Get serious about letting God use you
By Dale Hanson Bourke Used by permission. Adapted from Second Calling by Dale Hanson Bourke (Thomas Nelson Publishers, Copyright 2007).
“If you listen carefully, you will hear a whisper. It is not the cacophony of advertisers telling you to hide your fine lines and wrinkles. It is something far more pervasive and subtle. It is a whisper that says you are being called to something new. It is a gentle voice that seems to say, ‘Ah, now I have your attention.’ It is a voice that has been patiently waiting to speak truth you would be able to hear.” Think about it. If all the Christian women aged 40 and older got truly serious about seeking God and letting him use us in amazing ways, we could completely change our world. We could certainly change our communities and help bring about revival in our churches. We could help bring stability to conflict zones, hold the hand of every person dying of AIDS in Africa, and eradicate world hunger. We could bring peace to many countries, teach literacy to anyone who wanted to read, and build houses for every homeless person in America. We could help bring the kingdom of God to earth in every imaginable way. But our incredible opportunity would come with a few challenges. We would have to know God well and seek him as if our lives depended on it. We would have to eliminate the frivolous time wasters in our lives and focus on what was really important. We would have to wake up each day and ask God to show us what he wanted us to do. We would have to believe that God wanted to use the second half of our lives with more purpose, power, and passion than anything we ever achieved in the first half. If millions and millions of women listened to that whisper and followed their second calling, it is simply breath-taking to think of what God could do. That’s my dream. It has been a growing vision and a quiet stirring in my heart ever since I started studying the story of Naomi and saw what God was able to do through her. It is the dream that warmed my heart after it had grown empty and dusty from running hard after the wrong goals. I believe that God wants to redeem all of the broken heels, chipped nails, dead-end jobs, broken marriages, less-than-perfect children, bad perms, fad diets, lost friendships, and PMS of the first half of our lives. He needed us to get those things out of the way. He was with us then, but he wants us to really be with him now. He wants us to trust in something so much bigger than the best diet, the most wonderful sale, the biggest house on the block, the finest china, the top title, event the perfect husband. He wants us to know that just as he can take a woman who feels bitter and empty to being full to overflowing, so, too, can he transform even our best lives into something so much more.
Dale Hanson Bourke is president of PDI, a marketing and strategy consulting firm specializing in work with non-profit organizations. She is also founder of The AIDS Orphan Bracelet Project and author of Second Calling (Integrity Publishers, 2006) and The Skeptics Guide to the Global AIDS Crisis (Authentic, 2004).
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