I recently spoke at Elmwood Correctional and attempted to give the men a sense of destiny. As I thought about who gave it to me I recalled that when I graduated from high school neither one of my parents sat down with me and asked me about what college I was thinking of attending. In fact, neither one of them attended my graduation. I was on my own at the age of seventeen trying to figure out my future.
I now realize God has purposes for our lives beyond even what we can entertain. At Elmwood I addressed the men’s potential, I addressed the issue of embracing our destiny. My thought was that many of their parents probably did not speak to their potential and that is why they ended up incarcerated.
What hinders that at times is what I call the spirit of deficiency. One of the characteristics is this sense of imprisonment. This sense of being stuck! This sense of scarcity. Believing somewhere deep within; “I don’t have what it takes!”
I think if for one minute we could clearly gain possession of God’s heart towards us at any given moment, it would melt us. We either think too highly of ourselves or too lowly. Some of us are stuck in what I call the paralysis of analysis. The enemy has entrenched into our thinking that God is a hard taskmaster, difficult to please, and not very gracious or long suffering,
It has taken me years to realize that I have a destiny that causes me to be a disciple and to make more and better disciples. Disciples are people who give, serve and minister. Realizing that this is my destiny gives weight to me being a disciple. When Jesus called the twelve, he immediately gave then a sense of destiny, “You will become fishers of men.” A sense of purpose, destiny, gives us a greater capacity to do that which God has called us to lay hold of. Jesus said to the disciples, “I’ll take you out of the place you’re living and I’ll give you a capacity to do what you never dreamed you were capable of doing. A sense of destiny empowers us to sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom.
Unfortunately, some of us have lost our sense of purpose, our sense of destiny.