Our Personal Unique Design

A few weeks ago I was talking with a woman whose children are mostly grown. She is active in her church and she works professionally but part-time. She’s quite successful but terribly bored. She dislikes her church service and her job “just isn’t her.” She’s being doing both for years.

I hear the same thing from men all the time. They may be “successful” in their job, but it doesn’t fit them; they bring home a paycheck, but they feel they are made for something more.

The secret—hidden in all our hearts—is we are made for something more.

God has given us unique gifts and personalities, and he wants us to walk in who he made us to be. He’s given us something to do in the world outside that expresses something inside of us. It’s something we alone are made to do.

Below is the opening of the book It’s Your Call by Gary Barkalow. If you are looking for deeper insight into God’s design for your life, begin with this.

Sam    

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Dear Reader,

Let me introduce myself, because you are going to see a lot of my interior life as you read this. I’m not going to tell you primarily about other people’s lives. Rather, I’m going to tell you about mine, because I don’t think I’m very different from you.

Writing a book on a subject doesn’t mean you’ve done it right; it just means you’ve put your ideas, observations, and learning on paper.

Years ago, I ran across a statement from Oswald Chambers:

“Soak continually in the one great truth of which you have had a vision; take it to bed with you, sleep with it, rise up in the morning with it. Continually bring your imagination into captivity to it and slowly and surely as the months and years go by, God will make you one of His specialists in that particular truth.”

This is what I have done with the subject of calling for more than a quarter century. I’m not saying that I am an expert, but I would say I’ve become a specialist-someone who has intensely focused on a field of study.

But you won’t hear my voice only. You will hear the thoughts of many weighty people who have stood the test of time: C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Soren Kierkegaard, Dallas Willard, Oswald Chambers, Os Guinness, and more. A friend who read the manuscript said it felt like he was invited to listen in on a gathering of sages—people who had mentored me and were now asking me to contribute my observations and understanding on the subject.

Perfect. That’s what I want this book to be.

This is not your typical how-to, tips-and-techniques book.

• This book is not about what you can do, but about who you are.
• This is not about what you are good at, but what the good is that God has created in you.
• This is not about finding a job, but finding your life.
• This book is not about finding a solution to the situation you are in, but about deciphering your life as it unfolds in and around that situation.

You see, your life is far deeper, far weightier than you have probably come to believe, and that is why all of the career, calling, or personality tests, assessments, and indicators have not helped a great deal or at a profound level.

You are more than you have imagined, and there is more going on than you have probably been led to believe.

I want to encourage you to take your time with each chapter. What I have written, I have learned through more than twenty years of study, observation, conversations, reflection, and evaluation, so it will take more than several hours of reading to assimilate this.

There is a lot here, and it is sequential-one thing builds on the next. This material is not about acquiring more knowledge; rather it is about gaining an experiential understanding of your life with God and what you’re here for.

Gary Barkalow.

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PS:

Buy the Kindle version: It’s Your Call – Kindle

Buy the paperback version: It’s Your Call – Paperback