calling.

When I find myself more obsessed with destination than guidance, I am at risk for placing my desires over God's calling.

It's really quite easy to evaluate, at least for me.

The visions I have in my life, are they visions I am trying to plant in God or visions God has planted in me?

And–do I spend more time talking to God about where I want to go or more time in silence giving God a chance to point me to where he wants me to go?

Those questions lead to convicting answers for me.

But at the same time—they point me to a better place where I can better hear God's perfect directions.

Where I can hear God's call and not someone else's.