What If Your Life Doesn’t Go According to God’s Plan? | Aggressive Life with Brian Tome

One way or the other, maybe you're a blueprint guy. - No, it's more inflection points. I don't think I have a great blueprint laid out, like this is what I'm supposed to do, but like the college that I went to. I was ready to go to any number of other schools, and I ended up going to this tiny little Christian school that I didn't even want to go to, but it's one of the first times I feel like I sensed God's presence like talking to me or just being like, you need to go to this school. And I'm like, I don't want to be an art major at a conservative Christian school. I've set myself up to be frustrated, you know what I mean? But I think it was exactly the place that I needed to be, or it set me up well for what I'm doing now. And for me getting to have access to leadership at a small school that I wouldn't, and to have this foundational faith background that I just, I was able to grow in ways. I met Cindy there, and next thing you know, I'm using art and music and all of these in a churchally faith-based context that set me up for like using art and music in a church-based context later, you know? So I would not have picked it at all, but it just, it felt like the right next step, you know what I mean? And I've heard you say that before is like, what's the best next step, you know?

- Yes. - And I don't know, if there's a blueprint for me, I have no idea what it is, but I can pretty clearly, the more I listen to God, like hear what the next step is. - Okay, so there is a blueprint, let me speak in. - Okay. - There is a blueprint. - All right. - You know the blueprint is? - Mm-hmm. - Blueprints Jesus, and for you to be like Jesus. - Yeah. - That's the blueprint. - Yeah. - First Thessalonians 4-3, this says, 4-3 says, "This is God's world that you should be sanctified." His will is for you to be sanctified. His will isn't necessarily a specific job, his will isn't necessarily a specific partner, his will isn't necessarily a specific investment strategy, a workout strategy, his will is for you to be sanctified, which has become more and more like Jesus and more and more be purified. That's again, the thing that gets you about this question. People aren't freaked out about that, there's one to get the right job, one to get the right spouse. Man, you just worry about becoming like Jesus, and everything else will fall into place. And you can make decisions to do this,

or do that, or not do this, and not do that, and God's gonna be okay. I think we all agree, God doesn't really care what socks you wear in the morning. So there's some sliding scale between that and these other biggies we're talking about. My passion here is, what we wanna be an aggressive life, is empowering you to make decisions and push your life forward, and you'll be immobilized if you're afraid of disappointing God in a decision that he could be okay with any number of things. Yeah, yeah. I think that's huge. I think when people hear like, what's the meaning of life? 'Cause that's tied to this word, right? Like, what's God's will for my life, but what's the purpose of my life? And when you're young and you wanna achieve and you do all this stuff, you're like, it's just to be like Jesus, that's disappointed. You know, there's gotta be something more than that, right? But the older I get, the more I'm like, nope, that's, I think that's the answer. Yes. Well, good, let me just cap this up and just give us a kind of final thing. There are things that God wants and doesn't want for your life.

Those things are clearly spelled out in the word of God. Clearly, our sexual ethics, our business ethics, where we get our source of truth from, it wants us to be ready for the day at any moment. We meet Jesus through, there's things he's clearly, clearly has a defined and directed will on. We need to be concerned about those things and allow these other life decisions to take place in the midst of that. Now, if our hearts go in the right way and we're settling the big things in relation with God, he's gonna give us a lot of freedom to choose these other paths. And also, there could be of the two people you're dating, one that he wants you to go to, too. You gotta open that up before God. There could be, if you got two job offers, there could be one that he has a strong opinion on, you know? But what happens is we get too often stressed out about that instead of saying, well, I have the blessing of choice here. Well, I have the blessing of having an opportunity and since now, even though it's my only opportunity. So take your opportunities, go and run with them. If you don't think that Jesus has a hard time that one way or the other, go out to your life, live your aggressive life. - Let's do it. - All right, that's it, Windex.

Thank you. We'll see you next time on The Aggressive Life.