Meeting with precious people engaged in preparation for destiny is one of my primary pursuits. This is one of my priorities because of my own destiny. Patterns emerge from these experiences that relate to the growth and maturity of champions.
Destiny
You must hammer out destiny from the raw ore of personal potential. You cannot build destiny by focusing upon potential as an aggregate because raw potential has nearly unlimited possibilities, simply too large for proper focus. You will become more of a generalist than a champion if you pursue your destiny based upon a focus upon potential. You must pursue your destiny based upon purpose and use purpose as the priority of your pursuit.
God is your source of purpose. He created you with purpose, and He will reveal His purpose within you, to some extent to you but a portion to others assigned to your life as leaders. You cannot be the source of purpose or seek for purpose within your potential without a proper spectral analysis of the elements. You will mistake shining things for real gold.
Using potential as a means of finding destiny is a humanistic tenet: I can discover my destiny by examining my potential. After assuring you of the lie that you are not a creation, just a cosmic accident, thus removing the possibility of eternal purpose, the spirit of the world then moves to convince you that you must take charge of your own destiny.
God doesn’t put you in charge of your destiny; rather, He holds you accountable for what you do with His revelation of purpose and your obedience and submission to that revelation strategy for destiny fulfillment. God not only reveals destiny; He also sets strategy for you to reach its fullness. This strategy requires wholehearted submission to God’s leadership in your life.
Purposes Revealed
Champions must focus upon purpose. They must strengthen their wills to the ultimate: the strength of will to surrender. This strength of will comes through the renewing of the mind. Without the strength of will to surrender, good people become so distracted with substitutes and mirages that they misappropriate God’s resources for destiny fulfillment and bog down in mediocrity. Or worse.
The mind is spiritual, not physical. “Renewing the mind” is a spiritual process. God’s strategy for renewing the mind is called “repentance.” It works! Repentance means “I change to be changed.” Repentance is a surrender decision, not mental gymnastics.
Romans 12:2 tells us not to shape ourselves or be shaped by the environment around us, not to allow self-image to govern our understanding of what God wants. The alternative God has for self-image limitations that come from this world is a spiritual mind renewal that comes from His mind.
Self-image is a limiting factor for two reasons: self and image. We cannot know ourselves outside of God’s revelation of who He created us to be and what He called us to do. This verse says the path to knowing what God wants cannot be discovered by examining what we can see and know about ourselves by earthly experiences alone. It prescribes a spiritual “renewing of the mind,” so we can know God’s purpose, know what God wants.
Champions who pursue specific aspects of potential may become achievers, but not leaders. Champions who pursue God’s purpose will always produce something that requires more than one spiritual generation to accomplish, and the purpose they pursue will be a purpose inherited from a previous spiritual generation. So, champions can only reach destiny fulfillment by being leaders.
I spend nearly all my time with leaders. The higher champions go the more focused they become. So, the number one strategy of hell is to offer champions substitutes that distract them from purpose. If hell cannot keep you from being a champion, hell will work to limit your realization of destiny through beguiling substitutes and alluring distractions.
Destiny Goals
Long range goals tell us what to do right now so we can focus ourselves today upon fulfilling our life’s work and destiny. Without these goals, we tend to focus on “opportunities of the moment” that may be flashy and feel good but make little contribution to our pursuit of purpose. Knowing what is consistent with our destiny becomes more critical as we mature.
Children should experience the broadest interaction with life, following their curiosity and creativity in positive, progressive ways. As individuals mature, they should become incrementally more focused upon developmental experiences consistent with God’s purpose for their lives. My point here is that purpose is the foundation for making the long range goals that tell us what to do right now. Making long range goals with little or no revelation of purpose is more like day dreaming or riding fads toward the discovery of more exciting fad.
Champions pursue purpose every day because they know what to do today to be who they are created to be and do what they are called to do.
Champions avoid fads and frills, and they receive the best of their training and “next level” learning with foundational purpose clearly in mind. They know why they are attending a conference, getting training, or paying the price of strenuous preparation. They have a good motivation, founded on purpose, for this use of time and money; they know it is consistent with their “what I should do today” to be who I am created to be.
I would say nearly all the people I meet with who are frustrated with where they are, don’t have a good understanding of God’s purpose for their lives. One large group of frustrated leaders I meet could be categorized as “wanderers or vagabonds” because they are constantly looking for something they should already know, have “grass is greener” mentalities, or “American Idol” syndromes. Vagabonds have a faulty concept of purpose because they want to be someone else or someone other than the person God created them to be. They cannot have long range goals because they do not have a foundation of purpose with which to define a pathway of fulfillment. They are simply staring at a changing pattern of fantasy, a kaleidoscope of colors that never becomes a portrait of purpose.
Vagabonds fall prey to deception and destructive frustrations that lead to anger and aggression. They are often bitter from systemic unforgiveness, blame their leaders, try to destroy or diminish others who they perceive to have taken what should have been theirs. Because they are trying to be someone else, they are constantly assured that someone else has what should be theirs.
They basically spend their time and energies in counterproductive pursuits while having little or no understanding of their foundational purpose. Until they are able to lay down all the deception and get a clear vision of destiny from God, they continue to bounce from one dead end to another.
Let me say that this plague of frustrated vagabonding has become pandemic in modern American church-anity. I observe this tragic condition more than any other destructive substitute and distraction to the development of champions.
More than people’s past abuse, sins, suffering, errors, and traumas, the pursuit of unreal or unclear purpose stands tall as the number one reason why champions miss the fullness of destiny.
Modern saints are immature. This substitute causes people to stop maturing because God does not supply grace to make a person someone else. He has super-abounding grace to make a person the person He created them to be. What God had in mind when He formed you and wrote all the particulars of your destiny in His book remains the entire focus of heaven for your life and living. A revelation of this foundational purpose is the prequisite for setting long range goals that tell you what to do today to be a champio.
For vagabonds, this purpose remains so distant and indistinct, so small and insignificant in their daily lives that it nearly disappears altogether. While in champions this life’s work becomes an increasingly specific focus, an empowering and enabling revelation of the will of God.
