Michael Kendrick - Your Blueprint for Life: How to Align Your Passion, Gifts, and Calling with Eternity in Mind

PRAISE FOR YOUR BLUEPRINT FOR LIFE

Your Blueprint for Life is a brilliant book for anyone seeking to discover Gods full potential for his or her life. Michael Kendrick provides strategic steps that lead us into a closer relationship with God.

LOUIE GIGLIO, SENIOR PASTOR, PASSION CITY CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, AND FOUNDER, PASSION CONFERENCES

In Your Blueprint for Life, Mike Kendrick has challenged us to live with intention and focus on those things that matter: our relationship with God and our relationships with others. This book provides a practical guide to centering your life around those things that will matter in eternity. I have seen Mike live this out. I have had the privilege of being on the Kings Ridge Christian School Board, and he motivated and challenged all of us in this process. Mike has truly impacted my life, and through this book, he will yours as well.

JOHN SMOLTZ, FORMER CY YOUNG AWARDWINNING MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PITCHER AND MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL BASEBALL HALL OF FAME

If you have struggled to understand your purpose and calling in life, Your Blueprint for Life is for you. Mike Kendrick has developed a practical and effective guide to help you understand how God has uniquely created you for His purposes. Read Your Blueprint for Life, and it will help you align your priorities around those things that will matter in eternity.

ANDY STANLEY, SENIOR PASTOR, NORTH POINT COMMUNITY CHURCH, ALPHARETTA, GEORGIA

Your Blueprint for Life focuses on the importance of living a life that will outlast you, a life with purpose. Life is short, but God has placed each of us here to make a difference. To impact lives for eternity, we all need a blueprint to follow. Without a plan we will aimlessly wander around without reaching our potential. Your Blueprint for Life gives clear examples and truths to use on your lifes journey. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to align their passions, gifts, and calling with eternity in mind.

DR. JOHNNY HUNT, SENIOR PASTOR, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, WOODSTOCK, GEORGIA

The magnificent thing about Gods principles as revealed in His Word is that they are timeless and transcendent. They always work, will never change, and are always relevant. Mike Kendrick has written a book that shows how biblical principles can be worked out in a practical, challenging, and thoroughly biblical way in all of the significant areas of life. I would encourage anyone to make this book one to read every year. It will change your life.

RON BLUE, AUTHOR, SPEAKER, AND FOUNDER OF RON BLUE INSTITUTE, KINGDOM ADVISORS, AND RON BLUE & CO.

2015 by Kendrick Capital Management, Inc.

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Nelson Books, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Nelson Books and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Author is represented by the literary agency of Yates & Yates, 1100 Town & Country Road, Suite 1300, Orange, California 92868.

Interior designed by James A. Phinney.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE. The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are taken from The Living Bible. 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-4002-0661-2 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kendrick, Michael, 1960

Your blueprint for life : how to align your passion, gifts, and calling with eternity in mind / Michael Kendrick.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-4002-0660-5

1. Christian life. I. Title.

BV4501.3.K4584 2015

248.4--dc23

2014038440

15 16 17 18 19 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS

H AVE YOU NOTICED THAT EVERYONE longs to be more than they are? The desire to succeed, to make ones mark on the world, and to live a life that counts is like a burning flame God placed in the human heart.

Maybe this desire to be more and do something meaningful with our lives is why we love movies like The Lord of the Rings, Apollo 13, and Braveheart, as well as the Bible stories of Paul, Joseph, and Esther. These messages speak to something deep inside us that tells us we were created to make a difference, not just float through life then die without making a mark.

Ill bet you want to do something significant with your life too. You want to leave a legacy and make a difference for God. You want your life to count.

Ever since I was small, I have experienced this burning just described. At times it has burned red hot; other times it has been less obviousbut I have always felt it, and it has shown up in my desire to be anything but normal.

For me, normal has always been defined as a status-quo, boring, insignificant, and unfulfilled lifeand thats definitely not what I wanted.

Maybe I wanted to avoid the status quo of ordinary at all costs because I grew up on a farm outside the normal, small southern town of Enterprise, Alabama. Maybe it was because my parents worked nine to five for the government throughout their careers. By the time I reached high school, my determination to make a mark on the world grew when I wasnt even a mention in my high school yearbook.

After high school graduation, I decided I would try to avoid a status-quo life and that I would make my mark on the world by enrolling in the aerospace engineering program at Auburn University. I chose aerospace engineering because Id always enjoyed math, and I figured rockets were the fastest way to get wherever I was going.

With my degree in hand, I quickly landed a job with Pratt & Whitney aircraft in West Palm Beach, Florida. Imagine the response when I told people my new job was developing the most advanced military aircraft in the world.

My fear of being ordinary made itself obvious on my first day on the job. I wouldnt say the division where I reported was a cubicle farm, but something about it reeked of predictability. In my mind, it represented the kind of normalcy I had vowed to escape.

As I looked across the office, I could practically mark out the years in cubicles. My cube represented year oneentry level. Eleven feet away, my bosss cube represented the twenty-year mark. And seventeen feet beyond that, my bosss boss sat at the thirty-year mark.

The rest of my life was to be a twenty-eight-foot journey from a small cubicle to a medium one to a large one. No matter how hard I worked or how much I accomplished, I would never go any farther in life than twenty-eight feet. It felt almost morbid. And it was more than I could bear.