Finding Your Wheelhouse (Part 2)

It's uncomfortable to see someone operate outside of his (or her) wheelhouse. The dissonance is unsettling. The disharmony is palpable.

Your wheelhouse is that place where your skills, your knowledge and your passion all collide; where the timing and the momentum and the focus combine for a grand slam. (see Finding Your Wheelhouse)

We're all searching for it. You probably call it your purpose or your mission. The question posed is, What am I going to do with my life? And so we dabble here and dabble there, searching for the pressure point. Trial and error until we fall into it.

It's likely you are already very close. You're probably involved in a similar task or project. You're making good contact, but can't quite get it over the fence. You're driving the ball but need to straighten it out and keep it in fair territory.

Sometimes you step out of the box. You lose focus for a brief instant, thus the unsettling dissonance and the disharmony.

You can feel it in yourself, and others notice it in you. Ask a trusted friend to nudge you back into place when you veer off course. Ask a mentor to describe you when you're at your best.

It doesn't make you a bad person if you can't do everything. You can do something. And you can do something great. But you can't do everything. You weren't created to do everything. You were created to be one part of a whole body.

Usually we distort our wheelhouse out of desperation. We dabble there instead of here because we think there will fill a core need. The enemy tries to convince us that what we do can fill our need for significance and worth, that who we are connected to can fill our need for acceptance or that another gift is more valuable than our own. And occasionally we fall for it.

It's not uncommon to seek acceptance from others. It's not unique to latch onto those who appear to be successful and secure. But it is unhealthy. It drives you away from that mature, complete relationship with Jesus. It drives you outside your wheelhouse. It disrupts that complete satisfaction in His presence.

Ask a trusted friend to nudge you back into place when you veer off course. Ask a mentor to affirm your wheelhouse.

Ask Jesus to expose your insecurity and to meet you there. What he gives you will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life (John 4:1-14).