Are You Really the Master of Your Destiny?

After several months of ongoing battles trying to upload the entirety of my appearance on “The Barb Marshall Show,” I have decided to upload the part of the video that I’ve gotten to work: the last 10 minutes! Better a little than nothing, I figure. Sometimes winning the battle (in this case, with technology) means not fighting anymore.

So, what were the first 17 minutes about? Barb asked me about my difficult childhood (divorce, bullying) and asked me how I coped. I told her that, after believing in Jesus at age 5 or 6, I eventually rejected God for a time. My heart was broken from the ongoing pain I saw both in my own life and all over the world. If this was the world God made, I was not interested in him, and I told him so. Anybody relate to that?

Well, that didn’t help. Life only became more painful. However, I kept hearing this completely illogical little voice in my head saying, “It’s going to get better.” I eventually tried a new church and met a woman who became my mentor. She helped me really understand the love of God for the first time. Before this, I was just focused on knowing and following the rules. I shared that knowing the love of God changed me, as it inevitably does.

Barb asked me how I came to know my purpose in life. I shared about how I came across the Enneagram, another life-changing experience. I began to see, as I studied, that my thoughts and ideas and opinions were not my actual self, but rather a poor facsimile thereof. They created a very limited experience of life for me. I realized that my personality would not allow me to fully live out the destiny God had planned for me. That’s a tragedy, and it’s what drives me every day to tell as many people as possible what IS possible once they stop identifying with their personality. If more people were present to their own lives, living from their authentic selves, the world would be transformed.

Barb asked me how people can begin to live as their authentic selves, and I recommended that the place to start is to learn the Enneagram. Read a book (“The Wisdom of the Enneagram” is my favorite beginning book) or attend a workshop or group.

Then I explained that human beings are made of the spirit, soul, and body. The spirit is the part of us where God dwells in us. The soul is made up of the mind, will and emotions – the stuff in your head. We need those parts on the earth, but it’s not who we are. That’s the big difference. But the personality resides in the soul, and we’ve gotten so used to hearing its voice that we assume it’s who we are.

I was talking about how we begin to lose contact with our true selves from infancy onwards when the first section of the video cut off. The second part, below, starts mid-sentence! “We were made in the image of God, and that includes all of the wonderful qualities and characteristics that God possesses…”

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So, as you heard, destiny comes in two forms: general and specific. I do believe that there is a degree to which we are masters of our own destiny – not entirely, but neither do I think that it’s set in stone. Free will is a powerful thing. I hope you will use that power to learn the Enneagram and grab hold of your specific destiny.

Oh, one more thing: at the end of the show, I mentioned my audio program, “Know Yourself to Know God.” If you’d like to know more about it, click the tab at the top right of this site.

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