I needed to be reminded.  I've been asking in my heart for a refresher - What am I supposed to be doing?!  What is my calling?  Little did I realize where I'd come across it...  I haven't been too productive in collecting and editing my writing portfolio tonight, at least not many pieces I could send to a potential employer.  But, I've begun to remember something far more important...

"SLT has taught me not only to be more self-conscious when it comes to my thoughts and how they are tied to my history, destiny, and the raw material of who God created me to be, but it’s taught me to use those same skills to perceive who others are deep down and given me some skills as to how to call that out. I’ve learned to ask questions, rather then tell. I’m practicing these skills today still, but my trajectory remains steep and I am so grateful for the abundance of lessons I’ve learned and the example my facilitator was to me of the sort of leader I want to be.

            When it came to xxx, I could see a lot in her that the Lord wanted to touch and change, things He desired to tell her and show her, but I’d also learned that the most lasting impact wouldn’t come from me telling those things to her, but by faithfully helping lead her to those revelations herself. My place was just to walk beside her, listen, and when the right moment came, ask the question. It came one night, “Why are you with him?” She opened up her heart, and listened to what God had already been faithful to plant. Two nights later I think, she had broken up with her boy friend. Within a couple weeks, she was at an Encounter Retreat, a week after that I was helping her move out of her apartment and in with an incredible family, months later she entered Masters Commission. Where she is today is a testimony to the Lord’s love for her, and her responding to his love. But it also has shown me that a question is many times more powerful then giving someone the right answer. The revelation you come to yourself sticks much deeper then the one someone easily hands you.

            I want to lead people to the Lion and the Lamb, not by telling them the right answers, but by guiding them. And I want to guide them through poetry and prose. Just last week a friend gave me a prophetic word that “your writing is going to  illuminate in people the things He’s called them to be that they couldn’t see or had a hard time believing. Making the invisible visible specifically in regards to destiny and calling. Prophetically calling out to them what is already a reality in heaven.” I want to write stories that hint at something magnificent, that pull people into the sublime and beautiful, marrying the two. I want to lead them to a place where they stand face to face with the Lion, and leave them there to hear Him speak what He wills.

            I don’t know that I would be able to accomplish the level of effectiveness in my writing that I feel called to, had I not received the tools I did in Strategic Life Training, especially Year 2 where the tools got worked out into life. As I mentioned earlier, it’s transformed the way I look not only at my future, but also at the literary past. I see the heroes of past literature and my heart aches, because I can see where their desires that should have led them face to face with God instead led them astray, and how those desires went unfulfilled. I want to be faithful to prepare, in order that my writing will accomplish all that the Lord has planned.  I have a healthy fear to keep myself hid in Him, searching Him out, but not looking to go outside of Him. I also don’t want to limit the Lord in my thoughts, dreams or expectations. He is the source of the sublime: awful, overwhelming, untame and uncontrollable. What an adventure He invites us in to!"