It has been a few years since there has been any real movement with Desired Life Ministries. To be quite honest I was intentionally quiet as I let the ministry fade into the background while secretly hoping few would actually notice. Let me explain what lead up to that decision.
A few years ago I began feeling God leading me into a time of a sabbatical from ministry and I had with that a since of joy and pain. Joy because my heart needed refuge from two years of running full force into ministry as best I knew and pain because I felt a since of failure. Such an outcome was exactly what I feared almost from the moment God began to speak to my heart in the early days of this calling. You see I had felt a calling before in college and failed. So I was not about to start out on this new adventure unless I was certain beyond all doubt that was God leading me to do this.
In college I felt God stir my heart to start a Christian Fraternity at Kansas State University and after about two years and a lot of work and effort with only a few interested and a trip out to California to meet with national chapter leaders it ended in failure with our request for a new charter being declined by nationals. I was actually glad nationals had turned us down because I could then point to them as the reason for failure, but that didn't within me do away with the feeling of failing.
When one fails having felt what they earnestly believed to be God calling them to do something the question always arises "was it really God behind it all"? Perhaps you have felt God call you to something in the past and the outcome was what you saw as failure and that was what you feared going into it. Having experienced that twice in ministry and multiple times in business now at the age of 29 I can tell you that fear of failure cripples most men and women. Jesus's disciples and his followers felt everything was over and lost when Jesus was crucified, but at we know that was not the end.
I have learned and as you may or may not have learned as well - there is no failure until you give up and quit. Joesph felt a calling and God gave him a great vision, but it was many years and many hardships until that was fulfilled. It is through our failures that we gain the wisdom to enter into the fullness of what God calls us too. That is a very hard process at times and it can last years as has been my case.
One thing that has helped me is to remember the only valid fear in life is a healthy fear of God. Fear of failure is not a valid reason to not do something. Interestingly I read in a book by a young entrepreneur this year how often that which we fear doing is what we most need to do. Even the secular world has grasped the wisdom of facing fear and overcoming it as a requirement to do great things. Of course just because we have fear to do something doesn't mean we should do it, but if wisdom and discernment and God begins leading us to do something we must press past our fear.
That is the journey and the process that brings me to this moment in time.
