A thought by Bob Goff, from his book, Dream Big (Kindle Locations 519-520). Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition. (Click on the book title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)
No he didn’t.
Bob says, “He didn’t tolerate rookies who pretended to have gone All-Pro and have it all figured out but were just faking it. Once we get real with where we actually are and our desperate need for God’s help, He’s got a person He can do something with, and He’ll drop the people you’ll need in your path to help. Your job is to find them.”
He later says, “Start with acknowledging that deeper longing within you. If I had to take a guess, that’s why you’re here. You can feel it. I don’t even have to define what it is—you know exactly what I’m talking about. It is that ‘something more to life’ rumbling around in your gut, that tug drawing you toward a scary, audacious dream. It nags you when you feel stuck at a job you once wanted but have since outgrown. It fuels the late-night conversations before college graduation. It hovers around coffee shops and kitchen tables when parents become empty nesters. It is everywhere. Boardrooms and bedrooms, subways and surf shops, galleys and galleries. It is in the passenger seat on a long road trip, uttered through quiet prayers, and found in pop song lyrics. These are all expressions of us searching for a life that matters.
“I believe this pursuit is a combination of finding answers to the three big questions: Who are you? Where are you? What do you want? These are some simple words, but they are actually some of the most beautiful, most difficult, and most confusing questions we can ask of ourselves. They can be a cocktail of identity, desire, purpose, rejection, life experience, struggle, fear, hope, and longing rolled into one. If we’re going to discover and realize our most beautiful and lasting ambitions—the ones that are really worth pursuing—we have to lean into these questions.”
He goes on, “By the way, I’ve never met anyone who had all of this figured out—even if they told me they did. In fact, if they said they did, I’d take it as proof they needed to keep searching. Maybe this side of heaven life was made for searching. Instead of a final destination, or striving for complete certainty, maybe our ambitions are like the smell of a pie in the oven—a reminder and invitation to follow the scent, to enter, to keep trying, keep looking, and keep discovering.
“Maybe you know your ambitions (or have a pretty good sense of them) but have been too afraid to make any moves. There are a lot of people in this exact spot. Perhaps you’ve been living with unexecuted dreams for years, wearing them like an old T-shirt, yet avoiding them like a weird roommate. This is something that happens to our best ideas all the time. We’re so close to them, or we’ve ignored them for so long, that we can’t even see them for what they are anymore. Then just when we think we have corralled them, they change. When this happens, don’t get bummed out; get current with your new ambitions. I know it feels like a hassle, but it’s a good thing. We’re supposed to be new creations, and there will be nothing new about us if everything remains the same.”
He then says, “Can we just look each other in the eye through these pages and say, No more doing what merely occupies, entertains, and numbs us? It’s time to go after your dreams, your faith, and your ambitions with gusto. It’s just simply time. You know it. I know it. The people who love us know it. Let’s stop deferring, ignoring, and screwing around, distracting ourselves with things that won’t really matter next week, much less in our next life. Let’s instead throw our efforts and emotional weight into those ambitions which will outlast us and leave all the rest behind.”
Let’s do it, okay?
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