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."
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