I admit it. I want to impact people. I want to impact people for good. I want to impact people for a particular kind of good. I want to impact people with Christ. With his life, his message, his example, and his ways.<\/p>\n
But\u2026how? <\/p>\n
Should I write? Should I write books? Should I write blogs? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
Should I talk? Should I preach at a local church? Should I teach at a local church? Should I accept speaking engagements? Should I do training seminars? Should I be the guest speaker at retreats? Should I host my own retreats based on a variety of meaningful themes? Should I continue my education and become a professor at a college? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
Should I lead? Should I organize a church family in a way that impacts them and others through them? Should I spearhead a ministry program or push and initiative among people, getting them to buy in for their good and others that they end up serving? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
Should I counsel? Should I walk into the mess of people\u2019s lives and help them navigate it? Should I create and multiply support groups for the wide range of specialized needs that I encounter? Should I continue my education and counsel professionally? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
Should I mentor? Should I clear my schedule for nothing but one on one relationships? Should I proactively and lovingly pursue people who need mentoring? Should I reactively and lovingly respond to people who pursue me for mentoring? Should I create mentoring groups? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
Whatever I do, do I do it here in my current hometown? Do I do it in my old hometown? Do it find a new hometown? A new country? Would this be how I could best impact people?<\/p>\n
\u201cJust pick one!\u201d I hear myself say to me. Okay. But how? <\/p>\n
\u201cJust do whichever one you like the most!\u201d I hear myself say to me. Okay, but that just seems either selfish, or hard to discern. I \u201clike\u201d them all.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo them all!\u201d I hear myself say to me. Okay. But I know for a fact that a yes to anything is a no to something else, and the doing of everything is the choice to do nothing really, really well.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust stop thinking about it so hard!\u201d I hear myself say to me. Okay. And on this one, I really mean, okay. Because the possibilities seem so vast and weighty and overwhelming that it certainly is just easier to flip on the TV and forget about it.<\/p>\n
But it just keeps coming back. Nagging. Inviting. Pushing. <\/p>\n
And for this I am grateful. It means I still care. It means I still love. <\/p>\n
And above all else, no matter what I do, no matter what I choose, no matter where I land, live, or linger \u2013 I want to keep loving.<\/p>\n
How should you make your difference?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I admit it. I want to impact people. I want to impact people for good. I want to impact people for a particular kind of good. I want to impact people with Christ. With his life, his message, his example, and his ways. But\u2026how? Should I write? Should I write books? Should I write blogs? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christs-mission","category-my-life","category-the-best-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pO6nf-6K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=418"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418\/revisions\/419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brianmashburn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}