GOING TO EXTREMES | Trusting God With The Adventure Of Your Life
In This Book You Will:
- Be guided by a deep and unshakable faith in God
- Explore uncharted territories with your Creator
- Embrace the adventure that awaits God’s divine purpose
- Reignite dormant passions, and instill newfound courage
- Ignite a fire to seek a deeper, more meaningful connection with God
ENDORSEMENT: Brian Simmons “As I journeyed through the pages of this book, I was moved by its power to awaken dormant dreams.”
ENDORSEMENT: Patricia King “When you read Meagan Blessing’s book, Going to Extremes: Trusting God with the Adventure of your Life, you will discover valuable nuggets of wisdom and profound insights for life as she candidly shares experiences from her spiritual journey. You will be encouraged, empowered, and refreshed.”
ENDORSEMENT: Jeremiah & Teresa Yancy “We were never meant to live small, fearful, or boring lives—we are created for adventure! In Going to Extremes, Meagan Blessing shares with us personal experiences of hearing God, dreaming with God, and following God. Through her story, we see that God intends for us to live large as we are led by Him. We have all experienced situations and difficulties in our lives that make us want to live safe and small, but God wants to remove every roadblock of fear. This book will catapult your trust in God to new levels, and it will also stir your heart to seek to know Him more intimately. You will be strengthened to move forward, even into the unknown, because with God your future is secure and truly blessed.”
ABOUT the AUTHOR: Meagan Blessing is an author, award-winning artist, speaker, and dreamer. Always up for an adventure, she is inclined toward limitless possibilities and remote places. Her spirituality influences her writing and art, and she invites others to discover the sacred spaces hidden in the stories of their lives. Meagan lives in Alaska with her husband, who is also an artist and musician, and their two miniature schnauzers, who believe in their hearts that they are sled dogs.
EXCERPT from CHAPTER 2 —Your Life on Purpose
If you feel like you are missing some important piece to your life purpose but can’t quite figure out what it is, you’re not alone.
Perhaps you have stopped swimming upstream because you’ve lost sight of where you were headed. Or maybe you just got tired and relegated yourself to a quiet side pool, but something inside you will not settle down and be still.
You hear the distant roar of whitewater and dream of fighting the current again.
It’s difficult to see how to change your circumstances or to know if you should change them.
At the same time, it’s tempting to accept the notion that your external environment or state of affairs must radically change for you to move forward in life, but this is not true.
The truth is when we are able to see things from a different perspective, our perception of life changes, and we are able to take action in spite of our circumstances rather than remaining stuck because of them.
Almost always, the thing we need to change the most is our mindset. We’ve all had the experience of suddenly feeling elated or depressed for no apparent reason.
I have friends with very little in the way of material possessions who are wildly happy, and I also know people who have just about every fancy gadget they could want and are perpetually miserable.
My happy friends are content and motivated because they recognize their life has a specific purpose.
They understand that things don’t happen to them—things happen for them. The day-to-day adventures they have are often challenging, but they choose to view those difficulties as training opportunities that prepare them for their greater destiny.
They have a basic grasp of what they want to accomplish in their lifetime and are actively taking steps to become who they were made to be in order to do what they were made to do.
Take a moment to assess your current situation. If you were faced with a row of screens, each one representing a single day in the next year of your life, what types of “problems” might appear on those screens in front of you? What skills might you acquire as you overcome those challenges? Make a note of what comes to mind.
Do you feel you could trust God to help you solve those puzzles? If divine direction were given, would you understand the message you received?
These were some of the questions I asked myself as I prepared for my fast. Honestly, I didn’t know if I always heard God clearly or understood what I heard, and at the time, I wasn’t convinced I could count on Him to answer me in a crisis.
There are certain friends you will call on when you are in panic mode, and those dear friends will drop everything to help you, no questions asked.
On the other hand, someone who is not very close to you is unlikely to rearrange their schedule to help you out in a pinch. I didn’t feel my friendship with God was on the crisis-mode level, but I wanted it to be.
The best way I knew to upgrade that friendship was to hang out with the One I wanted to be friends with.
I began the first day of my fast in my pajamas, cuddled into our oversized leather recliner with a blanket, bible, journal, and our miniature schnauzers, who were delighted at this brilliant opportunity to curl up in an available lap.
I was looking for a revelation of some kind. I wanted what Abram had all those years ago: a divine relationship solid enough to entrust with my biggest life decisions. He is still referred to as God’s friend. Relationships like that don’t develop overnight.
They take time, and since I had to clear my schedule of any meeting that involved food (which was about all of them), that is what my fast provided.
As the days went by, it became my habit to read, journal, pray, and wait patiently. I asked plenty of questions, wrote them down, and received few answers. I was simply hanging out with my new friend.
I was in that chair every morning for at least two hours; sometimes, it was closer to four.
Each day had its set of internal and external challenges, and when they popped up, I remembered the screen vision I’d had just days before the start of my fast. I dealt with each “problem” as it came. Every evening as I prepared for bed, I saw another screen slide into the ground in my mind’s eye.
I hunkered in my vision bunker space, shut my life down, and tried to connect to a Presence I knew was more extensive than I ever imagined, even though I could not quite wrap my mind around it.
The spirit world is, in fact, more of a reality than the tangible one we live in, but most of us are unaware of it simply because it is unseen.
However, in the same way that wind is not seen, yet is felt, and the results of its presence are detected in the visible world, what is often not noticed spiritually also has visible results.
I needed to understand better what I could not see with my natural eyes. I needed to hear what I could not hear with my physical ears.
After several difficult days, something in my conscious mind clicked off the physical discomfort of fasting. My mind and body seemed to adjust to not eating, and all my spiritual senses became increasingly sharp.
I began to relax and tune in to God, learning to recognize the “sound” of His voice for the remainder of the twenty-one days. It was a life-changing experience, although I would not say it was easy.
ENDORSEMENT: Rebecca Greenwood “‘The process is the product’ is a phrase of wisdom and revelation that I have heard many trusted Christian leaders, friends, and mentors share. I, too, believe and teach this truth. Oftentimes for many the thought of an uncharted process and journey into a new unknown is intimidating and daunting. However, our Heavenly Father has called each of us, as His sons and daughters, to journey with Him into the fullness of all He has destined for each of us. This message scribed by my friend, Meagan Blessing, brings an anointed awakening and impartation to walk in a surrendered trust and faith. Friends, step into the path, journey, and adventure He has mapped out for your life and purpose. He is a good, good Father. Glimpses into His glory and goodness awakens a ‘yes’ to do as Meagan so beautifully states: ‘Dare to live purposefully and accept His invitation to trust Him and to live the adventure of your life.’”
Meagan’s Book is available on Paperback and Kindle: https://messengerbooks.com/meagan
