Future Planning Archives

(Note: this post has been adapted from a speech I made at a college ministry women’s retreat in early 2018.)

Galatians 2:20– “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Something that has been on my heart for a very long time is the concept of surrendering your life and your plans up to the Lord. I feel as if this is a concept that is talked about over and over in the church, and we give this Christian-ese cursory glance at it, like “of course I’m giving up my life to God!”, but we really don’t realize what it means. Full surrender to God means growing pains. It means hurting a little to gain a lot. Christ has offered us fullness and we keep clinging to the little things–I want to remind you what that means for us.

All of us have passions, skills, giftings–things we bring to the world. However, sometime it can seem like others’ gifts overshadow our own or that we are incapable of using ours in a practical way. Thankfully, that’s not the case! It can be hard to learn how to use what we’ve been given, but just like we needed to learn how to walk and talk, we need to learn how to use our unique talents.

In the environmental world we have a term, the niche, which describes the specific spot in the ecological web that an organism resides within. This is the spot on the web (think about the food chain) where the organism has “hit its stride”, so to speak–it it the specific environmental condition where the organism thrives. This includes the exterior environment, temperature, humidity, etc., as well as the food sources and the other organisms this specific one will be interacting with. This is a great way to think about our giftings.

Tag: Future Planning

Surrendering to God (When It Hurts)

Discovering Your Niche (Free Printable!)