What’s Next – Part 1: Episode 136

And maybe that was the only real connection to relationship is when I was a kid way back then. It’s so far out there, I can’t even see it. I’m so near-sighted and blind. I’ve forgotten what God could do because of what God did in my life. And so the place that I’m in, the position that I’m in, that all seems so like it doesn’t even make any sense connected to where I’m at now. So it’s tough for me to dream about what could be when I’m asking the question, what’s next? Because I’ve forgotten what already has been. c

Tagline: Created on purpose and for purpose.

Everybody. Welcome back to the Daron Earlewine Podcast. Excited to start a new three part series with you called What’s Next? And I feel like I probably ask this question way too often in my life because I’m always looking into the future. It’s actually one of my top strengths. It’s futuristic, thinking about what’s coming next in life. And as I told you in the past episode, one of the things that’s coming for me next is beginning this month, writing my second book.

And I’m fired up about it, but I’m scared about it. We talked about in the last episode about the idea of the resistance that’s coming to get you, that’s trying to hold you back, and I hope you are. I’m continuing to do my best to push through it, allow God’s spirit to give me courage to move forward even when I don’t feel like it. But you may be at a place where you don’t have a picture for me. I know where I’m going. I know if this all works out, what the next year and a half of doing this book looks like. So I know what’s next and I’m moving forward.

You might be at a place right now where you’re asking the question and you’re drawn a blank and you just feel stuck. You don’t feel like you have direction. You just kind of feel like you’re in, I don’t know, maybe it’s a place of mourning, maybe it’s a place of sadness, maybe it’s a place of just repetition. You’ve just been doing the same thing all the time and it just feels lifeless. And you’re just asking, man, what’s next?

Well, I want to give you a three-step process to help you begin to get vision for your future, vision for what could be next. And I’m borrowing some of this from an amazing book that I read about 23 years ago by Andy Stanley. It’s a book called Visioneering. Once you finish reading my book or getting the audiobook, which is just freshly released, you can go right now, go to Audible and get The Death of a Dream. The audiobook, I’m reading it, reading it to you right in your ears, be like we’re hanging out for about 6 hours.

After that, go get Visioneering by Andy Stanley. One of my favorite books, 23 years ago, he took us through it at a conference. The three questions that we have to ask ourselves, or there are two questions in a statement to actually begin to get clarity on what’s next as far as what God’s vision for our life is and how we catch a vision from that. And so here’s what they’re going to be. I’m going to give you two right up front so you’ll know where we’re going over the next three weeks to this.

What could be, what should be, and what must be. Those are the three questions that can guide and direct you to move into God’s vision for your life. What could be, what should be, what must be. We’re going to talk today about what could be. Next week we’ll talk about what should be. And the following week we’ll talk about what must be. And here’s the big thing about vision, why it’s so important is because vision is connected to purpose, and vision with your eyeballs is connected to light. I don’t exactly know how it all works.

I should because I’ve had vision problems my whole life. I was nearsighted since I was a little kid, had the glasses. Then I got contacts in like 6th grade. And then, praise God, a couple of years ago, I was able to get laser surgery. And my eyes work now, which is great, but it has something to do with the cones in your eyes and light reflecting. I don’t know. I’m not an ophthalmologist, if that’s what the doctor is called.

But here’s what I know, is that seeing with your vision has a lot to do with light. Vision for your future has everything to do with purpose. And I’ve heard this story tons of times, and maybe it’s stupid, but I like it. But the difference that understanding your purpose makes to actually give you vision in what you’re doing. Have you heard the story about the call out meeting where they called out all the people of this community and they said, hey, listen, we’re going to give you a job.

We’re going to pay you for as long as you work every day. It’s going to be a good amount, but you’re going to get paid and you don’t have to ever quit. You can work 24 hours a day if you want, and we’ll keep paying you. And people are like, this would be great. I can’t wait. Let me get sign up for this job. It’s going to be great. I can work overtime. There’s no limit of how much money I could make. I just keep working.

And then they said, okay, what’s the job? And they gave them a shovel and they gave them a huge pile of sand in a bunch of bags, right? And they would show up every day and they could get there and they could fill bags. And after a couple of days of just filling bags, most people wanted to quit. Why? Because they had no understanding of the purpose for which they were filling sandbags. And eventually, after a couple of days of hard work, the purpose of just making money for their own happiness was not enough to sustain them through the pain of filling sandbags for ten to 15 hours a day.

Now, what would have been different if the message would have come out and would have said, we’ll pay you every hour that you work. You never have to stop. And here’s the purpose for which you’re filling sandbags. Every sandbag you fill, you will be able to use to build a wall around your home for the flood that is coming to our town. Think about that. If someone said, you can work round the clock, we’ll pay you per hour to fill sandbags. And as many sandbags as you feel fill, they’ll have the potential of saving your family, your dogs, your geckos, your couch, whatever, your stuff from a flood that’s coming, guess what would have happened? You had had a completely different vision for the work that you were engaged in because you understood the purpose behind it.

That’s so key. If we’re going to move towards understanding what’s next in our life and get a vision for what God has for us, we have to understand this, that the vision of our future has to be connected to our purpose as human beings. I say it here on the podcast all the time, right? That you are created on purpose and for a purpose. And that is totally true. I want to tweak that statement a little bit in this episode to make it anchor a touch more into what is really true about you and what your true purpose is. And here’s what it is, is that you were created on purpose and for his purposes.

You see, for us to get a clear image, a clear vision for what’s next in our future, we have to realize that we have to be connected to our purpose as a human being. And our purpose as a human being is to be in connection and relationship with Jesus and then to join Him, right, using all the gifts and strengths and abilities and the design that he’s created us with, and actually join that together to what his purposes are.
So as we join together with Him, he’s able to share with us through our imagination, through our ideas, through our vision of the future, what’s currently on his heart, what’s currently on his mind that he wants to invite us as his children into. And within that, we get a vision for our future that is connected to the heart of the purpose for us being human beings. Scriptures talk about this all the time, okay, I share the scripture all the time, but it’s so foundational to what we’re understanding here and being able to understand vision and be able to answer the question, what’s next? It’s this Ephesians two, eight and ten reading from the NIV. For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, right?

You’re connecting this relationship through grace. This is not from ourself. It is the gift of God. Not by works so that no one can boast. For we are identity statement. We are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. How do I rephrase that every single week on the podcast? You were created on purpose and for a purpose. You were created on purpose and for the purposes of God.

Meaning that this understanding is that if you’re going to get a clear vision for what’s next in your life, you have to have it anchored to the purpose for which you’re on Earth, which is that right there, where I can clearly see what Jesus has done in my past, right? I can clearly see this understanding. I have faith in the imagination for what we could do together, and then I’m ready to join him to create the future.

The big question that comes up in this process is this what could be? What could be? That’s the first question I want you to start asking as you’re connected this understanding of vision and purpose and this whole understanding and this whole thought comes from the Old Testament, the Book of Nehemiah. If you’ve read the Book of Nehemiah before, it’s an amazing story of this guy named Nehemiah, and Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King’s Artaxerxes, and the Israelite people are enslaved.

And what happens to Nehemiah is he’s the cupbearer to the king. Meaning if you don’t know what a cupbearer is, meaning that the attendants would bring the king his wine, and the cup bearer’s job was to taste the wine before the king tasted it, and if the cupbearer didn’t drop dead, it was okay for the king to drink the wine. Not exactly amazingly, high profile or not a job with great security because people were often trying to assassinate the king. So it’s not like Nehemiah is some kind of high-ranking official, but he’s about to get God’s vision for his future connected to the purposes of God.

And it all starts in Nehemiah’s life by him asking the question, what could be? Hey, what’s up? I want to invite you to join.

Us for a global day of generosity called Giving Tuesday this year. It’s on November 28th.

And you may not know, but Blackbird Mission is the nonprofit that runs everything that’s connected with everything we do. So if you’ve read the book and it blessed you in some kind of way, maybe help God begin to resurrect.

A new purpose in your life, if.

You’ve gone through the Spiritual DNA workshop.

And took the steps to become who you were born to be, maybe you’re just a faithful podcast listener. And each and every week, the podcast is something that reminds you that God’s for you, not against you, that he’s near you, not far from you, that he’s created you on purpose and for purpose. All of that, as well as the Pub Theology ministry do and many other things, is everything that is a part of our not-for-profit Blackbird Mission this year?

We have a huge goal. Here’s what we’re trying to do.

We’re trying to raise $100,000 to fully fund the ministry for the next year. And here’s the cool part we’re going to give away 20% of it. Last year, we set a goal to raise $75,000, and we exceeded it, and we gave away 10% of what came in last year, and we want to be a conduit of God’s generosity. So this year, we’re giving away 20% of everything that comes into Blackbird to other smaller nonprofits.

One of the ones we’re going to.

Give to is we’ve got a great.

Counseling ministry that works with mental health, with people up out of Michigan, and they need some scholarships to help people go through a day and-a-half counseling intensive that need it to unlock.
Their roads of addiction and difficult behavior patterns.

And they say, hey, we’ve got some people that can’t afford to do this.

And would you guys be willing to partner and scholarship a few people through this? That’s going to be one of the things that we give to this Giving Tuesday. But we need your help. Anything would be appreciated. If you can make your gift monthly, maybe $30 a month or something would be huge for us. You pray about it, see what God would have you do, and here’s what you do. You just go to blackbirdmission.com Giving Tuesday. You go there, there’ll be a campaign set up, and we would love for you to join us this year for Giving Tuesday. Our goal is to raise 100,000 and give away 20 to other smaller nonprofits. Please join us if we have blessed you, help us bless others, and keep this ministry fully funded for the next year. We appreciate it.

Giving Tuesday. November 28.
blackbirdmission.com/GivingTuesday.
Thanks again.

So if we were to read all the way through chapter one of Nehemiah, what happens? Is he’s there being cut? Bear to the king. Someone comes and explains to him the condition of the city of Jerusalem, that the walls have been burned down, they’re broken down. The walls in the town are in shambles. And Nehemiah, as a true follower of God, is brokenhearted by what he hears about the condition that God’s city is in. And in that moment, Nehemiah begins to ask himself, what could be different?

And when we ask the question, what could be different? Here’s what we have to do to actually be able to ask and answer that question. We have to see it. We have to be able to see the potential of the future being different. And that’s all about hope. That’s all about hope for Nehemiah. What happens is they tell him that and he begins to get a vision. You know what what could be different? You know what could be different?
The walls of the city could be rebuilt, the walls of the city could be rebuilt, and there could be pride and strength and protection for God’s people. That could be. Now, when you get to what could be, you see it. But there’s so much in between, specifically in that place, right there’s the understanding of how it’s going to happen. You don’t know that. The understanding that you could actually be someone that brings that. I’m not asking you to understand any of that. Neither did Nehemiah. Right? The reality for Nehemiah was he was cut bear to the king, but he began to see it. You know what could be different?

The city walls could be rebuilt and God began to do a work in him to set him up, to start moving to the next process, which we’ll hit next week, which is, you know what? Not only could that be, but that should be. So here’s my question for you. What do you see when you look at your life and you look at the purposes of God? When you look at your city, when you look at your school system, when you look at your family, when you look at your marriage, when you look at your kids, when you look at your church?

What do you see when you look into the future and saying, what’s next? Do you have a statement for what could be? See, the issue is that with sight is we can either be near-sighted or far-sided. See, I struggle with near sightedness. Near-sightedness is when I can’t see far away, but I can see near. And by me saying I could see near, right, my eyesight was so bad, by near I meant about three inches from my face, was about how close text had to be for me to see it.

Outside of three to four inches from my face, everything was an absolute, complete blur. My life was unlivable because I was so near sighted. And here’s what I think happens to some of us, especially as it connects back to the purposes of God, is we’re near sighted and blind. As actually it says this in two Peter one eight. And it says, for if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But listen to this.

But whoever does not have them is nearsighted and blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their past sins. Here’s what I think happens to some of us. We’ve grown up around Jesus for so long that the moment you came to faith is so far removed from where you are right now. And maybe that was the only real connection to a relationship, is when I was a kid way back then. It’s so far out there, I can’t even see it. I’m so near-sighted and blind.

I’ve forgotten what God could do because of what God did in my life. And so the place that I’m in, the position that I’m in, that all seems so like it doesn’t even make any sense. It’s not even connected to where I’m at now. So it’s tough for me to dream about what could be when I’m asking the question, what’s next? Because I’ve forgotten what already has been. And if that’s where you’re at, I want you to begin to ask God to overwhelm you once again by the enormity of his amazing grace in your life.

The fact that you can go to place you can go, you know what? Yeah, I have been saved by God. I have been actually cleansed. I have been actually brought to life by God as we talk about in spiritual DNA. I have actually been given everything I need for life and Godliness through my connection and knowledge to Jesus, I do actually participate in the divine nature. To understand what could be, what’s next in your life, you have to begin to gather around you as close as it needs to be, as near sighted as you are. I don’t care if it has to be three inches from your face, as close as you can gather what is true about you and what is true about God and get clear on who you are and what your purpose is.

Because of his purposes, because of his grace, because of His Holy Spirit, if it’s far away what God has done, and it’s far away of who you are, bring it close so you can see it, so you can begin to answer the question, what’s next? I know. I know what could be because I know what already has been. You may also struggle with this. You may be farsighted when you’re farsighted, right? This is kind of a trip is you can see real clearly far away, but you can’t see close up.

Some of us, what’s happened in our relationship with God is that it’s real clear for you. You’ve never really had a connection with Jesus. And you might be listening to the podcast because you read the book and you’re just kind of curious. Maybe you’ve been at one of the schools where you’ve come and done the Purpose Paradigm. Maybe you’ve been at one of the companies where I’ve come and spoke and taken people through the Purpose Paradigm and done some purpose coaching. And you’re like, I’m kind of curious. I’m going to check out this podcast, see what this Daron guy is all about. And you say, here’s the reality, Daron. You’re talking about this God’s purpose in my life business. You’re talking about this relationship. I don’t really think about that. Like, I can see real clear that I can’t see God in my life at all.

But the problem is, real close up. I don’t know what to do with my life three inches in front of my face because I’ve never seen clearly what God could do. And here’s what I want you to know, that even though your vision wasn’t clued in to see how God’s been at work in your life, he has been at work since the day he created you. He loves you. And I believe he’s brought you to this moment where maybe you can’t see it right in front of your face. But God is standing here right now saying, listen, friend, I want to have a relationship with you. I want to bring forgiveness and strength and power and love into your life. I want to bring hope into your life. I want you to see right in front of your face because I want to do something new in your life.

I love this passage of scripture that says this in Isaiah 40, 318 and 19, where God says this forget the former things. Do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing now. It springs up. Do you not perceive it? I’m making a way in the wilderness and streams, in the wasteland. See, I am doing a new thing. Do you not perceive it? So what do you see if you’re near sighted and it’s so far away from where you got connected to God or you’re far side and you’ve never really been connected? But I can’t see right now, here’s what I want you to know. God wants to do something new in your life.

What’s next? Something new. What’s next is going to start with you beginning to see a vision for what could be different in your life. And what that could be needs to be connected to who God is and who his purposes are and who he’s created you to be. That’s the first step. And here’s what you remember this. And this is the question I just want you dealing with all week until the next episode, right, is what could be and maybe begin journaling down. What do you see?

What do you see that could be different? Here’s what I want you to know. It’s going to be a little bit of an ending caveat for you. You can’t use a mirror to see this. And too often when we’re looking for a vision for a future, we spend too much time looking in the mirror. And by that I mean this. What could be different for me? What could be different to make me happier? What could be different to make me more money? What could be different to make me look younger? What could be different to make me here’s the deal. If you’re going to find a vision big enough and grand enough and holy enough, worthy enough for your life, it cannot be connected to you solely.

That’s why I think I may have to start saying a difference. That is saying you’re created on purpose and for a purpose. But you could think, well, my purpose is just for me to be happy.

No.

That’s way, way too small a purpose for someone who has been saved by the grace of God, who has been empowered by the spirit of God and has been invited into the mission of God. For you. You cannot find what could be looking in the mirror. You’ve got to find what could be by looking into the heart of God and saying, god, what’s on your heart? What’s on your mind? What could be different in the world as I see it, that would bring you greater glory and would bring me amazing joy.

That’s why Jesus told us to pray it right. God, your will be done, your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. What could be? That’s your job for the next week. Begin in praying, asking God, god, I need a vision for my life. I need a vision for the future. Begin to capture my heart and my mind for what could be different. And guess what? These are the kind of prayers that God loves to answer. Can’t wait to talk to you guys next week as we jump into the next question to ask. As you’re beginning to find a vision for what’s next in your life, it’s just what should be. We’re going to talk about that, talk about nehemiah, and see where we find ourselves. So thanks for tuning in this time. Thanks for listening. Until we talk again, remember, God’s for you. He’s not against you. He’s near you, not far away, and he’s created you on purpose and for his purposes.

Talk to you guys next time right here on the Daron Earlewine Podcast.