The Power in Living Out Your Purpose
Updated: Apr 26, 2018
I have never been more sure of who God created me to be than yesterday! I spent the day sharing my gift to bring light and love to God’s people, and he poured out his spirit in a way that I could never have anticipated. In less than a week, God planted the seed of a beautiful message, song, and dance into my spirit. He watered it with the support and acceptance of spiritual leaders and mentors, and fertilized it with the wisdom, creativity and commitment of midwives who helped usher in the vision I’d been given. It manifested into one of my most impactful and touching dance pieces I've created to date. The piece is one I am incredibly proud of because I know I poured my heart, soul and every element of the journey God has brought me through into it.
Ultimately God blessed my effort, and made it of use to others beyond myself. I was even fortunate enough to receive testaments of the impact it had on others directly. God made it crystal clear what my purpose is and what happens when I boldly live within it!
It’s amazing because this message came at the most timely hour. In the month of January, I committed to a 21-day Daniel Fast. The Daniel Fast is a spiritually motivated diet where a person abstains from what I like to call a luxurious diet in an effort to generate a sacrifice-derived connection to God. I’ve fasted many times before in this manner. In fact, just a month, before I’d completed a full Fast from all foods for three days, but this time it felt different. This time I really wanted to use the three weeks to seek a new understanding and manifestation of God’s presence in my life. For wisdom and protection and guidance, particularly at the start of the new year with my life landscape looking so foreign and unfamiliar, but also to increase my influence on the world around me. I wanted my belief that love and positivity and wholeness ought to be more prevalent in the world to be more than just the desire of my heart. I wanted them to be the reality I more commonly encountered. Ultimately, I felt God was ushering me into a deeper level of relationship, and I used the Daniel Fast to uncover the why.
Some of the most prevalent recurring questions that came up during the course of my Fast were: God what do you want me to focus my attention on this year? What do you want me to commit to? What is my purpose in this season? How do you want me to go about doing it? One constant response I would feel in my spirit was the chorus of a song I wrote just at the end of 2017.
"I was created to worship you. I was created to elevate your throne.I was created to shine a light in this dark world. To radiate your precious love and lead your people home."
Those words would echo in the walls of my chest. They were beckoning me to live a certain way. To believe God created me with a clear purpose and to live out that purpose with every opportunity I was given. This past Sunday marked the first day of breaking my Daniel Fast. I’d made it beyond my 21-day journey, and with no irony lost on me, as questions about my future began to bubble within my spirit, as they sat unspoken within my heart, God crafted an opportunity for me to encounter the promise that he spoke over my life when he created me. He gave me the opportunity to offer my brightest form of light to others through the ministry of dance. Dance has freed me from my darkest emotional spaces. When there are no words to describe my feelings of pain or fear, I can always find movement that articulates even the most deep sentiments of my heart. It has been the language I communicate best in. God reminded me of all of that when he showed me the song "Out of Hiding" by Steffany Gretzinger and Amanda Cook. God highlighted the many ways he used dance to let me know that I was loved and whole. How light was generated to cut through and illuminate the spaces of my own personal darkness. How it lead me back to him over and over again. I was able to weave together all of those moments into this dance piece. Each instance gave power to the testimony I shared through movement. All in all the stories formed a beautiful presentation of the tapestry of God's faithfulness in my life. One that I was honored to be able to share with others.
I share the video of this piece with you humbled by its existence. It to me was God's nudge in the direction of my calling to transform word and written composition into movement to penetrate the hearts of viewers in a new way. A reminder that when I commit to what he has put within me, he will show up and move in a profound and powerful way. There is no greater feeling in the world than living out life in my calling. I am thrilled to see how God enlarges my territory as I commit even more to this work. I hope that more than anything my testimony inspires you to live fully as God purposed you to, that you might experience the most beautiful and pure form of joy the way I was able to.
