Recently I read that doctors, lawyers, educators, accountants, engineers, and people in a wide variety of professions and businesses participate in professional development to learn and apply new knowledge and skills that will improve their performance on the job.

This is not just a need in jobs, skills and products but this is also true with who we are as individuals.  We get older.  There are new challenges.  There are new circumstances that change us for the good, the bad or the ugly.  And then the unthinkable happens: we melt.  We fall apart.  Not necessarily on the surface but on the inside.  We don’t know who we are! And when are there we see that we have never really resourced our insides (heart, passion, dreams and purpose)

Personal, spiritual and strategic development is not just a one time event but it is a life time of pursuit and is one of the most neglected parts of our lives.  We just think that we will grow into leaders naturally.

This is really true of ministers.  We are constantly reading and prepping for sermons and we can mistake this for knowing ourselves. I read one author that called this “sanctified ignorance.”  “Sanctified ignorance” is just saying “I serve God, therefore, things will work out and be find.” I don’t need to plan!  Biblical growth is not “letting go and letting God.”  God gave us passions and desires.  He gave us the ability to cultivate and create.  This takes meditation and implementation.  This takes vision and goals.  This takes a deep understanding of our purpose!

I will confess I have been there.  I have sacrificed myself for churning out work and saying “I love God… I will be fine… I will just serve and it will all work out.”  This is a farce.  In the years that I have served as a senior pastor, I can tell you that I have neglected my heart over and over which as led to frustration, anger and dwindling passion.  It was not until I came to a crisis of needing to understand my own heart and needing to define my passions and dreams that I began to thriving.  God gives us passions and desires.  Sometimes it is for something beautiful and sometimes it is for the broken things around us.  We will not thrive in running wildly after those things until we really know ourselves.

Are you underresourced and overwhelmed?   Are you on that old “treadmill?” Do you even know your passions and dreams?    Finding purpose is not a one time experience.  It is a life time pursuit.

Minister friends, it is crucial that you don’t live with “sanctified ignorance.”  

Read 4 ways we can “Resource our Lives to Thrive”