This post is part of our "Purpose Driven Life" book study, the first official Christian Boylove Forum book study. You should have read the first three chapters of The Purpose Driven Life before participating in the discussions on this thread. If you do not own the book, you can read the first few chapters for free here: http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/en-US/AboutUs/AboutTheBook/FirstSevenChapters.htm
If you are starting late, you are encouraged to read only one chapter per day. Since there are several days in between our studies, you will be caught up with the study in time to discuss the next chapter.

What Drives your life?

This chapter really covered a lot of ground. It had some powerful things to say about examining how we have been living our lives; what has been driving us. It also challenges us to be open to the idea of developing a new driving force for our life, one that is guided by our desire serve God by living the life he intended for us to live. Being such a diverse forum, I am sure we are all in different stages in terms of how we live our life. For some of us, this might be the first time we consider living our life for anything besides ourselves. For others, we learned to live life according to God's plan for us long ago and this chapter merely serves as a reminder not to lose focus and let the world pull us away.

A lot of BLs have a hard time dealing with issues from their past and can probably identify well with what was said about guilt and resentment. I am not such a person and am thus ill equipped to address that angle. If you are or were such a person and this part of the chapter spoke to you, feel free to share with us where you are in that struggle or how you overcame it.

I want to address one of those issues which I am more familiar with; fear. Growing up as a bl, I remember more than any other emotion, the fear I felt upon discovering what I was. It was a sort of dread that enveloped me as I lay there in bed one night, a 12 year old boy forced to come to grips with the fact that he is the monster his parents had warned him about. I went through life dreading my future, for I firmly believed my only option was to one day become a child molester. Fear of myself, my future, and what I thought were the demons controlling my mind was the driving force of my early adolescence. Over time, I eventually overcame that fear when I accepted myself and confronted that fear with the truth. Unfortunately, I have seen many BLs even in this forum who are still driven by fear. Most of them do not walk around with that dread that consumed me as a boy, but fear nevertheless is the force that keeps them from moving towards God's purpose for their life. They are driven by fear of what they might become, fear of losing control, fear of people finding out, fear of being rejected, or one of so many such variations. Some are driven by false beliefs about who or what they are. But I really believe what the book says about this is accurate: Fear is a self imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be. Some of those people driven by fear are hiding their gifts, they are hiding their talents because, like the unfaithful servant in Jesus' parable, they are afraid. I firmly believe God will ask you those two questions the book mentions when you come before the throne of judgement. What a disappointment it will be if when asked what you did with what God gave you your response is "nothing, because I was afraid". It's time for us to stop being afraid and to step out boldly into our new life in service of God.

to participate actively in the book study, feel free to respond to this post or to any of the questions Cat or anyone else posts below. You don't necessarily need to respond to what is written on this post, you may prefer instead to talk about the parts of the chapter that spoke to you even if it wasn't something mentioned on this post. You may also pose your own discussion questions.