The Point of No ReturnSample

Understanding Your Boundaries and Parameters

It is so important to understand exactly where the Lord wants you to be at any given moment. If you find yourself in the wrong place doing the wrong thing, you’ll only experience frustration, heartache, disappointment, failure, and depression.

Here’s an example: Have you ever tried to fit a square peg into a round hole? If you have heard of this expression, you know it just doesn’t fit! No matter how you twist, turn, or try to put that square peg into that round hole, it will never fit! That’s exactly what it feels like when you try to serve in the wrong place or become someone you were never meant to be. If you’re a square peg, and you or someone else tries to cram you into a round hole, you know precisely what kind of frustration I’m talking about.

God chose you, convicted you of sin, drew you in by His Spirit, gloriously saved you, anointed you with His gifts and power, and placed you in the Body of Christ for a distinct purpose. It’s crucial that you find where you fit within the Body of Christ. Just as a natural body can’t function if every member tries to be the hands or the feet, you need to fulfill your unique calling in the Body of Christ for the Church to operate the way the Lord intended it to operate!

If God has called you to be a Bible teacher, but you’re trying to be an evangelist, I guarantee you will feel like a square peg being pushed into a round hole. Likewise, if He has called you to be an evangelist and you choose to teach the Bible instead, you will feel dissatisfied and out of place until you take your true position in God’s plan.

Perhaps you’re called to an assistant position, a role you fulfill with excellence and ease. If others try to compel you to move into an executive leadership role, but you feel miserable in that position, don’t feel like a failure! Just accept that you’re in the wrong place and return to doing what you know you’re called and gifted to do!

Oftentimes, when people are put in positions they were never destined to fill, they feel guilty for not liking their job or appreciating their new privileges. Some believers rebuke the devil, thinking he’s attacking them and their new prosperity, yet that nagging sense of uneasiness, guilt, and frustration persists. Others may pray for more desire and energy to do the job, but they will never experience it if they’re not in the will of God. You must realize you have to put up boundaries if you want to stay within the parameters of the calling He has given you! If you know you’re within your boundaries, you’ll know whether whatever you’re facing is a product of the devil or your flesh as opposed to a product of being out of the will of God.

If you have accepted an assignment God never intended you to accept, you must understand that rebuking the devil or praying for energy will not help you. If you’re in the wrong place, you don’t necessarily have a devil problem or a flesh problem. You’re just a square peg trying to fit into a round hole—it’s as simple as that!

Blessings and contentment come when you enter the place where God wants and has destined you to be. Once you establish your boundaries and obey your unique calling, everything will begin to fall into place, and your joy and fulfillment will be restored. Your fuzzy perspective will begin to clear up, and you’ll know for certain that you’re back on God’s path again.

Wherever you go and whatever you do, you’ll inevitably face problems, challenges, and attacks from the enemy, even when you’re in the perfect will of God. He has promised to help you every step of the way as you make your way toward the perfect destiny He ordained for your life.

Study Questions:

1. Think of a unique gift or ability God has blessed you with that positively affects those around you. What is that gift? How does it correlate with your calling?
2. You can do all things through Christ, but He hasn’t called you to do everything. What boundaries have you established, or boundaries you need to establish, to keep yourself on God’s path for your life?
3. What was the last step God told you to take? Have you obeyed His direction?