Somewhere With a Purpose

“Chazown”. It’s Hebrew for “dream, revelation, or vision”. God gave each and every one of us a Chazown, a purpose. This weekend I made the (right) decision to attend an event called the “Chazown Experience”. I didn’t know what to expect from going to this, if it was just a lesson or lecture, or some sort of seminar. But what I did expect was that in some way, somehow, I would figure out what my Chazown in life is.

Here’s a conversation I have had all too often:

Someone: “What’s your major, Jimmy?”

Me: “It’s accounting.”

Someone: “Blech. So do you have an idea as to what you’ll be once you get out of school? A CPA?”

Me: *shrugs* “…..eh, I really don’t know yet”, or “I have no idea”, or “Well my mom keeps bugging me, telling me that I should do her books once I’m out of school”.

And that’s why I decided to go to the Chazown Experience.

Craig Groeschel, founder of Life Church, organized this sort of event and walked us through figuring out our purpose, what God has created us to do. Craig said many times, “Everyone ends up somewhere. Few people end up somewhere on purpose.” I decided I wanted to be one of those few people. I didn’t want to end up somewhere by accident, and to finish my life with regrets. That’s actually something I want you all to think about. If you were to lie on your deathbed right now, would you have regrets in life (“I could have, I should have, etc.)? Wouldn’t you rather have no regrets, and once you pass on, want to hear God say to you, “Well done, my good and faithful servant”?

Craig had us explore three different areas: our past experiences, core values, and spiritual gifts. We were to look at our past experiences, both good and painful, and figure out what themes or lessons we learned from those experiences. Mine? Walk a Christian life; Transform to be a child of God; Struggles are inevitable; Everyone is a person, a creation of God; Everyone has different backgrounds and beliefs.

Then we looked at our core values, what we stood for the most, what we strive for the most. The top 10 I figured out were mine? Authenticity; unity; fellowship; encouragement; personal growth; worship; respect; integrity; gentleness; patience. (Note: This doesn’t mean I’ve been perfect in all these areas. One value option was purity. I highly doubt anyone there was 100% pure. It’s just what we strive for.) The one core value I realized I try to strive for is respect.

We had to take a spiritual gifts assessment and find what ours were. The five results I got were exhortation, music, mercy/compassion, prophesy (not the future-teller kind), and missionary. To go along with this, we had to ask ourselves what activities we’re drawn to, what energizes us when we perform them, and what make us lose track of time. Meshing those together, my top two spiritual gifts were music (mainly because I just enjoy singing/worshipping) and mercy/compassion. A gift not mentioned in the assessment, but what I have been told several times that I have (even by my small group at the Experience) is that even though I don’t speak a whole lot, when I do, I’m easily able to explain my thoughts in just a few sentences and get my point across to others, whereas others have admitted it would’ve taken them a lot longer just to explain what they were thinking.

Throughout this entire seminar-like event, there was something that kept tugging at my mind, saying “this is what you were meant to do”. As I was going through the Experience, it was becoming clear that what was harassing me in my mind was true. After we looked at our past experiences, core values, and spiritual gifts, we were to make a purpose statement, explaining what our Chazown is. Writing it down as if I had prepared to the whole time, mine turned out to be: “To travel and reach out to other people of different races and cultures and form Christ-like relationships”.

Going over everything I did in the event again and again, it just became more and more amazing as to how well it all seemed to piece together. I studied abroad last year, and I just loved the traveling and wanted to do it more often in life. Two of my core values were fellowship and unity, and I want to build friendships with people of all kinds of cultures. Last semester, I helped a bit at Capitol Hill C of C, where the people there have rough backgrounds. My core values of respect and gentleness sort of matched with my spiritual gifts of mercy and compassion which, together, applied to one of the lessons I learned from past experiences, that everyone has different backgrounds and is a creation of God. Earlier, I had been trying to make excuses as to why this Chazown isn’t for me. “Well, traveling abroad, wouldn’t the language barrier be a problem for me?” That’s when I remembered that I had a gift of being able to speak with conviction to others in just a few sentences (speak, not write, hence the 8 or so previous paragraphs), so I could learn some important phrases beforehand and readily use those…and I’m allowed to learn another language. “Well, what about all the financial stuff? I’m not exactly rich.” And the voice I keep hearing in my head, “God will provide”. That alone was enough to win the case.

So, what next? Well, finish school (with a changed major to International Business or something like that), look into some missions program (possibly Let’s Start Talking), and possibly even go back to Germany and do mission work there for a while. (After all, I already led a devotional at a small church in Chemnitz). Even as I’m writing this, I’ve come to realize that I don’t think I’ve been more certain about anything else. So I don’t want to let anyone else (besides God) tell me what my purpose is (I could still definitely use encouragement though). I’ve already figured my purpose out, and it was given by God. And God had a Chazown planned for me from the very beginning.

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