I have often minimized my knowledge and giftings because I couldn’t believe that people did not know the information I did. It’s easy for me so others should know it as well. But I have found out in my time on earth that no one is like me and the insight and abilities I have, were given to me by God and I have the advantage because of what He put inside of me. Great revelation, I love this purpose map process! Thank you!😊
Let me mention that this write-up is so detailed and profound that just one slide of the infographics a whole master class
Firstly, I love that this 13th letter was posted on the 13th day and I came by it within the 13th hour mark in my time zone.
Definitely prophetic.
13 is the number of the prophetic (biblically and especially for me)
I knew then that I must read this in detail, study every jot and tittle to find out what God wanted to say to me.
Things I loved and that spoke to me
1. Disadvantage
a) I love how you broke down disadvantage and very clearly described how something could start in a disadvantage but could actually be heading somewhere different. I’ve always known this truth but the infographic painted it out like a journey and even made the disadvantage almost seem like an advantage. I truly agree. Whilst reading it, God reminded me of my own life 13 years ago when I was sent to a village. I did everything in my power to be deployed another city all effort field and then I asked the question: “God what are you wanting me to see here and one has all my efforts failed”? That was the right question. And BOOM! 13 years later today my life is a whole testimony of grace.
b) I especially love God’s response to the chaos. God did not wait around wondering why this chaos was too much like this. He immediately spoke and order appeared. This was profound. And inspired me to immediately stand up in my prayer room and respond to certain circumstances and restored order. I can do what God does.
1. On Adaptation:
a) I loved this statement on the infographic- You don’t know which ordinary ability is waiting for an extraordinary moment. This is powerful. There’s always going to be the right time. Just reminded of certain things God told me about, certain opportunities he’s brought my way that I’m still wondering why it happened till today. Those opportunities were huge. And the outcomes were not what I thought the magnitude should be. God has said to me - “At the right time”. You’re write up here just reinforced that for me.
b) the condition created the calling. I really loved this one , it reminded me of how God would use our own stories as our purposes later. In June, a brother came to our school and by some stroke of luck - we asked him to support a young boy with brain disability during the time they will be living in the host hotel and the program team had gone home. I later found out that for a period of eight years, his wife had passed through the same brain condition. He cared for her and she got well. It was now very obvious why God would select him to care for this boy with brain condition. That’s a pointer to his life calling. It’s a long story but I will just stop here because of length.
3) On the Summary slide
Sometimes the very thing that looks like a problem can be a set up:
Indeed just like when I was posted to that village - I never knew that my whole purpose in life was tied to the one year that I spent there - and the things that happened from there led to me being hosted by the President of one of the most developed nations on earth - just to learn more about someone of the activities which I started in that village. and many more. All these happened because I stayed on in that place of chaos.
Thank you again for the beautiful piece as usual !
Glory… you are the type of reader I love. You don’t just sit with it. You digest it. Thank you for this feedback and reflection. Your life has been proof of God grace and favor. And “13” wow you catch everything. I love it. You too are prophetic. 🙌🏾
And I think you have summed it up perfectly. Sometimes the problem is truly the set up!
When others recognize your gifts and are threatened, they do everything to dim and snuff it out of you like it was done to Joseph. But God! Remember where his gifts took him? The Palace!
It doesn't matter what others' insecurities are. That’s not our business. Our focus IS on our Father's business and His purpose for us. Let's stay focused.
“What did starting here require me to develop?” Courage and boldness. As a child, I grew up in a home of strictness, fear and unpredictability. I learned how to capture the heart of the king (my father) even in fear and talk him off the ledge. Conversations a child should not have to have with a parent or any adult. Many times I’ve been told I was ahead of my time. Honestly, I didn’t remember this until I listened again and immediately felt that come to the surface.
That’s so beautiful that things resurfaced for you as you listened. I love when that happens. It’s one powerful way that God awakens us and give us clues to what to lean into. Excited to have you on this journey.
I was up with my coffee, dog and mom on the couch. I was going over all the ways God has kept me over the years since birth. My mom hemmoraged pretty bad with me, then it was a lot of abuse through childhood into adulthood. I'm still here still standing and sometimes I think how I've learned to keep going to just do what I have to. Looking at this map, I feel like hidden abilities is where I am but I also feel like I'm living in purpose simultaneously. 4 years ago so started feeling the pull to leave Florida. My homeland I was born raised lived as an adult and j prayed fervently for 3 years about location of if it was God's will or my flesh. At the end of 2024 I just knew that it was my last full year Living in Florida. End of April I left headed north to the mountains I had no place go that I knew of and only a promise God gave me I'll show you when you get there. I got to the state I'm living in now and the 1st week was rough 2nd week I was in a different part of the state living with a friend going through a wilderness season with lots of pruning and now I'm in the part of the state where I'm surrounded by the mountains.
I really loved your map especially that sometimes a problem can help you to see that you have the solution if you only look inside yourself. I started singing in songwriting when I was very young probably 8 or 9 years old. Of course people thought it was a phase. But it definitely was not God gave me the gift of song! But I was never one of those people who wanted to Chase the dream of money, success, my voice on the radio, and staying in hotels 360 days a year.
I believe God wanted me to lift my voice in song to him. I have always been an empath I feel things on a deeper level than most people. I can cry at movies, songs can move me, and even people's stories that I don't even know. I feel their pain in their heartache and just want to help them.
I often wondered why I feel things the way I do and I believe it's God's hand showing me that I have a gift of not only the singing but of compassion and empathy. I just want everyone to realize that we're all one people just be kind and love one another. I look forward to your next letter.
Thank you for today’s Video Letter. The clarification on adaptation being an asset is appreciated. I am also a visual learner. The “Purpose Journey Map” is an excellent learning guide. God’s continues to lead & guide me to my destiny.
Mr. Gold, my friend, I cannot tell you how much this blessed my whole soul. I am a preacher who’s been on the hunt for a church home since March 2024. Unfortunately, every church visit is more discouraging than the Sunday before. Why? Because preachers have gotten lazy. It appears no one studies. It’s so insulting that God can be so good and preaching has gotten so bad. I came up through ministry during the era of Rev. Dr. Beecher Hicks, Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor, Bishop John Bryant, Bishop Eddie Long, Bishop Vashti McKenzie. Preaching giants whose exegesis of the Scriptures left you spellbound. Made you hunger and thirst for an anointing that compelled you to give God’s people an experience with the text that they’d never forget.
Somehow your UNDER THE SUN offering landed in my inbox today. What a blessing! What a blessing!
Hey my friend. First welcome to under the sun. And I know alllll of those power houses you mentioned and I know how hard it is to find or discover someone who really can see and break the word down. Most people today just want to give motivational messages or repeat what they heard someone else say. But I’m happy you are hungry and thirsty for truth and revelation. I’m sure you are an amazing preacher as well. Looking forward to growing with you.
This map is a gem!! Thank you so much for discussing your insight on this journey we all are destined to take. I came across this map yesterday at the right place and time!!🙌🏾🎯
Currently, I find myself somewhere en route to the fourth locale.
What has been interesting about moving through 3 toward 4 is realizing how many “hidden” talents I’ve accumulated that I didn’t initially recognize as talents at all. The more people I encounter, the easier it becomes to see where those things have a place in someone else’s life.
We are servants. And one thing life, business, and relationships keep teaching me is that service cannot only be about giving in the way I prefer to give. There is a responsibility to understand the person in front of you well enough to recognize how what you’ve been entrusted with can actually meet them. Otherwise, even our service can quietly become about ourselves. 🙃
👣That’s why I’m enjoying this stretch between 3 and 4. There’s something different about realizing that what once developed as an adaptation for your own survival, growth, or understanding can mature into a testimony and a blueprint for someone else who is still trying to find their way through the dark.
One of my biggest takeaways from this piece was “His Voice. Creative. Order.”
There are so many blueprints throughout Scripture, but your framing made me sit with God as Creator differently. We’re made in His likeness, yet sometimes we treat creativity as though it means inventing everything from scratch. (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV🫠)
Meanwhile, Scripture is full of patterns, principles, sequence, stewardship, multiplication, pruning, rest, preparation, timing. There’s already so much order inside the creativity.
The more I meditate on those patterns, the more I see that God does not merely give us inspiration. He gives us principles for how things are built, tended, multiplied, and sustained. Once you start recognizing those parallels, one principle seems to illuminate another.
That part of your map gave me a lot to sit with. Thank you ☺️
This is it Ana… we have to zoom in on the principles… the patterns… everything in our life will change if we picked those up. I loveeeee it. Happy you are uncovering those hidden talents.
for sure, sometimes we “know” the principles, or have heard the precept, all we needed was someone like you who illuminates what was hidden 🔦 to make it that much more apparent
Thank you MG! As a deeply visual learner this post ministered to me in ways I can hardly explain.
At 58 yrs of age, this map felt like biographical as well as prophetic.
These first 3 areas read like a “what I’ve been through and where I am. While anticipating the upcoming steps will be as a guide to what’s next and what’s possible.
There’s no coincidence that I was led to your Stack in my present season.
I’m absorbing 🧽 and observing 👀 all that GOD is revealing about me and my journey.
It’s been my prayer for Him to use everything about me, what’s happened to me and what I’ve done for His glory, and this map gives so much context to my process.
I am grateful for your gift and that you share it.
I have often minimized my knowledge and giftings because I couldn’t believe that people did not know the information I did. It’s easy for me so others should know it as well. But I have found out in my time on earth that no one is like me and the insight and abilities I have, were given to me by God and I have the advantage because of what He put inside of me. Great revelation, I love this purpose map process! Thank you!😊
Michelle you’re welcome… you are a walking example of this. Thank you for sitting with this letter today.
I've done that one 2 many times.
Let me mention that this write-up is so detailed and profound that just one slide of the infographics a whole master class
Firstly, I love that this 13th letter was posted on the 13th day and I came by it within the 13th hour mark in my time zone.
Definitely prophetic.
13 is the number of the prophetic (biblically and especially for me)
I knew then that I must read this in detail, study every jot and tittle to find out what God wanted to say to me.
Things I loved and that spoke to me
1. Disadvantage
a) I love how you broke down disadvantage and very clearly described how something could start in a disadvantage but could actually be heading somewhere different. I’ve always known this truth but the infographic painted it out like a journey and even made the disadvantage almost seem like an advantage. I truly agree. Whilst reading it, God reminded me of my own life 13 years ago when I was sent to a village. I did everything in my power to be deployed another city all effort field and then I asked the question: “God what are you wanting me to see here and one has all my efforts failed”? That was the right question. And BOOM! 13 years later today my life is a whole testimony of grace.
b) I especially love God’s response to the chaos. God did not wait around wondering why this chaos was too much like this. He immediately spoke and order appeared. This was profound. And inspired me to immediately stand up in my prayer room and respond to certain circumstances and restored order. I can do what God does.
1. On Adaptation:
a) I loved this statement on the infographic- You don’t know which ordinary ability is waiting for an extraordinary moment. This is powerful. There’s always going to be the right time. Just reminded of certain things God told me about, certain opportunities he’s brought my way that I’m still wondering why it happened till today. Those opportunities were huge. And the outcomes were not what I thought the magnitude should be. God has said to me - “At the right time”. You’re write up here just reinforced that for me.
b) the condition created the calling. I really loved this one , it reminded me of how God would use our own stories as our purposes later. In June, a brother came to our school and by some stroke of luck - we asked him to support a young boy with brain disability during the time they will be living in the host hotel and the program team had gone home. I later found out that for a period of eight years, his wife had passed through the same brain condition. He cared for her and she got well. It was now very obvious why God would select him to care for this boy with brain condition. That’s a pointer to his life calling. It’s a long story but I will just stop here because of length.
3) On the Summary slide
Sometimes the very thing that looks like a problem can be a set up:
Indeed just like when I was posted to that village - I never knew that my whole purpose in life was tied to the one year that I spent there - and the things that happened from there led to me being hosted by the President of one of the most developed nations on earth - just to learn more about someone of the activities which I started in that village. and many more. All these happened because I stayed on in that place of chaos.
Thank you again for the beautiful piece as usual !
Glory… you are the type of reader I love. You don’t just sit with it. You digest it. Thank you for this feedback and reflection. Your life has been proof of God grace and favor. And “13” wow you catch everything. I love it. You too are prophetic. 🙌🏾
And I think you have summed it up perfectly. Sometimes the problem is truly the set up!
So very true!
When others recognize your gifts and are threatened, they do everything to dim and snuff it out of you like it was done to Joseph. But God! Remember where his gifts took him? The Palace!
God IS good.
Isn't that the truth. They were jealous of him.
It doesn't matter what others' insecurities are. That’s not our business. Our focus IS on our Father's business and His purpose for us. Let's stay focused.
Wow! Wow! Wow!
“What did starting here require me to develop?” Courage and boldness. As a child, I grew up in a home of strictness, fear and unpredictability. I learned how to capture the heart of the king (my father) even in fear and talk him off the ledge. Conversations a child should not have to have with a parent or any adult. Many times I’ve been told I was ahead of my time. Honestly, I didn’t remember this until I listened again and immediately felt that come to the surface.
That’s so beautiful that things resurfaced for you as you listened. I love when that happens. It’s one powerful way that God awakens us and give us clues to what to lean into. Excited to have you on this journey.
I was up with my coffee, dog and mom on the couch. I was going over all the ways God has kept me over the years since birth. My mom hemmoraged pretty bad with me, then it was a lot of abuse through childhood into adulthood. I'm still here still standing and sometimes I think how I've learned to keep going to just do what I have to. Looking at this map, I feel like hidden abilities is where I am but I also feel like I'm living in purpose simultaneously. 4 years ago so started feeling the pull to leave Florida. My homeland I was born raised lived as an adult and j prayed fervently for 3 years about location of if it was God's will or my flesh. At the end of 2024 I just knew that it was my last full year Living in Florida. End of April I left headed north to the mountains I had no place go that I knew of and only a promise God gave me I'll show you when you get there. I got to the state I'm living in now and the 1st week was rough 2nd week I was in a different part of the state living with a friend going through a wilderness season with lots of pruning and now I'm in the part of the state where I'm surrounded by the mountains.
God hand of covering and protection is on you.
I really loved your map especially that sometimes a problem can help you to see that you have the solution if you only look inside yourself. I started singing in songwriting when I was very young probably 8 or 9 years old. Of course people thought it was a phase. But it definitely was not God gave me the gift of song! But I was never one of those people who wanted to Chase the dream of money, success, my voice on the radio, and staying in hotels 360 days a year.
I believe God wanted me to lift my voice in song to him. I have always been an empath I feel things on a deeper level than most people. I can cry at movies, songs can move me, and even people's stories that I don't even know. I feel their pain in their heartache and just want to help them.
I often wondered why I feel things the way I do and I believe it's God's hand showing me that I have a gift of not only the singing but of compassion and empathy. I just want everyone to realize that we're all one people just be kind and love one another. I look forward to your next letter.
Angela that is beautiful. Embrace allllll of it. Walk in it and sing and love.
Thank you for today’s Video Letter. The clarification on adaptation being an asset is appreciated. I am also a visual learner. The “Purpose Journey Map” is an excellent learning guide. God’s continues to lead & guide me to my destiny.
Thank you Mary. We are growing together under the sun.
Mr. Gold, my friend, I cannot tell you how much this blessed my whole soul. I am a preacher who’s been on the hunt for a church home since March 2024. Unfortunately, every church visit is more discouraging than the Sunday before. Why? Because preachers have gotten lazy. It appears no one studies. It’s so insulting that God can be so good and preaching has gotten so bad. I came up through ministry during the era of Rev. Dr. Beecher Hicks, Rev. Dr. Gardner Taylor, Bishop John Bryant, Bishop Eddie Long, Bishop Vashti McKenzie. Preaching giants whose exegesis of the Scriptures left you spellbound. Made you hunger and thirst for an anointing that compelled you to give God’s people an experience with the text that they’d never forget.
Somehow your UNDER THE SUN offering landed in my inbox today. What a blessing! What a blessing!
Hey my friend. First welcome to under the sun. And I know alllll of those power houses you mentioned and I know how hard it is to find or discover someone who really can see and break the word down. Most people today just want to give motivational messages or repeat what they heard someone else say. But I’m happy you are hungry and thirsty for truth and revelation. I’m sure you are an amazing preacher as well. Looking forward to growing with you.
I had this feeling that the letter is written personal for me, may God increase your inspiration. Thank you for this great piece.
Thank you! Looking forward to the follow up. :)
I’m waiting on that next letter !! So good
I can’t wait for it to reach you Ocean this Sunday. We enter the most dangerous part of the map. 🫣
You write so well, marquiose.❤️
I am inspired as always.🤝
Awwww thank you so much. Writing and English were always my favorite things in school.
My current situation doesn't define my destination!!🙏🏽🙌🏽💙
This map is a gem!! Thank you so much for discussing your insight on this journey we all are destined to take. I came across this map yesterday at the right place and time!!🙌🏾🎯
Thank you for sitting with it. 🫶🏽
Currently, I find myself somewhere en route to the fourth locale.
What has been interesting about moving through 3 toward 4 is realizing how many “hidden” talents I’ve accumulated that I didn’t initially recognize as talents at all. The more people I encounter, the easier it becomes to see where those things have a place in someone else’s life.
We are servants. And one thing life, business, and relationships keep teaching me is that service cannot only be about giving in the way I prefer to give. There is a responsibility to understand the person in front of you well enough to recognize how what you’ve been entrusted with can actually meet them. Otherwise, even our service can quietly become about ourselves. 🙃
👣That’s why I’m enjoying this stretch between 3 and 4. There’s something different about realizing that what once developed as an adaptation for your own survival, growth, or understanding can mature into a testimony and a blueprint for someone else who is still trying to find their way through the dark.
One of my biggest takeaways from this piece was “His Voice. Creative. Order.”
There are so many blueprints throughout Scripture, but your framing made me sit with God as Creator differently. We’re made in His likeness, yet sometimes we treat creativity as though it means inventing everything from scratch. (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV🫠)
Meanwhile, Scripture is full of patterns, principles, sequence, stewardship, multiplication, pruning, rest, preparation, timing. There’s already so much order inside the creativity.
The more I meditate on those patterns, the more I see that God does not merely give us inspiration. He gives us principles for how things are built, tended, multiplied, and sustained. Once you start recognizing those parallels, one principle seems to illuminate another.
That part of your map gave me a lot to sit with. Thank you ☺️
This is it Ana… we have to zoom in on the principles… the patterns… everything in our life will change if we picked those up. I loveeeee it. Happy you are uncovering those hidden talents.
for sure, sometimes we “know” the principles, or have heard the precept, all we needed was someone like you who illuminates what was hidden 🔦 to make it that much more apparent
Thank you MG! As a deeply visual learner this post ministered to me in ways I can hardly explain.
At 58 yrs of age, this map felt like biographical as well as prophetic.
These first 3 areas read like a “what I’ve been through and where I am. While anticipating the upcoming steps will be as a guide to what’s next and what’s possible.
There’s no coincidence that I was led to your Stack in my present season.
I’m absorbing 🧽 and observing 👀 all that GOD is revealing about me and my journey.
It’s been my prayer for Him to use everything about me, what’s happened to me and what I’ve done for His glory, and this map gives so much context to my process.
I am grateful for your gift and that you share it.