Our Fight Club Pink challenge this week?  “Have you identified your purpose?”  We all have one.  In Jeremiah 1:5 it states “Before you were born, I set you apart.”  As Paul writes, we are all called to share the good news of hope through Jesus. I think God gives us all different talents and abilities to be able to fulfill that calling.  I wish I could sing like Brittany, our worship leader,  but I can’t carry a tune in a bucket! It’s been a joy this week to watch the ladies in Fight Club post what purpose or calling they have stepped into.  It’s a reminder that just like toes, fingers, livers all are vital to the human body – all have different functions – it’s the same in the body of Christ.  All ministries are needed, and no one ministry is any more important than the other.

I believe my gift from the Lord is writing, speaking and loving on people.  (I do pray often for my hug to heal like Peter’s shadow).   I use the talents God gave me in an effort to reach and inspire others and to bring them hope.  Yeah, that’s it!  I’m a “hope dealer”!!  But in order to use that gift?  I had to acquire boldness.  To be all in, over my head, not afraid of what others would think or feel if I asked a lady in a store or gas station if I could pray with them.  Not afraid to speak or write what the Lord dropped in my heart.  My mother prayed for me to have a “holy boldness” in my faith.  I had to have that before I could move forward.

I don’t want to just witness to people and share the good news of hope through the gospel of Jesus Christ.  I want to see lives totally transformed and restored.  This week as I sat in an Open Heaven service a stranger told me that they saw me knitting together broken pieces of a cloth, 5 pieces to be exact.  I looked up the significance of the number 5 in the bible.  The number 5 represents God’s unmerited grace.  The gift I didn’t deserve, but so graciously received.

Here’s where it gets better!  I had a necklace I wore on the start of my “Eat, Love and Pray” journey 5 years ago when I was the one who was very broken.  My heart was likely in those 5 pieces.  The necklace?  A dog tag with the word “Grace”.  Now that I am healed and whole?  I found myself giving that necklace to a beautiful young lady entering rehab a couple months ago.  As we sat in the car and I gave her the necklace, I prayed over her that she would find the same restoration I have found.  That her joy would come from knowing who she was in Christ and not continue to look for her worth in others.  To realize she is a beautiful young lady, fearfully and wonderfully made with a purpose of her own.  I hear from her now in rehab and my heart leaps!  She isn’t just being healed, she’s being restored.   She’s stepping into her purpose, loving on other broken women and sharing the promise of hope.  She is just radiant with a joy the world can’t take away.

Restoration from God isn’t just binding the wounds and filling the voids from the abuse, the addiction, the pain.  Think about how we restore a car?  We take it back to NEW.  God takes us back to new.  In the word we read “Behold.  ALL things are passed away.  ALL things become new.”  He renews our mind and restores us to walk in his original plan for us.  To step into our destiny.  To fulfill the calling we have on our lives.  And when you step into that destiny?  That’s when true peace and happiness settles in your soul.

Be blessed.  Be encouraged.  Seek your purpose.

Love,

Kris