Part 5 of 7
We are still in celebration mode because we launched the premiere issue of VBD Magazine in October! It is your quarterly literary and empowerment haven for growth and development. This is another one of our resources to light the path to your next level of unprecedented success. In tandem with this magazine launch, we are exploring one way in which you can sharpen your fiction author writing skills as well as grow or walk in your purpose. We have been following Donald Miller's concept of the storybrand to show you how you can craft your life story. We started by saying that our character has a problem and meets a guide who gives them a plan. Now, our guide is going to call them to action. Join us for the journey.
The Guide Calls them to Action
According to Donald Miller, in a truly great story, the character has to be challenged to make use of the plan that the guide has given him/her. In the 2020 Goodreads Choice Award for Fiction, The Midnight Library, Matt Haig writes of a main character who hates her life and attempts to end it. Instead of dying, she is brought to a grand and timeless library where every book on the shelf is a potential life she could have lived. If she falls in love with that life, it will be the book (life) she stays in. If she does not, she returns the library to try other books. The guide is a version of her middle school librarian who is clearly skilled in recommending books based on the information that is given to her. The missing piece between the book on the shelf and the character's action is the librarian's prompt to open it, read it or try it. Remember that until your character grows and no longer needs the guide (because the need is met), he/she is completely dependent on the guide.
Jesus Calls us to Follow Him
We are reminded that as the character's in our story, our need is to have meaning and purpose. By ourselves, we will reach a dead-end no matter how hard we try. But Jesus Christ, the Son of God stepped in with His unending compassion and authority to show us that the way to a meaningful life is by laying ours down. His call to action is simple: follow Me. He is not going to ask us to go somewhere He has not gone. His purpose on Earth was to save men from their sins and that involved dying a criminal's death on a cross. Before His trial began, He fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will." (Matthew 26:39). The purpose of God for our lives calls for our humble submission and we walk in it by following Jesus' example of submission. The only reason I am writing this story now is because Jesus Christ fulfilled His purpose.
A friend of mine shared recently that she just had a strong desire to no longer be outside of the will of God and to go after everything God has for her. She genuinely started to believe that the will of God for her life was her best life and she wanted nothing less than the best. Do you desire the best for your life too?
By Kerry-Ann McPherson
Project Manager & Contributor
