Learning to read our heavenly blueprint
By Dr. William Holland
I recently spent an afternoon with a young man as he was sharing about his search for personal direction. In his attempt to discover what type of life God wants for him, he’s hoping that he will eventually find happiness and contentment. I truly respect anyone (especially a teenager) that is trying to do the right thing and willing to invest the time it takes to search until they find it. I remember a few years ago reading about another young man named Guiseppe, who was also trying to find his place in the world. His parents had come to America from Sicily and his father was from a long line of fisherman (no pun intended). His father was very proud and considered it an honor to carry on this profession and he expected all of his sons to continue just as all the generations before. The problem was that even though he wanted to please his father, the Sea and the smells of dead fish made Guiseppe nauseated. Instead of this type of work, he had a passion to play sports. Sadly, throughout his teenage years, his father was very disappointed and constantly declared Guiseppe was lazy and would grow up to be good-for- nothing. Nevertheless, in spite of the emotional hurt and pain, he continued with his vision and surprisingly ended up more successful than anyone in his family could have ever dreamed. You may have heard of him, his full name was Guiseppe Joe Dimaggio.
Horace Bushnell is quoted, “There must be detail in every great work” and if we stop and think for a moment, we can see that paying attention to even the smallest features and components can make a huge difference between success or failure. Creative individuals are called dreamers and visionaries and its true with high expectations they achieve wonderful accomplishments but somewhere within the advancement process you will find that either themselves or a team of trusted supporters worked diligently to make sure all the tiny elements and aspects of the original idea was taken care of. Mr. Bushnell went on to say, “Accurate and careful minding of common and small tasks, combined with general scope and vigor, is the secret to efficiency.” This is an excellent principal to our natural life but we can also apply this wisdom to our spiritual life as well. Becoming a Christian does not complete our mission – it enables us to begin. Until our spiritual eyes are opened, we are not able to interpret how our divine blueprints were meant to guide our everyday life. The same way that a good education or a successful profession does not just fall out of the sky, we must accept that becoming spiritually sensitive and developing our faith also does not just automatically happen.
So, how can we begin to pay attention to our divine blueprint and become more enlightened to what God’s will is for our life? We begin with the desire to know what He wants us to do. As we are constantly making decisions let us remember that God will not force us to follow His instructions. For example, we know that praying is the most powerful spiritual action we can take, but to what level are we willing to persevere in order for prayer to become an essential part of our life? It would be such an inspiration if we could grasp how God has planned a wonderful destiny for us and is just waiting for us to not only see it but also to become determined to accomplish it. When we take a serious look at this concept, we notice right from the beginning that our level of desire will ultimately measure our how successful we will be. We have heard the old saying that, “if we can dream it – we can build it” but let us also be reminded there is no substitute for hard work and no such thing as an overnight success. Herman Melville is quoted, “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” We can reach for the stars but may we keep in mind the purpose of our destiny is not necessarily for our pleasure or glory but in order that we might fulfill HIS plan.
Dr. Holland lives in Central Kentucky with his wife Cheryl, where he is a Christian author, outreach minister and chaplain. Learn more at: billyhollandministries.com.
