I’ve been hearing so much about The InScribed Collection of Bible study books. Have you heard about them? Each title touches on a subject matter unique to the needs and issues that women face everyday: staying hopeful, having an engaged prayer life, making good choices, living confidently in Christ. Good stuff, right?

So  I was so thrilled when my new friend Ashley Linne popped in my inbox a few weeks ago. She’s one of the authors in the InScribed series. She sent me her book in the series, Inseparable, and asked if she could share a message with you today. I’m so glad to introduce you to Ashley today.

Why You Are on a Mission in Christ
By Ashley Linne

I can’t tell you how many hours I have laid awake at night, asking God what His plan is for my life or asking Him to show me what to do in any given situation.

I wanted to be sure to get it right.

I remember joking in college when someone asked what I was going to do after graduation, “I’m not sure. God must not have put my ten-year planner in the mail yet.”

What is God’s will? God’s will can be boiled down to this: love Him and love others. We can only do that in the Spirit’s power. If we are allowing love to be the life force of every decision we make and everything we do, we will get better and better at hearing God’s voice and following His specific will in different situations.

It doesn’t mean we will avoid failure; it means we will redefine success.

If success means growing in our earnest love for God and increasing the natural outpouring of that love through obedience to Him, then fear of failure will disappear.

Out of our overarching purpose to love God and love others comes another crucial part of God’s design for our lives: being and making disciples. Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18–20, ESV).

You may think you aren’t qualified to disciple or mentor anyone. But all it really requires is that you be willing to invest your time and heart in someone who is just one step behind you. In my experience, this happens best in the context of a friendship that feels natural already and isn’t forced or contrived.

If you’re young or feel inexperienced, you may be intimidated at the thought of leading anyone to Christ or helping a “younger” Christian in her walk. But there are lifelong friendships to be forged, ones that fly in the face of our culture’s disposable, pseudo relationships that lack any sort of depth. You have a unique opportunity to change the course of history by investing in just one other person. I don’t know about you, but that’s something of which I want to be a part.

And for any of us, no matter our age or how long we’ve walked with Christ, I hope we can find encouragement in the fact that all we need is to be one step ahead because it isn’t about us anyway. We don’t need to be perfect, know everything, or have it all together. We just need to be able to point others to the One who is perfect, knows everything, and has it all together.

Loving God and loving others involves making disciples, and God gifts us and leads us to do His will in varying ways. When we decide to pursue God’s will instead of our own, that is when true happiness comes to us.

God’s plans are for His glory, and we get to be a small part of that. He has in mind unique and possibly unusual things that only you can do, but you won’t be able to do them apart from Him. There may be risk involved, but living out God’s commission means finding His definition of success.

“For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago.” (Eph. 2:10, The VOICE)

 

Excerpt from Inseparable: Who I Am, Was, and Will Be in Christ by Ashley Linne. Download a FREE Chapter from all three new Inscribed Studies Here.

 

About Ashley

Ashley Linne is a wife and mom who loves to write, sing, and travel. She is passionate about discipleship, mentoring, and sexual abuse prevention.

She has been leading small group Bible studies for over 15 years is the author of Inseparable: Who I Am, Was, and Will Be in Christ

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Ashley lives with her husband and son in Bellingham, WA.