Today’s guest post is from a fellow female XP, Becky Alexander.  Becky serves at what we affectionately refer to as “the other Crosspoint”.     You’ll enjoy her post  And don’t forget to follow her on twitter too!

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Born to Fly

A song on my iPod asks the question, “How can you keep your feet on the ground when you know that you were born to fly?” Wow. I get that.

1. Being born to fly is the realization that things are status quo and status quo is not what you’re called to.
2. Being born to fly is the knowledge that something more impactful needs to happen and you are supposed to be a part of bringing it about.
3. Being born to fly is the awareness that one person with courage and drive can accomplish great things.
4. Being born to fly is a restlessness inside, suspecting that God is about to make some changes in your life.
5. Being born to fly is being an adventurer, willing to take risks and anxious to try new experiences.
6. Being born to fly is always having a goal in front of you. And not just a “mountain peak” goal, but an “over the top of the peak” goal.
7. Being born to fly is dreaming big, loud, and in bright colors.
8. Being born to fly is allowing set-backs and obstacles to frustrate you only for a short time and then pushing ahead with whatever level of determination is necessary.
9. Being born to fly is being easily inspired.
10. Being born to fly is living life with energy, lots of energy.

I think maybe, just maybe, I was born to fly. Were you? Give yourself a score based on how many statements apply to you.

• 6-10   Born to fly
• 3-5     One wing in the nest and one wing in the air
• 1-2     Roosting

The reality is that this particular project isn’t meeting my expectations.  I’m a bit defeated and don’t feel like it’s as successful as it ought to be.  In essence I’m pridefully dismissing it because it doesn’t feel worth my time.

It’s got me wondering whether passion is always an indicator of God’s will?  I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of things that God has called people to that they weren’t necessarily passionate about.  I’m sure they felt defeated and unsuccessful too.  Insert nearly any Biblical character you can think of as a prime example.

Why do we do this then?

Why do we equate passion or lack of it with God’s will or plan for our lives?

Why do we so easily throw in the towel when we lose passion?

Why are we quick to walk away from a job or project when we find ourselves a little defeated?

I see this a lot in ministry work (I’m guilty of it myself)… wondering if I’m doing the right thing on those days when everything seems to be going wrong?

God’s will doesn’t mean endless passion or constant success.  God’s will is living God’s plan.  And His plan isn’t always warm and fuzzy or fun.  Sometimes living God’s will is hard work.  Sometimes living God’s will means pushing through when you don’t have an ounce of passion but others are counting on you.

Kick your pride to the curb and embrace what He’s given you to do… whether you’re feeling passionate about it right this moment or not!

One of my favorite books from this past year was Andre Agassi’s auto-biography Open.  The most surprising part of his story was that tennis was never his dream.  It was his father’s.  #1 in the world, over $31 million in career earnings and one of the best players of all time and yet, tennis wasn’t his dream.

As I read his story, I felt his pain, his frustration and his loss of identity as he pursued a dream.  A dream that was never his own.  And as much as he didn’t love the dream, he loved his father and he poured himself into it to make him happy.  His father’s dream eventually became his dream.

If Andre’s father hadn’t had a dream and held his son to the pursuit of it, I wonder what Andre would have become?  How good would he have been at tennis if he hadn’t spent hours on the court as a seven year old?  How realistic would the #1 seed have been if he hadn’t moved thousands of miles away from home to go to tennis boarding school?

What he achieved would have not been possible without the sacrifices.

His story gets me thinking about my dreams.  Are they big enough?  As a seven year old kid, Andre’s dreams weren’t big enough.  Only his dad had the experience and the foresight to know what could be.

What would happen if we traded our dreams for God’s dreams?

I’m pretty sure that I think too small.  I know I don’t dream big enough to push through the discomfort and the sacrifice.  What does it really look like for me to pursue God’s dreams?  What kind of sacrifice will that mean?  What kind of frustration will I need to face?  How lonely will I feel?

I’m not suggesting that the Agassi story is the perfect model for following your dreams.  It’s not.  But I have to wonder what God could do through me if I gave even a fraction of the energy that Andre did to my Father’s dream for me?  God’s dreams, God’s plans for me and for you are so much grander than what we can comprehend.

So with a new year ahead of us, I hope you’ll dream.  I hope you’ll seek God for his dreams for you.  Better yet, I hope you take the steps to see that dream become a reality.

I’m so excited that Cross Point is hosting Ben Arment‘s Dream Year weekend.  If you are ready to pursue a dream, this would be a great place to start!

THE DREAM YEAR WEEKEND IN NASHVILLE – JANUARY 21-23

Dream Year is a process designed by STORY creator Ben Arment to help people bring a God-given dream to life in one year.

You’re invited to Nashville on January 21-23, for the first Dream Year retreat. In one, pivotal weekend, you’ll learn the principles behind Dream Year and create a personal plan to pursue your God-given dream. Here’s what you’ll experience:

- The Dream Year process from start to finish
(For an overview, visit DreamYear.net)
- Personal feedback on your dream
- Case studies of successful stories
- Milestones for achieving your dream in a year
- New friends to share the journey with you
- Tools for managing the progress of your dream
- Analysis of your dream’s history and viability
- Ways to overcome the challenges of your field
- Resources to help guide your journey
- Special guests throughout the weekend
- Meals listed on the event schedule
- Morning morning lessons for a year
- A much-needed getaway in an exciting city

If you register by this Friday, January 7, you can get $50 off with the discount code CROSSPOINT.

For more info, visit DreamYear.net. To Register for the weekend, go HERE.

How can I pray for your dream?

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow” Albert Einstein

“The past is behind, learn from it.
The future is ahead, prepare for it.
The present is here, live it.” Thomas S. Monson

These last few days of the year are a great time for planning and preparing for the New Year. I suspect that you’re setting goals and making resolutions for this New Year with great excitement and anticipation.

I can’t wait to hear some of the things that God is laying on your hearts for 2011!

Let me encourage you to also take some time to reflect and learn from this past year. Celebrate the successes, mourn the losses, anticipate the opportunities still to come!

Here are a couple of great blogs with some suggestions for reflecting:

Questions to Ask for Reviewing 2010 by Brad Lomenick

Seven Questions to Ask About Last Year by Michael Hyatt

Take some time and process these questions, journal your answers and then share them with your spouse or a close friend.

Here’s to 2011!

Haven’t our GIVE! stories been great?  I know I’ve needed this dose of inspiration and perspective this Christmas.

Today’s story is from Natalie Winter and it’s simply lovely.  I encourage you to recapture the delight of giving this year!

My dad loved Christmas. There wasn’t one thing about it that didn’t thrill him. From getting up early on Black Friday, to waiting expectantly for us to come downstairs on Christmas morning, he loved the festivities, the celebration and the opportunity to spend time with family. It was only after he passed away that it occurred to me that perhaps part of the reason he loved the day so much was that it was also my mom’s birthday. So for him, he got to celebrate the two greatest joys in his life all on the same day.

Another reason that my dad loved Christmas so much is that if there was ever anyone whose loving language was giving gifts, it was my dad. He plotted for months on how he would demonstrate his affection through the perfect present. One Christmas when we were younger, my mom and he had decided to get my sister and I new bikes. That was until on Christmas Eve when we were looking through a catalog and saw a pint-size train set that a little kid could actually ride. It didn’t matter that the bikes were already purchased, my dad went out and got the train and spent all night assembling it, so that the next day he could see the wonderment and surprise on his little girls’ faces As we got older, the gift-giving joy continued, as he would seek to find new and creative ways to delight us. Whether that meant writing us a riddle that would lead us to an undiscovered check, or hiding a present for us to find later, he would consistently look for new opportunities to bring a smile to our faces. Even when he was out of a job, he would sacrifice and save so that he could bless us. And we quickly learned that it wasn’t the cost of the gift that mattered, what mattered was how much the gift would mean to us – and that exponentially increased the delight that he had in giving it. My dad, the man who could barely think of anything to write down on his wish list, would spend time, energy and money in trying to make everyone else’s wishes come true.

As I look back at all the Christmases and birthdays where he worked so hard to thrill us, the greatest gift he gave me was this:

He demonstrated the delight in giving.

He showed me that being a cheerful giver isn’t a function of how much you have, but it’s a condition of the heart. Despite all the effort he put in finding and purchasing the perfect present, the greatest gift he gave wasn’t something that could be bought.

The greatest gift I was ever given was in learning what it meant to give.

N.A. Winter is the author of Better Things Ahead.  You can also find her on Twitter.  She enjoys teaching her college students, hanging out with her husband and discovering new ways to fulfill her desire to live a simple life of worship.

Are opportunities always an indicator of God’s will?

I think sometimes I assume that if a “good” opportunity comes my way it must be “God opening a door for me.”

I don’t want to minimize the significance of the doors that God does open in our lives, but I think too many times we blindly assume good things are God things…

and I’m wondering if they always are?

While a good opportunity may not take you down a path out of God’s will for your life, is it possible that too many good opportunities could distract you from the thing that God is asking you to pursue?  Could you possibly be chasing many good things and missing the great thing, the unique thing that God wants for you?

It’s human nature to want to define our purpose in life.  I think that’s a hole in our hearts that God purposefully left there for us to wrestle with.  I truly believe that God has a plan and purpose for each of us.  He didn’t design us uniquely just to prove that He could.  He designed us uniquely because He wants us to use those uniquenesses to play our specific part in His story.  He doesn’t need all the same characters.  He needs our differences.

So with all that in mind, is it possible that you need to quit wandering through open doors and instead get clarity on who He has designed you to be? How has He uniquely wired you and what can you contribute best to His kingdom that no one else can do?

And if you could define that, don’t you think it would make choosing the “good” things much less complicated?  You could find yourself saying “no” much more often to the myriad of good things in exchange for the few “great” things that are much more closely aligned with what you have best to give.

I’m just wondering…

So there’s all kinds of speculation as to whether this shot is actually real or an allusion of special effects.

What fascinates me about it is that it COULD be real.

If I were the one trying to knock a bottle off someone’s head with my tennis serve, I might actually get the job done but only because I took out the person, not just the bottle.

But when Roger Federer, possibly the greatest tennis player who has ever lived, takes a shot like this there is room to believe it could be real.

That’s the power of excellence.

Excellence fascinates me because it’s the product of hard-work, dedication, discipline, devotion… the list could go on.

Excellence isn’t given. It’s earned.

Excellence isn’t a bonus.  It’s a reward.

Excellence is something we all aspire to, but rarely are we patient enough and committed enough to realize it.

What do you hope to be excellent at someday?

Ever been in one of those seasons?

I don’t like the feeling and I don’t like myself.

So, today while I was walking I found myself praying, “God, what’s the deal?  Why am I so restless, stressed, frantic and irritated?  What do I need to do?”

And just as that word “do” came out of my mouth, I felt God kind of stop me in my tracks and say:

“You don’t need to do, you need to be.”

“Be?  Be what?  How do I be?”

I don’t know how to be.

Be still.

Be calm.

Be quiet.

Be prayerful.

Be listening.

Be thoughtful.

To be means simply to “exist or live”.

In all my frantic-ness, I’ve forgotten how to simply live.

Psalm 46:10

Be still, and know that I am God.

John Ortberg says in The Me I Want to Be

My main job is to remain connected to God.  When my primary focus is being present with him, everything else has a way of falling into place.

That’s what I want to be.

I just can’t figure out how to do it.

How about you?

I love personality profiles, self-help quizzes, spiritual gifts tests and just about anything that helps me “make a careful exploration of who I am” (from my favorite verse Galatians 6:4-5).

So that’s why I’m thoroughly enjoying my newest treasure:

Unwritten Travels is a fun little book co-written by my friend Jenny Black and her friend Jenny Watson.

“The Jennys” take you on a whimsical journey of self-discovery that is fun, insightful, thought-provoking and inspiring.  I know you’ll enjoy it too.  You can check out their website Unwritten Travels and/or order Unwritten Travels here.

What’s your favorite self-discovery resource?

I commit myself to too many additional projects.  I try to squeeze in just one more call, email or blog post.

You know what I mean.  Most of you do this too.

Every once and awhile, I find myself dreading even the things that I would otherwise enjoy.  You know that “why in the world did I commit myself to this?” question that runs through your mind as you’re frantically trying to prepare?

But there are two unique events that I’m privileged to be a part of that no matter how frazzled or unprepared I feel going into them, I always leave completely energized with that euphoria that I’m doing exactly what I was made to do.

As a leader in ministry, I find myself in a lot of environments where I get to talk leadership, but lately the opportunity to speak into the lives of other women in leadership has become a passion that I just can’t shake.

My friend Lori Wilhite started an amazing community for pastors wives and women in ministry.  I’ve had the privilege of hosting the leadership virtual roundtable discussion a couple of times now and I absolutely love it!  Sitting in front of a computer screen chatting about leadership with 8-10 other women leaders is a true gift.

Our next Leadership Virtual Roundtable is June 10th.  If you are interested in joining us, you can sign up HERE.

Cultivate Her is quite possibly the scariest adventure I’ve ever embarked on.  Birthed from my dream to create a place to inspire, encourage and empower women in leadership, Cultivate Her has already been a wild ride.  And when I say wild, I mean pee-your-pants scary, exciting and overwhelming all at the same time.

Currently we host monthly breakfasts in Nashville, but are working on plans for on-line broadcast, regional events and more.

If you live in Nashville, be sure to join us for our next event June 23rd.  More details HERE.

As much as involvement in these events stretches me, I’m amazed at how full I feel and how confident I am in where God is leading me.

What fills you up?  What drains you and yet completes you at the same time?