Discerning Your Spiritual Calling: Moving into Dominion of Your Spiritual Call
The sixth day of the creation story is one of the most important stages of understanding your spiritual calling. On the sixth day, God created humankind in the likeness and image of God and gave every person dominion over creation. With this God given dominion, God sent humankind out to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Genesis 1: 26-28, WEB, 2022).
Dominion is an interesting word as rarely can a person articulate feeling a sense of complete dominion in your life. You certainly have strengths, skills, and attributes that you excel at; yet owning dominion over your life is something that feels foreign and distant. The reason for this alienation is the conscious pattern of thought you live in determines how much dominion over your spiritual calling you will manifest.
Your life is always a reflection of your consciousness (Butterworth, 2003). For this reason, most people struggle to complete their spiritual calling. The storms of life increase your worry and anxiety and you move out of consciousness as a co-creator. Just as God gave humankind dominion over the earth; God gives you dominion over your spiritual calling and its completion. You are a partner with God, not used by God, but an actual partner.
Title: Lost Lake, New River ACEC, Author: BLM Oregon & Washington, Source: Flickr is licensed by CC BY 2.0
You often lose your confidence as a co-creator because you view your partnership with God from the wrong perspective. Instead of seeing yourself in equal collaboration with God, you view yourself as subservient. Your fear disempowers you, and you believe you cannot accomplish the great spiritual tasks set before you. In this state, you become a victim of God versus a partner. To overcome your victimhood, it requires a change of consciousness.
This change of consciousness remembers who you really are. The Spirit formed you in the image of God, after God’s likeness. Being created in God’s image means you have an innate knowledge of the next steps of manifesting your spiritual calling. Yet, to walk in fullness, as a co-creator, you must first overcome your own victimhood.
Overcoming Victimhood in Your Spiritual Calling:
There are three states of consciousness that will defeat you in your spiritual calling. These states of consciousness include living as a victim, victor, or vessel (Hasselbeck, 2010). A victim consciousness forces you to lose all sense of ownership and responsibility for your life and choices you make.
Victim Consciousness:
In a victim state, circumstances happen to you. You believe you have no ability or power to change your situations. Individuals living in victim consciousness will find many reasons not to complete their spiritual call. Excuse after excuse will come to mind; obstacle after obstacle will prevail. It doesn’t matter what the excuse or obstacle is. If you are listing a ton of reasons you can’t live out your calling, then you are likely living in victim consciousness.
In victim consciousness, the obstacles may be real; but your victimhood magnifies them until you become powerless. You become your own worst enemy, as your negative self-talk further victimizes you. Your spiritual calling becomes impossible in your thoughts and consciousness before you ever act.
Victor Consciousness:
The second state, victor consciousness (Hasselbeck, 2010), will also stop you from pursuing your spiritual calling. When you live in victor consciousness, you realize you can control some of your circumstances and experiences. At first, you might think, “Wait a minute, isn’t being a victor something that will help me accomplish my spiritual calling?” On the surface level, the answer would be, “Yes’, but when you go deeper in this state, you cease being a co-creator with God. The victor state forces you to use your own power and initiative to accomplish your calling.
Victor consciousness is often the state that arises out of discovering you have lived as a victim. You realize you have to change; so you pull yourself up by your proverbial bootstraps and pursue your spiritual calling with all your might. You become the sole master of your spiritual call, leaving God behind.
The problem with pursuit of your spiritual call in a victor consciousness is your call rest entirely on your own power, strength, and ability. In your vigor to overcome your victimhood; you leave God out of the picture as your partner. You are no longer a co-creator, but a sole creator. When you operate as a sole creator; exhaustion sets in, and your spiritual call becomes drudgery.
God has no desire to victimize you! When you co-create with God, the Spirit works with, not through, your skill, ability, and talent
Vessel Consciousness:
The third state impairing your spiritual calling is vessel consciousness (Hasselbeck, 2010). Vessel consciousness is tricky as many of us have been taught we are vessels of God. From this perspective, God works through you to accomplish your spiritual call. You become an innate object that is used by God. Whereas the victor consciousness (previously discussed) depends heavily on you; the vessel consciousness depends to heavily on God. You become a victim used by God.
God has no desire to victimize you! When you co-create with God, the Spirit works with, not through, your skill, ability, and talent. God created you as an individual and has no desire for you to become an automaton. You are distinctly you and God desires you to be fully present when collaborating in your spiritual call. God isn't interested in working through you. Instead, God is seeking a partner.
Living in A Calling Consciousness
When you stop living in the lies of victim, victor, and vessel consciousness; you can truly pursue your calling. A calling consciousness understands your spiritual calling is a collaboration with God as a co-creator. You are partners.
When you stop living in the lies of victim, victor, and vessel consciousness; you can truly pursue your calling
In calling consciousness, you no longer live as a victim as you overcome your self-limiting thoughts and beliefs. Through accessing your partnership with God, you open yourself to an array of possibilities, plans, and actions that respond to every obstacle you encounter in your calling.
A calling consciousness forms by attuning your mind to God through meditation and prayer. From the inward work of prayer and meditation, the dawning of new ideals and responses unfolds (Filmore, 2014). As a result, an unending flow of next steps emerges in response to the obstacles. It is through the process of involution and unfolding that dominion is demonstrated. It is in the silence and presence of God that you return to dominion within your spiritual calling.
Moses and Living in Calling Consciousness:
Like many of us, Moses ran from dominion in his spiritual calling. In Exodus Chapter 4 (WEB, 2022), you will find Moses makes one last attempt to step out of his spiritual call. Moses proposes two obstacles to God that he truly believes will derail his spiritual calling. First, Moses questions if the people will even believe that God sent him. God gives two signs to Moses to strengthen his dominion: Moses’s rod transforms into a serpent and then his hand is made leprous and then healed. God showed in these acts that Moses was supernaturally supplied to have dominion in his calling.
One would think that these two supernatural manifestations would convince Moses that God empowered him to take dominion. Yet Moses continued to question his dominion. Moses pushes God’s patience by stating that he suffers from a speech disorder and this obstacle will stop him from fulfilling his spiritual call. God, in response, encourages Moses to take dominion by stating, “Who made man’s mouth? Or who makes one mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Isn’t it I, Yahweh? Now go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you should speak” (Exodus 4:11-12, WEB, 2022).
Despite God’s supernatural reassurances, Moses remained anxious regarding his spiritual call. His final attempt at avoiding his God given dominion occurred by ducking all responsibility and asking God to send someone else. God introduces a partner to help Moses with the dominion of his spiritual calling; he sends Moses’ brother Aaron to be his voice for Moses.
In order to live in a calling consciousness, you must remember the Holy Spirit created you in the image and likeness of God
In this story, we can see the stages of victim, victor, and vessel consciousness and how these states of mind prevented dominion of Moses in his spiritual call. Moses was a victim of his speech disorder. He believed himself to be a vessel of God that the Hebrews would reject. Finally, despite being promised victory through supernatural signs; he retreated into his own abilities and skills and asked God to send someone else. Like Moses, when you live in victim, victor, or vessel consciousness; you will come up with every excuse and obstacle opposing your spiritual call. It isn’t until centered in calling consciousness that you see possibilities instead of obstacles.
In order to live in a calling consciousness, you must remember the Holy Spirit created you in the image and likeness of God. This empowers you with all the creativity and capacity to live your spiritual calling. You simply have to step into your dominion as a co-creator with God. You live in a co-creator state when you identify your limiting beliefs and thoughts that prevent you from taking dominion.
For Moses these limiting beliefs included low self-esteem because of ineloquent speech (victim), overdependence on his own capacities and skills (victor), and the belief he was being used by God instead of partnering as co-creator with God (vessel). If Moses would have simply sat in the silent meditation and accepted his spiritual dominion; then God would never had to send Aaron as his voice. God would have partnered exclusively with Moses.
It is when you realize Spirit has empowered you as a co-creator in God’s image versus a victim, victor, or vessel that you can walk in dominion of your spiritual calling
By: Heath B. Walters, Ph.D.
Copyright © February 3rd, 2023, Heath B. Walters DBA Spiritual Life Resources, All Rights Reserved
Reference
Butterworth, E. (2003). The Creative Life: 7 Keys to Your Inner Genius. Tarcher-Perigee.
Filmore, C. (2014). The Revealing Word: A Dictionary of Metaphysical Terms. Martino Fine Books, Reprint of 1959 Edition. ISBN-13: 978-1614276548.
Hasselbeck, P. (2010). Heart-Centered Metaphysics, Unity House. ISBN-13: 978-0871593344.
World English Bible (2022). WEB Online. https://ebible.org/study/