5 Steps To Get Clarity About God’s Next For Your Life

I’m Ok, but not great, how do I get to great?

Do you have this nagging, almost guilty feeling of discontentment, but you struggle but have no clarity about your life as to why? Do you then do a quick inventory of your life, such as:

Marriage- doing good, check

Kids doing well, check

Finances- doing good, check

Faith- I go to church and serve, so doing well, check

 

When you finish your inventory, you feel good, but then that nagging feeling comes back, and you can’t figure out why. If you are anything like me, you can’t shake it off. I went on the quest to fix it and finally gave up and surrendered my feelings to the Holy Spirit.

When God finally became my life coach, everything changed. Within a year, I quit my job, my husband transferred to a department in his company much more aligned with his strengths, I started a business, we started fostering teens, and we increased our involvement at our church. I am not going to say our journey has been easy, but we feel joy and peace we have never experienced before, and it’s a joy I pray everyone will also experience.

I suggest instead of looking for a thing to “fix”, and an asset to acquire or anything external, you consider digging deeper and looking to the Holy Spirit to give clarity.

Lucky for me, I belong to an amazing church that has a deep belief in maximizing the potential of its congregation to multiply kingdom impact. I went through a faith-based group coaching program called the Younique Journey This program walks you through a series of workshops with exercises to guide you to discover your unique calling.

The program helps find your “sweet spot.” That beautiful place where the trifecta of your Passion, Ability, and the environments in which you naturally flourish comes together in a crescendo all your own. Knowing this gives you clarity about who you are so you can design what Younique calls a Gospel-Centered life design.

I understand that not everyone has the opportunity to go through the life coaching program I went through, but taking the time to evaluate your past experiences in prayer, articulate your call, and name your values will give you an insight that will act as an internal GPS so you can live your call.

I encourage you to take the time to explore:

1. Your past, particularly reoccurring life themes.

Do you find yourself in a financial mess every few years? Do you find yourself in bad relationships? Do you find yourself in jobs you don’t like versus a vocation that feeds your soul? If you, the only thing constant thing about your situation is you. Consider prayerfully revisiting your past, even if it’s with someone you trust, to look for patterns and decisions as to how you created the life you are now living. I will admit this takes courage. The courage to own your decision, without condemnation, but the perspective to help to learn to reframe and make better choices.

2. Where you normally falter.

One of the most impactful sessions I experienced in Younique was the session where we discussed how the seasons, we drift off course from our call falls into our need for approval, the feeling we, not God, can take care of our needs or our ambition will give us what we need. Similar to the three temptations of Christ, Satan will question our identity, and we will get tempted with whatever we typically use to “satisfy” the hunger only Christ can satisfy. I never feel I am enough, so I typically get off course when I start to crave the approval of others. Knowing is so freeing because I know I have a litmus test to evaluate the underlying motives of my decisions to keep me focused on living my call.

3. Review your past jobs...

Reviewing my past jobs and evaluating what I liked and what I didn’t like gave me great insight into my call. I wrote down daily for a month any duties or experiences I enjoyed and experiences I did not, and I found a reoccurring theme. I loved coaching people who were open to self-discovery, ready for accountability, and saw their goals as serving a great purpose.

I struggled in roles that were highly detailed if they did not involve people. This gave me the perspective that the role I had at the last job I was floundering in was not a fit. It was like sticking a round peg into a square hole. Knowing this helped me get past the feeling of inadequacy and lean into God with prayer, which helped me focus on who I was called to be, take a leap of faith, and leave my job.

4. Know your values…

If you asked me a few years, I would have told you I am someone who lived with my values as an internal compass. If you would have asked me to concisely articulate my top 4 values, you would have heard crickets because I would have struggled with an answer. Now, if you ask me, I can boldly say the top 4 values (God is at the center of all my values, so I did not list my faith as a value) are:

Integrity- because living what I say I believe is the best statement of faith

Courage- because doing it scared, although fear is the ultimate walk of faith.

Joy- because peace in God’s sovereignty in all circumstances allows me to walk with others in their brokenness without fear

Compassion- because Empaty+Action is the current through which God can move mountains

5. Write out your vision statement...

Your vision is a statement of where and who you want to be. I wrote one over 20 years ago, and I am amazed at how similar it is to my vision now. It’s more than a bucket list, it’s a statement of who you are and “whose” you are.

Over the years, the statement has guided me through tough decisions and acted like a guardrail to remind me who God created me to be. I encourage you to write one out. Bonus: If you are married, do one together. It’s amazing how much momentum can be created when two people work together towards a shared vision.

Doing these items are powerful. It means that any financial decision you make gets filtered through this list to make sure your choices are propelling you towards your call rather than preventing you from living out your call.

Conclusion

In my years as a financial coach, nothing broke my heart more than talking to someone on fire for God, ready to serve his purpose, but in bondage to a lifestyle that was created without God’s input. Taking the time to do deep self-reflection and get clear on who you are and the direction you want to go in will help you direct every area of your life toward living in the fullness of your purpose.