feeling accomplished . . . and staying ALIVE

i enjoy reading a good book, but for as long as i can remember, i've always been too "busy" to do it.  well now that i have the time, i've been reading.    my current record is one book a year, so given that i just finished one in a couple weeks, i'm feeling very accomplished.

what is this book?  well, it's called wild at heart.  haha!!  yup, it's a man's book.  the full title is wild at heart: discovering the secret of a man's soul.    it was laying around (and so was i) so i picked it up, and i actually found it quite intriguing.

i also found it a bit simplistic, but i really enjoyed the writing style and the concepts that the author delivers.  and there is something in there that i really appreciate and agree with wholeheartedly:

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the author John Eldredge quotes Gil Bailie --

Don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that,
because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
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amen to that.  why wouldn't we be alive, we've got a LIVING God inside us!  but yet it's rare to find someone who is really ALIVE, you know what i mean?  you know when you do, because you find yourself wanting to be around them all the time.

as i read that i was thinking - wow, what a great philosophy and answer to a world that is caught up in trying to figure out "what is my purpose in life" or what we can bring to the world to make it a better place.  given that it's God's world and we should be seeking His purpose for it, God knows what we're purposed for and He's made us for that.  and when we're doing what we're made to do, that's when WE COME ALIVE.  that's when we shout yippeeeeeeee or woohoooooooo!!  (or... is that just me?) 

i feel like we get so stuck with key decisions, looking at the practical facts because we're squeezed by glaring needs or present life demands.  but in the bigger picture i'm thinking that our "purpose" is - and key decisions should be - not so much involved around WHAT we do (which job to take, which place to live) but should be around HOW we do it -- by relationships that we form when/as we're doing it.  or maybe to flip it, we could say it's not so much about HOW it looks on the outside, but WHAT we do with the opportunity.

after all, at the end of life here, we're not to give accounting to how successful we were in business or at work... we can't take that with us, right?  so it must be instead about what lives we tried to impact around us and the relationships we formed in growing His kingdom.  love God first and foremost, and He allows us to love others and LIVE life abundantly.  and when we're truly alive, i can imagine that people will flock to know what and who makes us so ALIVE because they want it too.

ok, i'm done preaching now.    that's what's running through my head these days, and i'm trying to keep that my focus as i think about my own next steps.  where will i be most ALIVE?