The thing you're asking God for is already in you.

I can say this with confidence because to be in Christ means to be made new, and that newness comes with a purpose. It’s part of the base package. No upgrades needed.

Last week, I asked you to share where you are with your vision, not because I’m trying to get all up in your koolaid, but because I want to cook up the right dishes for your appetite. I want to meet you at the point of your need.

I buried the question at the bottom of a long letter, so here it is again, up top, where you can't miss it. One tap, and you can help guide the menu for this season.

Don’t worry if the options don’t line up perfectly. I’m looking for a ball park, not a street address.

If your honest answer is somewhere around I feel something stirring or I'm not sure I'm supposed to have one, then this week’s spread is for you.

Bon Appetit! 👨🏽‍🍳

Consider Moses. We remember the burning bush, because it's the dramatic part, and we file it under "how God gives a vision." But read the story from the beginning and the bush is not where it begins.

Forty years earlier, a young man raised in Pharaoh's house walked out and looked at what was happening to his people.

The burden was already there. A sensitivity to a specific injustice, for a specific people, was already in him. Stephen, retelling it centuries later, says Moses "supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand" (Acts 7:25). He had the seed, but it wasn’t ready to break forth. And so he ran, and spent forty years keeping sheep, and I'd bet money the burden never left him. It just went quiet.

Then the bush.

Right upfront, God calls out the burden: I have seen the affliction of my people. He puts His fiery finger right on the very thing Moses had been carrying since he was young. The thing that spurred him to act from his convictions, albeit, impulsively.

The vision didn't arrive at the bush, it was confirmed and reawakened. It arrived four decades earlier, as an ache Moses didn't know what to do with.

That's the pattern. Nehemiah was wrecked by a report about a wall before he had any assignment to build one. Moses was wrecked by a beating before he had any assignment to lead anyone. The ache came first, the clarity came later — and it came through the ache, not same random new discovery.

So let's look at what's already in you.

There's the burden. The need you can't stop noticing. It usually lands on a group of people you feel some kinship with, and it's usually too big for one person to fix, which is exactly why it feels like a weight and not a to-do. This is why Moses spends most of Exodus 3 and 4 trying to duck the assignment — it felt too big for him, but it wasn’t.

Then there’s your journey. The jobs you've worked, the rooms you've been in, the problems you've had to solve because nobody else would. Experiences that have shaped your skills and perspective by design. Nothing has been random.

And then there are the scars. The remnants of some trauma that cut us to the quick, and left a permanent mark. We all have them. The thing that wounded you is very often the thing you end up being sent to. Not because God wanted the wound, but because He uses the sensitivity.

Put those three together — the burden, the lived experience, and the pain — and you're looking at the seed. You may not have the clarity of a complete vision (frankly, who does?), but what you have is the soil, the seed, and the first sign of something pushing up. That's not nothing. It's the beginning of everything.

Make a list. Sit down with a piece of paper and write out what's stirring. Two columns: the things that hurt you, and the burdens you keep noticing. Some of them will line-up. I’m sure of it.

You don’t need to put a finger on anything now. Just sit with it. Getting it out of your heart and onto paper is enough. Next week we're going to look at where those things point.

Hit reply and tell me the one item on that list that surprised you. I read every one.