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Writer's pictureAndrea Angie (GA)

Let Your Life Speak: Thoughts on Vocation Part 2


Let Your Life Speak Thoughts On Vocation

{Links are always at the end of your reading.}

Let Your Life Speak: Thoughts on Vocation Part 2

As we continue in this two-part podcast series, it is essential that we keep in mind that vocation is about your voice, which makes you a speaker. The significance of our soul care definition bears repeating:


The speaker in you definition...


She primarily uses her life as a voice to speak forth grace + truth.

Language helps her deeply connect whether she's stuck or struck, she's a shalom-making storyteller calling folks home.


And it's foundational that we embrace that it calls us all forward (vocatio means “a call or summons” in Latin), more than we call it to us.

If you haven't read part one, you can scroll to the links section below and start there.

Did you know each blog post is now a text form of the Mohawkmomma Soul podcast?

This topic and conversation are adapted from a section in the Sabbath Rhythms Devotional Planner.

In part one, we began to dig into:

Vocation Is Not A Job - But It Requires Work... this doesn't always equal generating an income.

Vocation Makes You Curious... this means taking risks and making sacrifices.

Now let's continue to dig...

Vocation Is A Mirror And A Gift

It is absolutely a gift to mirror Yeshua, the Beloved.

What I've learned is that an image is formed when light rays leave the source and are reflected from the mirror. Light is the groundwork on which image bearing rests.

The Beloved is both the Source, the Mirror, and the incarnate image of God.

His illuminating love, generosity, and creativity becomes our mirror and our gift when He summons us to speak. We stand in front of the mirror of His presence shining forth His light.

In other words: Your vocation is about how you choose to "throw back" or reflect your known life into the world because you continue to behold the image of the Beloved.

He longs for our vocational participation, not because He lacks anything; rather, He desires and delights in us! He has given each of us a unique way to speak and navigate our voices within our families, our friendships, our communities, and in the world.

In essence, to let your life speak is to mirror the beauty of the Beloved's nature and nurture through your embodied narrative.

The embodied narrative is about how Love clothed Himself

in a human body to pay us the highest compliment

to bring us back into the pleasure of sacred communion.

Reflecting His image in our life's vocation is the highest compliment because we are given the gift of acting as the physical embodiment of God, Love Himself.

Yet some may be persuaded that this gift belongs only to people who believe a certain set of beliefs. A better place to start is by acknowledging that the image of God shines forth from us all doesn't belong to a mere few and it doesn't—the Beloved gave this gift of reflecting Him to all humanity.

Here are three essential ideas you should know about being made in the image of the Beloved:

1. The image of God is more than just one aspect of our identity; it is the whole nature of our being within our bodies.

The Beloved is multifaceted in His identity and so are we. There are so many aspects to our lives. The whole nature of our being takes on greater awareness to live anew when we're filled with the love and goodness of Christ and acting fully in God's image.

We reflect the image of Love's deep involvement in the depths of our being in light of our exquisite bodies. Let’s show up for love of incarnation and let that guide all else in the way we express our multifaceted identity—His image.

This is our wholeness audacity.

2. The image of God earnestly and irrevocably unites your dignity, worth, and value to that of the Beloved's.

As image-bearers, humans have intrinsic dignity and value because of the image we reflect. When you create something you are proud that it reflects who you are as an artist. We were created as the crowning glory of God’s creation, and we reflect Him as an artist and a creator.

We are handmade masterpieces by the Divine Artist/Creator, and we reflect Him with the "handmade" things in our lives, whether we put our hands to a relationship or a craft, we can experience the beauty of our handmade places as the very human quality of reflecting the Divine in all of our imperfections.

Because our imperfections are quite like handmade things with inconsistencies or slight flaws, we can reframe the way we relate to our imperfect places based on the worth we place on the human dignity found in something handmade.

We can start by accepting our imperfections as valuable features of a brave and courageous soul. A soul with a love of experimentation, patience, humility, and a stomach for failure. After all, failure is simply feedback.

3. Our relational nature is an aspect of the image of God.

God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is in an eternal relationship of love. He has created us for relationship with Himself, with others, and with the creation. The more we reflect the image of Christ, the more responsive we will be to connect with Him, to others, and to His creation.

Because your voice/vocation is both a mirror and a gift from Jesus to others, it will inevitably bring the greatest opportunity and challenge to you and your community.

Jesus' presence has a way of digging through our mindsets and attitudes, it can be both a disruption and a deliverance.

And so it is with our presence when we speak forth. We will disrupt what's normalized and rewarded when we step out in brave influence and courageous hearts.

As great as it is a vocation to share with and serve others, you will best find sustaining fulfillment in your vocation when you permit regular pauses in your life to gaze unhurriedly in the Beloved's mirror of pleasure and purpose in you, the true youthe whole you. The offering of that gift—your true self—is the most you can do to love and serve the world.

Vocation Is A Grace-Witness, A Testimony

To let the whole you speak means you'll dare to become a grace-witness. Think of it as your testimony of how grace keeps showing up in your life to compel you to share how you're always accompanied in life's shadows into the light to be healed, transformed, and known.

This knowing will enlighten and invite you to further cultivate and invest in your voice/vocation as you understand communion from the level of your perception.

What, if anything, about the way you are developing and nurturing your multifaceted life voice needs to shift in order for you to discover deeper trust, assurance, and more courage?

How would you answer this statement: "I bring a voice of ______ into the world."

What attributes need to be cultivated and nurtured for that voice to expand beyond your comfort zone, familiar zone, typical zone, etc.?

These three attributes are ones that I want us to consider...

a child-like resolve to engage Jesus with fascinating wonder.

a willing attitude to impress less and reflect what's real, true, and healing at the risk of looking (or sounding) foolish.

a repentant heart to humbly and shamelessly embrace the Beloved's kindness and turn around from many of life's detour.

Vocation Is Communion, A Sanctuary of Transformation

When we allow these attributes to cultivate communion, it opens us up to shared living.

A shared living that helps you engage in a togetherness with the Beloved as you marshall the collective beauty, intellect, curiosity, creativity, and grace of other people around you.

The richness of this communion is what continues to attune and align your deepest desires with God's desire. But you must let your voice learn to trust the Voice of the Beloved. His voice will always call you into the rhythms of true freedom.

A freedom that helps you tuck yourself away into Abba's heart, a heart that incessantly summons you.

The more attentive you are to your vocational summoning, the more you take custody back of your soul and realize it's about being content with who Jesus has called you to be from His tender, yet strong voice of steadfast love.

The more grateful and content you are with your voice without comparing it to the voice of another, silencing your voice, or trying to hide behind a voice that is not your own, the deeper you will align yourself in a communion that becomes a sanctuary of transformation for you, which also turns you into a holy conduit.

There's so much encouragement when you consider how vocation allows you to gather up all of your scattered places into the whole of your life and bring them home to a welcoming hospitality of shalom.

In all of this... Perfection is not required. Shame is not nurtured.

 

Today's Prayer & Meditation

"I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe...." - Paul, Ephesians 1:18, 19.

Notice the purpose statement for the heart to be enlightened, it is to know three fascinating things...

the hope

the riches

His incomparable great power

Pause and choose one of the three that most resonates. Linger in meditation. Then, savor a different rendition of the song, Open the Eyes of My Heart by Trey McLaughlin.

Ephesians Chapter 1 Verse 18

 

Vocation Reflection & Questions:

LORD, in what ways am I engineering the process of my vocation (voice) too much? I do not want to make the mistake of confusing a security-based occupation for my soul’s vocation.

Soul, how will I recognize the interplay/interaction between work and rest in making for a HEALthy living and speaking out my vocation?

Before I tell my life what I intend to do with it, may I listen to what it intends to do with me.

Before I tell my life what truths and values I have decided to live up to, may I let my life tell me what truths I already embody and what values I already represent.

Wherever I am made aware of the principle of alternation of work and rest in my life, may I look expectantly at the grand surmise they offer and how they draw me deeper into the awareness of Your unceasing shalom.

(If you desire to journal your responses, please feel free to download the PDF the links section at the end.)

​ ​​  ​Vocation Is About Your Voice

In this episode:

— You’ll be encouraged to respond to the statement: "I bring a voice of ______ into the world."

— You’ll be invited to notice three attributes that cultivate the communion that vocation brings.

— You’ll consider how Jesus' presence has a way of digging through our mindset and attitudes as a disruption and a deliverance.

— You’ll be guided in one of the vocation reflections from the Sabbath Rhythms Planner.

In the spotlight segment of She Did THAT!

She Did THAT is a spotlight I give to women who beautifully and imperfectly embody their lives.

This week: a Mohawkmomma guest blog excerpt by Stephanie Ascough, a friend, a lover of Jesus, wife, mother, poet, and writer.

Discover her light-bearing beauty on her website where she writes about life on the hopeful journey. You can also chat with her about all things writerly on Instagram: @stephanieascough.

LOVE IT? SHARE IT! Text, email, carrier pigeon—share this episode with friends however you like! Feel free to snag one of these graphics to share.

 

Exciting News!

To flesh out your vocation in more depth, there's an entire section in the 2019 Healing Manifesto: Sabbath Rhythms Devotional Planner! Order your copy or give one as a gift!

Healing Manifesto Sabbath Rhythms 2019 Planner

Until next time,


Scribble. Speak. From your soul.


 

Links for further discovery Subscribe & Listen to my Soul Care Podcasts

Healing Vocation, Let Your Life Speak Journal Pages

Shop with Soul in the Boutique - we empower and advocate for the marginalized in the US and globally.

More SOULutions Worksheets here

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