Knock, knock: Are you alive?

What makes you come alive?

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." Howard Thurman

I am in a place of discernment and attempting to hear what God is doing in my life and attempting to notice where I feel the Spirit leading me; I also just purchased a Howard Thurman reader. Asking myself what makes me come alive-- what gives me life--is something I have to pay attention to. This requires my paying attention, listening to what gives me life. Noticing what I don’t want to do is often a way of discerning what I want to do want. Those things I don’t want to do usually take life from me. Jesus said he came to give life and set us free. There is something about moving out of exile and into life that saves a person, that is-- makes one whole. God longs to make us whole and in order to be made whole we have to move toward what gives us life.

"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls." Howard Thurman

When I am true to myself I am true to God. Do you listen for the sound of the genuine in yourself? I want to hear it today. I want to have the courage to go deep in my soul and truly listen to what waits and lurks beneath the "shoulds and coulds" and to listen for the sound of the genuine. It is no surprise that the word "genuine" may stem from the word "ingenuus" which means native, freeborn. Listening for the sound of the genuine means listening for what sets us free rather and avoiding what puts us in bondage and makes us slaves to ourselves and the world.

Are you listening for the genuine in yourself-- the life giving, freeing Spirit of God deep within you that makes you come alive? Today I pray that I will tend to what gives me life—what makes me come alive. I pray that I will remain faithful and listen for the sound of the genuine within that makes me come alive to the world.