Starting Something New (eBook)

Spiritual Direction for Your God-Given Dream

Beth A. Booram (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015
InterVarsity Press (Verlag)
978-0-8308-9719-3 (ISBN)

Infos

Do you have a dream? Do you have a creative idea stirring within you to do something different or start something new? If so, you're not alone. Many people have God-given dreams but don?t know how to discern what they are and develop them into something real. Most of these dreamers aren't business people or experienced entrepreneurs. They're just sincere Christ-followers who need a spiritual and practical guide to help them realize their dream-whether it be to start a new ministry, non-profit or business, or even the vision to begin a new lifestyle.Drawing from her personal experience and the stories of fifteen others, spiritual director Beth Booram has written this companion guide for those who wonder if they have a God-given idea but don?t know what to do with it. Interviews from people like Chris Smith, Phileena Heuertz and Randy Reese who have courageously embraced a God-prompted idea are included with each chapter to add further vision and insight. Carefully designed exercises at the end of each chapter will guide and provide practical support for those who are on the spiritual journey of identifying and acting on a God-given dream. By the end, you will know that one of the privileged tasks of life is to discern, shape, birth and sustain something new.

Beth Booram is the co-founder and director of Sustainable Faith Indy, an urban retreat center in Indianapolis, where she leads The School of Spiritual Direction and offers individual and group spiritual direction. Beth speaks around the country on topics related to spiritual formation and Christian leadership and has been involved for more than thirty years in a variety of ministry roles on the college campus and within the local church. Beth is a deep feeler who loves to think, an extrovert with a penchant for solitude, and an artist who sees the hand of God in even the smallest encounters with creation. She and her husband David live near downtown Indianapolis in their 100-year-old home and retreat center. She has authored several books including Awaken Your Senses, Picturing the Face of Jesus and The Wide Open Spaces of God.

Textauszug

1

CONCEIVING

Gentle God,
Take my hand and lead me
to the dream that you have for me.
Open my eyes and ready my heart
to receive the gentle stirrings of the Spirit.
In every step of my journey be near.
Amen.

Corine Murray

IT SEEMS STRANGE THAT ONE of the most significant and dramatic moments in our lives happens without our knowing it. Quietly, in the deep darkness of the womb, a sperm and egg commingle in secret. Instantly, without fanfare, a brilliant, stunning human life is conceived. And those whose progeny this is have no notion of him or her at that moment of conception.

I suspect that this is also true of those who have been given a dream from God. We might look back and have a hunch when this dream began to form within us. We might identify certain things that were going on at the time that seemed to provide the perfect conditions for its implantation. But when the idea was fertilized, when the tiny speck of a life form came to be, we don’t exactly know.

My dream was conceived over a several-year period of growing desire for a better vocational fit. I felt an unremitting desire inside me for work that was more fulfilling within a culture that felt compatible to my values. Something was missing. I would write about it in my journal, trying to name it but typically stumbling over words to clarify or define it. It was uncomfortable to feel. It reminded me of what I had had and what I didn’t have at present.

The desire often felt like discontent. Though nothing in life was unbearable and I had work that was paying the bills, I couldn’t dismiss or ignore the longing to start something new, something that fit who I was and what I was created to do. I found acknowledging the desire painful at times, like a couple who are experiencing infertility and would rather not speak of the agony of their unmet longings. It’s a desperate place to be when you want something so badly but have little to no ability to make it happen.

Coupled with the desire for new life is often the feeling of desperation. The ache of what we want is so strong and insistent we can begin to feel desperate for its fulfillment. While no one would deny the unpleasantness of these emotions as they play tug-of-war in our hearts, they do form within us some very potent and heartfelt prayers, prayers that I believe are seminal in creating the conditions for conceiving a dream.

PRAYER FROM THE ACHE OF UNMET LONGING

Perhaps it was this combination of desire and desperation that provoked Zechariah’s prayers for him and his wife, Elizabeth. I imagine him wistfully looking at her, seeing the sadness in her eyes, a mirror of her heartache over never having a child of their own, and praying his heart out. Praying with a fervency he’d rarely experienced, asking God for the improbable after so many childless years, asking God for a baby.

When the angel Gabriel greeted Zechariah in the sanctuary of the Lord as he was fulfilling his priestly duty, Gabriel said to him, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer” (Luke 1:13). What prayer? Did Zechariah even remember what he’d prayed? Was it so long ago that he’d forgotten? Had he stopped praying now that it appeared he and Elizabeth were too old to bother with dreaming about a child of their own?

When Gabriel continued and told Zechariah that God had heard his prayer for a child, for that which he desperately desired, and that Elizabeth would give him a son, it must have been more than he dared to believe. All he could cautiously respond with was, “How can I be sure?”

Desire and desperation are the kindling that ignite the fire of passionate prayer and provide the ripe conditions to conceive a dream. They tilt our heart in God’s direction and open its door to the Spirit’s flame. It’s a formidable task to hold desire in our hearts and the subsequent desperation that comes when we get in touch with the desire. But it is this compost that makes us most fertile and open to God depositing a dream within us.

PALM SUNDAY EPIPHANY

For Abby Kuzma, the preparation was underway several years in advance before God actually deposited a dream inside her to help found the Neighborhood Christian Legal Clinic. She felt compelled to quit her job and create more space in her life for her family. At the time, she had no idea that that space would provide the ripe conditions for her to hear and respond to a very distinct and unique invitation from God.

Abby shared,

I’d been working on Capitol Hill from 1984–1989 for Senator Lugar and was a subcommittee chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee. I loved my job! But I felt strongly that I needed to quit because I knew I couldn’t work part-time—I’m too ambitious. I needed to devote myself to my family. Ben (her husband, who is a physician) was beginning a very demanding job. So, I quit. It was a really scary time.

We’d always wanted to have more children, so I soon became pregnant. When baby Alex was six months old, we moved back to Indianapolis. Nobody knew me. I was just a wife and a mom—not a professional. I had retired. I went inactive in the bar. I was at home with my kids for six years.

During that time, Abby and her family became active members at an inner-city church called Tabernacle Presbyterian. Abby continues:

In 1992, Pastor Frank Kik gave a Palm Sunday message. He cast a vision for Tab to start a medical and legal clinic for the neighborhood. It was like a lightning bolt hit me. I can do this. This is what the Lord wants me to do. I can help here. I was thinking about it all the time and was one of a number of people who responded.

Though Abby met with her pastor and began to give attention and research to the idea, she also did some of her own soul searching. This invitation both stirred and disconcerted her, and through the inner turmoil she began to pray in earnest.

The lightning-bolt moment felt like God was speaking to me. I knew. I just knew. I was very excited about it. But then, I suddenly had this epiphany—Did we have this idea and ask God to join us, or was it God’s idea and he has invited us to join him? After about a year, I had to release it and really submit myself to prayer. Is this from God and for us? As I prayed, I eventually felt God’s peace and guidance. From that time on, I never felt like the clinic was “my baby.”

PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE PRAYING

As I’ve scanned my journals over the last several years, I’ve come across those prayers of desire and prayers of desperation, cries of my heart that began to resound with such intensity that I had to pay attention.

In one such entry, I wrote,

Father,

I feel, have been feeling for a few years, something bubbling up inside. I know it will require courage, faith and risk to give birth to this. Part of the labor pains may be coming from my present ill-fitting context. Lord, help me allow the conforming, birthing contractions of life and my soul to do what they need to do in me. Give me wisdom and courage to believe in your vision within me.

If you are trying to discern whether you have a dream from God that needs tending, pay attention to what you are praying. Not the rote or dispassionate prayers, but the ones that have a quality of unbiddenness. Prayers that overtake you. Prayers that you can’t “not” pray. They form in you, not so much from your choosing to think about them but from the swirl of desire and desperation merging together, giving voice to your deep yearning. Those prayers can indicate where God is preparing to or has implanted the seed of a dream.

First off, notice the content of those prayers. What is it you are praying for? What is the nature of your desires? Do they have to do with desired relational, vocational or lifestyle changes? Are they in response to something you’ve seen, an injustice or need that you can’t let go of? What common themes keep emerging as you read your journal entries or hear yourself crying out to God, yet again? (If you don’t journal, then how about your conversations with friends?) Somewhere in the content of your prayers are important clues about who you are and what God is asking of you.

Not only is it important to pay attention to the content of your prayers but to the ones that survive time—your persistent prayers. I’ve noticed that the prayers I don’t give up on are often the ones that the Spirit is urging me to pray. Prayers related to God-inspired dreams seem to be irrepressible. Over time they intensify rather than become lost in a pile of things I’ve talked to God about but have eventually forgotten. These kinds of things take time to become clear. By “time,” I don’t mean weeks or months. Most people who have given birth to a dream say that they began to pray and think about it years before they saw anything tangible come together to realize it.

So, here are some questions to consider as you reflect on your prayers and discern whether you have conceived a God-given dream. It might be helpful to write down your responses in a journal as you contemplate these questions.

REFLECTION: PAYING ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU ARE PRAYING

• What are you praying for earnestly these days? What prayers can you not help praying?
• Describe the content of those prayers. What do you most desire?
• What are your prayers in response to? Something you’ve seen? An injustice or need?
• How long have you been praying for this? Has the desire lessened or become stronger?
• What is it like...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.3.2015
• Verlagsort: Lisle
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Psychologie
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Moraltheologie / Sozialethik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• Schlagworte: Christian • Creative • Discern • Discernment • Dream • Entrepreneur • follow your dream • God • God-given Dream • godly dream • Idea • New Business • non-profit • Prayer • spiritual director • Spiritual Entrepreneur • start a business • Vocation
• ISBN-10: 0-8308-9719-4 / 0830897194
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8308-9719-3 / 9780830897193