What makes your heart come alive? Then go and do that. Not everyone can answer that question though. Why? It depends largely, if not totally on the story we have lived in and are still living in.
A Poet once wrote:
'Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die,
life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams, for when dreams go,
life is a barren field frozen with snow'
When i first read this short but penetrating poem, it was like a laser beam had cut right to the essence of my heart and of my story.
For I knew well that i had to have integrity to admit that I was like a broken winged bird that had tried to fly into a bigger story many times but was not able to.
I could relate so deeply to looking over the landscape of facing the pain that my life had been a barren field frozen with snow. The answer to 'Why'? is about Story. We have to listen to each others stories in order to better understand each other. It is so very rare though I have found, as life in Western Culture seems to resemble an Ants Nest that has just been kicked!
What makes my heart come alive? I finally allowed that question to be like a surgeons scalpel in the hand's of the One who made me for Himself. I knew somewhere deep that I had to live the question.
I began a journey to go and find my truest self which was hidden in my deepest wounds, but there was a Wounded Healer who walked with me. Jesus.
For that is often where our deepest calling for others lays hidden in our deepest pain. It is a fierce challenge, but worth the journey. I knew that I must not compromise the person being born, I had to take the Quest...A Life-Quest
What we believe we are does not happen in a vacuum independent of the relationship. For we are all shaped by people, experiences, core beliefs, and values, especially our 'non-negotiables if we know them.
I was sitting on a comfortable chair in a corner of a large lounge, it was so quiet it could have been a retreat. I drank from this well of peace. The corner chair sat by the window and the sun poured in. I 'stumbled' across a statement almost by 'accident'.
'How you picture God in your heart of hearts matters, really matters' (unquote)
What is non negotiable for you?
SOME QUESTIONS
What compels you?
What Cause would you die for?
What makes your heart come alive ?
What are your deepest core desires?
What are YOUR non-negotiables?
What needs do you feel compelled to meet and why?
What burden do you carry in relation to the difference you long to make?
There are many more Questions we can ask in relation to your Calling.
THEMES
Some of the Themes of our Story are:
Themes, messages and Identity theft
Where to look for the Call
The Assault on our Glory
Being the Beloved of God
Our deepest desires
Different desires and how to interpret them
The Turning Points in our story-both painful and joyful
The key orientation points of your life story;
Penetrating questions that explore reasons why we get stuck in our lives.
The nature of seasons
With courage and honesty we can connect with who we are becoming by what we have had to overcome.
God's Question:
When a Paramedic attends to an injured person, they apparently ask them three questions to determine the person's level of consciousness.
What is your name?
What day is it? or who is the Prime Minister of Britain?
Where are you right now?
God asked a question in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve chose to believe the serpent's lie about the character of God and then disobeyed God. 'Where are you'? God asked. How penetrating this question is.
Where are you in your life? Where are you as a man or a woman? Where are you in relation to God? Where are you in relation to God's calling on your life? The story we are living in determines where we are.
What story are you living in?
'Without a sense of love and belonging, there is always suffering' (Brene Brown)
By using the Paramedic's three questions but using different words such as:
Story, Journey and Desire we can have some idea of answering God's question 'Where are you'? We are born into a broken world, so we all have imperfect blueprints from imperfect parents (if we had parents).
Our story in the form of our childhood and life journey is shaped by factors like people, experiences, agreements with the messages we received and inner vows we make to self protect amongst other things.
Because we were all born East of Eden into a Fallen world underpinned by an unseen spiritual war, we have all taken some hits, so we have all been wounded to a lesser or greater degree.
Those wounds form lies that in turn cause us to make inner vows. These inner vows then take on a life of their own and can become strongholds in our inner being and our lives. Wounds, Lies, Vows (or Agreements) and Strongholds. Deep down inside we may feel that we have been living in a story of survival most of our lives. We can FEEL stuck.
Our story then determines the journey we take in life and who we become.
Turning points in our life journey also affect the direction we take. This all goes to form both our story which in turn forms our identity. As human beings we have desires.
If we are living out of a fragmented identity, our desire will be to self protect and numb our pain and of course this self protection and numbing out will continue to form our identity and dictate our journey, because we will be living out of a different 'script' written by someone else.
Some of us know we are living out of of someone else's 'script', some of us do not.
Check out this powerful scene ('Your move chief') from the film Good Will Hunting as Robin Williams skilfully disarms the thick walls of self protection that keep Matt Damon (Will) locked up inside ....copy and paste this link into You Tube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRG2jlQWCsY
To be fully conscious we need to be Alert & Oriented x 3 to these key Navigational Points: Our Story, our Journey and our core Desires. At the heart of the problem is the problem of the human heart. We need a new heart.
This is where Jesus longs to be invited into our story, to transform, heal and liberate the script of our lives and bring us into his bigger Story. He enables us to absorb our pain into a larger sense of meaning that is bigger than ourselves.
Jesus died to transform our story.
He is still asking 'Where are you'? Even and maybe especially to those who follow Him, but have been shaped by Institutional Christianity, rather than a truly comprehensive Biblical redemptive Story of Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation (Restoration)
Counselling: From the Past to Now
Mentoring: To walk alongside for a season
Coaching: From Now to the Future
I have mentored individuals and I am a Further Education tutor of Sociology. I basically listen to your story, provide a landscape/bigger picture to discern the key Turning Points in your story that both shut your heart down through wounding experiences and the turning points that made your heart come alive.
By looking at the landscape of the bigger story of our lives, we can observe from a birds eye view the places our heart became buried and the process we need to travel through to get our hearts back. That's what I love to facilitate people with.
LifeQuest Summary Statement
Story and Identity are inseparable, for we cannot know who we are outside of our story. LIFEQUEST is a four week course that takes an honest look at your story, the experiences and people that shaped you. It also looks at the key cultural story we have lived in and explores the story you are living in now, and what God’s Larger Story is about.
It can be engaged Online either through Zoom, the web based video tool or in person at a convenient and agreed upon venue. Of course it is better and more effective in person so this would be the preference, but I am open to whatever people may prefer. Ideally it works best in a small group of up to 6 people in an informal atmosphere.
My name is Nigel Mohammed
Email me at: thebiggerstory1@gmail.com and I will send you further details. The cost of this course is £75 for the entire 4 weeks. I also offer ongoing one to one mentoring either via Zoom, or in person.
I also facilitate and teach half day workshops on the topic of Worldview and run a 10 module course called The Transforming Story which is about the Biblical Worldview.
'Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures'. Han Suyin
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