Intimacy Precedes Impact

Knowing your creative gifts is important. 

Knowing God is far more so. Intimacy with God always comes before impact for God. 

That’s why we must begin here. 

God knit your gifts into you before you were born. He gave you specific passions so the two of you could pursue them together. The more you do, the more you know God. The more you know God, the more you discover your true identity and purpose. This is a beautiful never-ending circle. 

But “doing” isn’t the most important thing to God. He created Adam and Eve and loved them fully before they did anything. 

It’s freeing to realize not everything is up to you. As I say in my book The Story of With : “God doesn’t need your help as much as he wants your heart. Whenever you start to focus more on your talents and gifts than on him, you miss the main invitation. Which is to pursue them together. With him.” 

This version of “with” can feel disruptive, inconvenient, and inefficient as you allow God to set the rhythm of your day. You look to God to know when your work is done. You seek God, not the world, for validation. You pursue God, not past formulas, for new ideas. Productivity is good. God’s presence, however, is the foundation. Everything else, including all external metrics of success, are secondary. 

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