Answer Your Call - Dick Lyles, Martha Lyles

Answer Your Call (eBook)

Reclaim God's Purpose for Faith, Family, and Work

Dick Lyles, Martha Lyles (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
192 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-466-7 (ISBN)

'What does God want me to do with my life now?' If you've ever asked that question, Answer Your Call can help. Each person has a unique set of natural gifts meant to be used in concert with God's supernatural graces. Answer Your Call offers insightful advice on how to live your calling at home, in the workplace, and in your community. It goes beyond mere theory, using questions, short quizzes, and practical exercises to help you discover what God is asking of you now. Interspersed with Scripture and Catechism quotes, as well as wisdom from popes and saints, Answer Your Call will guide you to carry out God's purpose in every dimension of your life.

"e;What does God want me to do with my life now?"e; If you've ever asked that question, Answer Your Call can help. Each person has a unique set of natural gifts meant to be used in concert with God's supernatural graces. Answer Your Call offers insightful advice on how to live your calling at home, in the workplace, and in your community. It goes beyond mere theory, using questions, short quizzes, and practical exercises to help you discover what God is asking of you now. Interspersed with Scripture and Catechism quotes, as well as wisdom from popes and saints, Answer Your Call will guide you to carry out God's purpose in every dimension of your life.

INTRODUCTION

Do you know that you don’t have to care for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, serve as pope for twenty-five years, or be burned at the stake to become a saint? Nor is it necessary to die fighting lions in the Colosseum of Rome or be martyred in some other grotesque fashion. Not that all the people who lived or died these ways don’t deserve to be elevated—they do. Their sainthood should be valued and cherished. But at the same time we honor these wonderful saints for the way they lived and died, it is equally important to realize that we can each achieve sainthood by following a different path—a path unique to each of us, tied to our own unique call and the gifts given to us by God.

We considered writing a book on how to become a saint but decided not to when we discovered that many people were scared by the concept, daunted by the idea of trying to become a saint with all its sterling implications—unwrinkled, unflappable, unattainable. That’s because many people don’t understand the concept of sainthood.

Saints are people who have been canonized by the Catholic Church. Canonization is simply a means to proclaim that they practiced heroic virtue and lived in fidelity to God’s grace. A primary reason for recognizing certain people in this manner is to sustain the hope of believers by proposing the saints as models and intercessors. More simply stated, saints are people who got it right. They answered their call as human beings by combining their God-given gifts with God’s grace to achieve a unique purpose for their lives. In essence, they are people who, without a doubt, made it to heaven. If you want to get to heaven, then for all practical purposes, you want to be a saint. The goals are one in the same.

You, too, can achieve sainthood. The best way to become a saint is to live life to the fullest—to have an eternally fulfilling and wildly rewarding life here on earth, doing the things you are most passionate about and doing them in a way that brings satisfaction and true joy to you and those around you, while also bringing glory to God.

Our intent is simple: to provide you a way to identify and live the most fulfilling path possible for the rest of your life, however long that may be. Our underlying belief is that there are no better guideposts from which to live your life than those of Catholic doctrine. It is the backbone of the oldest Christian faith. With our two-thousand-year tradition of living the teachings of Jesus Christ, with the examples of all the saints who have preceded us, and with all the great writings of Catholic theologians throughout the ages, there simply is no better foundation upon which to build the life for which you were created.

Within this massive foundation of Catholic knowledge, we’ve developed a framework that helps clarify and put into perspective what we consider the nine most important dimensions of Catholic life.

We each have a unique set of natural gifts that comprise three dimensions: skills, aptitude, and motivation. We have available to us God’s supernatural grace, which accrues in three forms: sanctifying, sacramental, and special (or charisms). We also each have a unique life purpose, expressed in three avenues: faith, family, and work. When we successfully combine our three dimensions of natural gifts with the various forms of God’s grace to achieve our threefold personal call, we can achieve not only joy and fulfillment but—if we do it right—sanctity, too.

As we begin, it is fitting to consider the words of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger at a Nazi concentration camp. He said:

Every man and woman in this world has been assigned a mission by God. In fact, ever since God created the universe, He arranged the first causes in such a way that the unbroken chain of their effects should create the most favorable conditions and circumstances for each person to fulfill the mission that God has assigned him or her.

Therefore, every person is born with abilities that are proportionate to the mission he or she has been entrusted, and throughout each person’s whole life, the environment, circumstances and everything else will contribute to make it easy and possible for him or her to reach that purpose.

In fact, each person’s perfection consists in reaching that purpose; and the more thoroughly one’s task is carried out, and the more scrupulously one’s mission is fulfilled, the greater and holier he or she shall be before the eyes of God.

Besides natural gifts, each person is also accompanied by the grace of God from the cradle to the tomb. God’s grace is poured on us in such quantity and quality that our weak human nature strengthens itself by acquiring the supernatural energy we need to face our own mission.1

Cardinal John Henry Newman said it similarly: “God has created me to do him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another…. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work.”2

Our individuality—including the unique mix of gifts God has given each of us—is our promise. Because of God’s expectation that we each contribute something different to the world, our promise represents our distinct potential to make that contribution.

When a professional football team drafts a strong young quarterback, we say the player has promise. When a bright and enthusiastic graduate embarks on an exciting career, we say that person has promise. Likewise, when each of us is born, we also have promise as human beings—promise to bring something special to the world in a way that brings honor to God, our Creator and Father.

Our personal promise represents a type of personal covenant with God: “Lord, you gave me these gifts, and now it’s up to me to nurture, develop, and use them to their fullest potential to achieve my unique calling.”

If only it were that simple.

The fact is, it’s not that simple. If it were, we would look around and see a productive and peaceful world of fulfilled people. But that’s not what we see. Why? Because there are a number of factors at work that hinder us from fulfilling this covenant, keeping our promise, and achieving our God-given potential. These factors fall into two categories.

The first category contains all the things that either we do or that happen to us that cause us to lose sight of God, or cause us to fail to recognize his presence in our lives. These factors blind us not only to God’s presence, but also to his abundant graces. Some of these forces are evil, but many are simply caused by the complexities of the world in which we live. Because all of these forces are inextricably interwoven with the fabric of our society, it is easy to fall victim to them without realizing it. By understanding these blinders we have an opportunity to look beyond them to see the very special miracles and the supernatural grace God makes available to us every day. Chapters one through six address the most common of these blinders.

Only after we understand how these blinders limit our vision can we become empowered to live our lives in a more deliberate, meaningful way. In essence, we will inoculate ourselves against becoming victims to the blinders that denied us this grace in the past.

The second category contains influences that cause people to lose sight of (or never see in the first place) their own natural gifts. Again, many of these influences are merely the result of the dizzyingly complex world in which we live. We need to overcome them in order to see our gifts and blessings clearly so we can bring them to bear on a meaningful life’s purpose. These influences are addressed in chapters seven through ten.

This book will take you through a process to discern your God-given purpose in life, understand your own natural gifts, and develop a plan to overcome all those blinders and influences so you can connect more deeply with God’s abundant graces on a path that will lead to true fulfillment. Chapters eleven through sixteen explain how to do this. Chapter twelve describes in detail the three areas of your life that will be transformed as you learn to hear and answer your call. The remaining chapters will guide you through a process to help you identify your call in the context of these three areas and help you to develop a simple plan that will lead to the true fulfillment of God’s promise to you.

This process takes time. It’s not something you can complete in a few hours or even a few days. For some it may take years, as it did with some of our saints. Consider St. Augustine, for example. He didn’t even become a Christian until well into adulthood, and he then became one of the greatest Catholic theologians and philosophers. How much time it will take you to find your call and start down your path to fulfillment depends on you. The most important thing you can do now is to make a genuine commitment to God, yourself, and your family that you will work hard to discern every dimension of your call and then live it. We hope you’ll decide there’s no nobler undertaking—that your most important legacy will be the example you set with your life. And, of course, we hope that this book will in some meaningful way contribute to that effort. Answer Your Call is...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.2.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-466-4 / 1635824664
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-466-7 / 9781635824667

Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt?

EPUB (Ohne DRM)
Größe: 1,5 MB

Digital Rights Management: ohne DRM
Dieses eBook enthält kein DRM oder Kopierschutz. Eine Weitergabe an Dritte ist jedoch rechtlich nicht zulässig, weil Sie beim Kauf nur die Rechte an der persönlichen Nutzung erwerben.

Dateiformat: EPUB (Electronic Publication)
EPUB ist ein offener Standard für eBooks und eignet sich besonders zur Darstellung von Belletristik und Sachbüchern. Der Fließtext wird dynamisch an die Display- und Schriftgröße angepasst. Auch für mobile Lesegeräte ist EPUB daher gut geeignet.

Systemvoraussetzungen:
PC/Mac: Mit einem PC oder Mac können Sie dieses eBook lesen. Sie benötigen dafür die kostenlose Software Adobe Digital Editions.
eReader: Dieses eBook kann mit (fast) allen eBook-Readern gelesen werden. Mit dem amazon-Kindle ist es aber nicht kompatibel.
Smartphone/Tablet: Egal ob Apple oder Android, dieses eBook können Sie lesen. Sie benötigen dafür eine kostenlose App.
Geräteliste und zusätzliche Hinweise

Buying eBooks from abroad
For tax law reasons we can sell eBooks just within Germany and Switzerland. Regrettably we cannot fulfill eBook-orders from other countries.