Potential Purpose

Recently I have been looking into what I want to be doing after sixth form. I have no more of an idea than when I first started sixth form what career I want to go into or my dream life ambition or whatever, but I am slowly piecing together bits of my near future. I'm not claiming to know God's purpose for my life or anybody else's but there are some aspects of it that I am starting to understand a little bit better.
I have had many conversations with people about things that I would like to do and looked at various universities but nothing really clicked and I ended up more confused about what I should be doing.
One thing that I was told was that God doesn't give us talents and passions for no reason and someone reminded me of the parable Jesus tells of the 'talents' (Matthew 25: 14-28)

"The man who had received the five talents went at once and put his money to work and gained five more. So also, the one with the two talents gained two more. but the man who had received the one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master's money." (v16-18)

The first two used the talents they were given wisely and gained more as a result, whereas the last one just buried it in the ground and did nothing with it. What did he gain in return? Nothing. So God has given us gifts and passions that we can use for Him. I was at the Big Church Day Out this year (as I have every year been since it started - go if you haven't been!) and I really saw that God can use talents of all sorts! There was someone there doing circus skills, keepy-ups with footballs, the first aid team, security guards, people serving food and drink, running all sorts of games, someone on stilts! Never mind all the incredibly talented musicians that were there - whether they were Christians or not, God was still using their abilities, personalities and talents.
So in deciding what it is I really want to be doing, I looked to where my passion lies and what I can do involving that - and I am really starting to feel a lot more positive about my future. I still don't know what is going to happen but I do know that God knows, and that what I enjoy and what I'm passionate about are not going to go to waste.

"God has given each of you a gift from his great variety of spiritual gifts. Use them well to serve one another. Do you have the gift of speaking? Then speak as though God himself were speaking through you. Do you have the gift of helping others? Do it with all the strength and energy that God supplies..." (1 Peter 4: 10-11)

But what if you're not sure where your passion lies? If you've never really thought about it or have been distracted by other things that have got in the way of discovering it, it could be tricky to work out what it is you want to do, what God could be leading you towards. When I was thinking about this yesterday a question/ scenario popped into my head. So, imagine this... If someone said to you that there was one thing, and one thing only that you could do for the rest of your life, what would it be? The answer to that question could be a good place to start, whether it is a sport, an instrument, art, media, generosity, hospitality, cooking or whatever, these can all be used in any situation to serve others and to serve God. And as a side thought - if you did have to do one thing only for the rest of your life, surely you would choose something you enjoy.
This is not to say that whatever you may have in mind is what you will be doing forever, but it may be something for a length of time until other paths and passions become clear.
I really can't stress enough how I don't know the way in which God works - that's why He's God and we aren't supposed to understand him, and many people wouldn't hesitate to agree with me when I say I don't know everything and wouldn't come close to claiming I do, but I know this way of thinking has helped me to work out a few thoughts and have kick started the long drawn out process of decision making that comes from growing up, and I can only hope and pray that in this I can help some other lost and confused people - if only a little bit.
God won't abandon you either - if you need to find your passion, draw near to God. Psalm 37: 4 says,

"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."

To delight yourself in him would be to draw into his presence and not just to experience it but to enjoy it. We need to grow to love him better, to develop our own personal relationship with him and in time he will reveal to us our true heart's desires. We can never be too close to God, by that I mean there will never be a point that we can honestly say that there's nothing else we can do. Never a time we can say that
"everything is just so perfect I don't need to work on this any more". The time may come one day, in heaven when we find ourselves fully immersed in his presence, but all the time we are here we can constantly be working on loving, honouring, praising and pleasing God. And when we come to enjoy this, despite pain and hardships we may be enduring, he starts to reveal things to us. Verse 5-7 says,

"Commit your ways to the Lord; trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him..."

He wont reveal everything we want to know straight away but we need to trust in his ability, his goodness and faithfulness, trust in his kindness and wait patiently for him - in time he will honour us by letting us know what is going on! He will reveal the best thing for us, our way forward. Jeremiah 29:13 says,

"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

If we search after him wholeheartedly, we will find him and with regards to future worries, just earlier on in this chapter, in verse 11 it says that the Lord knows the plans he has for us, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."
Just be reassured that God really does know what he's doing with you, he knows what you're going through, where you're heading and where you will end up, he hasn't given you gifts and talents to go to waste, but to enjoy and to use to worship, praise and serve. Most importantly, he loves, he is love. And he gives us the ability to love.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing." (1 Corinthians 13: 1-3)

Verse 13 - "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Found in You

Firstly, I want to say thank you to everyone reading this, and those who have read and shown me support for my last two posts, I am so overwhelmed and so thankful. God most definitely is good.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLQlnaHpgJw - Secondly, watch this please :)

This song came on my iPod while it was on shuffle and I wasn't really paying that much attention to it - I was probably just like, "awh this is a nice song :)" but then one line really stood out to me and I started to listen. And actually listen. I find it so easy to bumble along with music, in particular worship music and not really pay attention to the words (which is kind of the point of worship music) and every now and then I feel God going, "seriously Gemma, this song is playing... you should LISTEN to it." So that's what I did when this line jumped into my ears,

"Jesus, everything I've lost I have found in you."

I apologise again for a rambly post but my train of thought was a little like this, "wow... that's such a nice line... actually it's so true..." and I started thinking about things I've felt I've lost. Confidence. Hope. Peace. The three words that I thought of that I have lost plenty of times. And another one - patience. And the significance of this line really started to kick me in the stomach. When I've lost confidence, I have found it in God. When I've lost hope, I have found it in God. When I've lost patience, I have found it in God. and when everything gets hectic and seems too much to handle - I have found peace in God.
My thoughts then continued and I thought about people who don't know God as well as I may do. Well, I don't know much of God, because He's God, He is uncomprehendable (?) and incomparable and as I've discovered ever deeper through reading the book "Indescribable" we have only glimpsed an extremely minute piece of His masterpiece, His message, His power and His ability (I could go on). But what I do know of God, and what I'm continually reassured of, is that He loves me. And He loves to comfort. And to anyone who yearns for Him, He will meet you. James 4:8 says, "Come near to God and He will come near to you..." He wants you to make the first move, He doesn't jump in and say - "that's it I'm gonna sort this out for you, you can't think for yourself any more." He waits for you to say "God, I need You." Then He says "Well, I've been here for a while... It's about time you realised it, but never mind that, you need me and I'm here, and we're going to get through this together."

"The time when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you."

I'm sure most are familiar with the footprints poem, but if you aren't I urge you to google it or something because it has been a crucial part to my faith and I am continually reminded of that line. When I've lost confidence, I have found it in God - He's carried me through it. When I've lost hope, I have found it in God - He's carried me through it... And I don't know where I would be if I didn't have God, my constant crutch, propping me up when I stumble.
 I just had a thought of falling... falling backwards - the worst type of falling because you can't even see what you're falling onto and really have no control over how you land or what you land on - anyway, I had a thought of falling backwards, but onto a trampoline and as soon as I fell right down to the surface, I was sprung right back up again. God is my trampoline.
Another thought tangent - that trampoline analogy made me think of those faith tests everyone does at some point, where they get a friend to stand behind them and they fall, trusting that their friend is going to catch them. A lot of the time it is a completely trusting scenario where one person falls and the other person catches, but often the "faller" can lose faith at the last moment and step backwards instead of trusting the "catcher" to catch. And in the worst case scenarios the "catcher" actually ends up being the "dropper." But this is how it is with God - we fall, He catches us - every time. He will never drop us - ever. But we can sometimes lose our trust, and step back - not letting God catch us - maybe we think we don't need him, finding other things to pull ourselves back up with. But we will always fall again, and again and again. And we need to learn to put full trust in Him (I am aware this is sounding like my last post but I'll try and get off that).
Pulling it back to the song lyric - when we lose things and feel unsatisfied we can choose what to do. We can try and find them in earthly things, temporary things that will fade - things that will disappoint us. We can pretend everything is ok and carry on, lying not only to everyone on the outside, but to ourselves on the inside, leaving us feeling unhealthy and suffocated. Or we can admit we need help - we can allow ourselves to fall into God's outstretched arms, because He is willing to catch us and He can provide all that we need. We need to make the first move and tell God we need Him, because He won't invade on anyone who is closed off to him and we can't expect Him to move if we aren't 100% willing. We need to acknowledge. We need to ask.

"Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened." - Matthew 7: 7-8

And if we feel like God isn't answering our prayers - we need to persist. Persist in prayer. Because He will answer when the timing is right. And God's timing is always right. Even if it seems like we don't have the time here, God is outside of our time, God created our time! So of course He knows what He's doing! Of course His timing is perfect! And we need to trust His ability - because all we need is found in Him.