Becoming Well With Liz Tafadzwa

Hello BW Community. It almost feels criminal to be saying this now, but Happy New Year, and welcome to Season 2 of Becoming Well! I started this Blog in September 2023 with a burden on my heart from the Lord to help people discover their God-given purpose, find freedom, experience radical healing, and return back to their authentic selves. The vision was given to me in 2021 and it is still the same and as the years continue to unfold, how I answer that assignment will expand to audio and video..hint hint to a podcast but let’s stop here before I spill too much detail prematurely.  We are now in the final month of the first quarter and it’s crazy to think the year is moving by so quickly. I am so glad to be back and even though I’m back later than i thought. I’m feeling refreshed and ready to smash 2024.

January is the month, most people create their vision boards and cast their New Year resolutions. Gyms are often full to the brim, the fruit and veggie stock in grocery stores move at an exponential rate, and sweetened foods see a slight decline in demand up until a certain point. If I still saw this trend the same way I used to I would be typing something that feels judgmental right now but what I’ve come to realize is that at the root of all these behavior modifications that people make at the beginning of the year is a clear indication that people naturally want to be better. Every human being wants to be successful. That includes the person on the street, that overweight aunty, the toxic grandpa, the couple drowning in debt, the introverted girl, the disorganized dude, or the church girl bound by addiction. We all have the natural and spiritual inclination to grow and become the versions of ourselves that we possibly can be.

However, with that inherent desire comes a harsh reality we are constantly faced with which is the work required. It takes work to process change productively, it takes work to grow, it takes work to be better and it takes work to become that best version of yourself, which i like calling becoming exactly who God created to be. But with any vision or picture you have in your head, without moving that picture from your head and putting it on paper it is going to be a toll order to take the practical steps and stay committed to the process to become and do what you desire to be.

“When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild, but whoever obeys the law is joyful”- Proverbs 29:18

Proverbs 29:18 says “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (KJV). I love the NLT version of this verse which says “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild,but whoever obeys the law is joyful.” What this verse is saying is that without a vision or what God calls “divine guidance” by default, you run the risk of doing things that end up being a destruction in your life. I don’t want that to be your reality so i want you to think about this for a few minutes, what is your vision for the year? Is that vision from God or Pinterest, social media or pop culture? The reason why I like the NLT version is that it uses the word divine before the word guidance. I believe Solomon recognized that there are many things in the world that are always ready to guide us, including yourself if it is not God. Divine means the guidance or vision should come from God or a higher power than you and nothing else. Now as a follower of Christ, my higher power is God.

 How many people do you know who have achieved some version of financial success who genuinely had a vision but after years, that success became the weapon that destructed them? Bernard Loiseau, a renowned and incredibly successful chef shot himself at the age of 52 because the vision was guided by something else that was not God. I have so much empathy for suicide victims but i carry the strong conviction that when the vision you carry truly comes from God, when it gets hard, you have a larger bandwidth to lean on God than yourself because like it or not success comes with enormous pressure. I would like to think he perished not because he was a failure but because the vision he had for himself may have not been a God-given one even when he was financially successful. I can make a long list of influential people who may have not committed suicide but ended up getting bound by the very success they had achieved because the vision was not divine. This is not to say that those who have received a vision from God won’t fall shot. There are many world-renowned pastors and Christian creatives that fell short publicly but their visions enabled them to eventually bounce back because a vision truly from God will always be bigger than you. If the vision is largely about you and how it will benefit you the most without consideration of how it will affect others especially those close to you, it is most likely from God. Why? Because people are God’s most valued possession and he will never be in the business of dishing out self-serving visions.

I don’t know if you are like me in this, but I’m the one person who is always thinking up different business ideas, creative ventures, and projects and most of them never make it past step 1 with God. That step 1 is having a clear answer to the question, why do you want to do it, whatever the idea is? My failure to give a clear-cut response and also sit on the idea for at least 2 weeks quickly exposes me to the reality that the idea did not come from God but from another source. I honestly get why God is more interested in why we do what we do than what we do because whatever you will do for the long haul will have many hard phases. If your motive is not pure, you will give up hence why God is big on motive. It’s just too hard to go in with the wrong motives. It’s his love for us because he is trying to protect us from the devastating pain and loss that will come with a self-serving vision. I dont encourage extremes or getting on with a vision God gives you the next day and also waiting 10 years, but if it is truly a vision from him it will have a few characteristics that can be known within a reasonable time. The characteristics are the vision is submissive(you can share it with your Christian community and hear their perspective if you cant share it with anyone it may be a sign that it is self-serving), aligns with your S.H.A.P.E ( I will do a separate post in this season on this), agrees not violates biblical principles (if the business idea is to requires exploiting widows and orphans because that’s your “target audience, you can be certain that it did not come from God because God seriously protects those groups of people) and lastly it will require you to both have faith in God and trust him (if the idea will make you less dependent on God and everything will be within your control, then God will not put his long term hand of blessing on the idea because that is the one of the things that he wants to teach his children throughout their lifetime).

“Why you want to do what you want to do is more important than what you want to do”

The vision he will give you to become all he created you to be never be at the expense of the work he wants to do in people he will reach through you. Vision is so important friend and I want you to think about, pray about, and get into God’s word to recieve the vision God has for you. When i talk about the vision for the year, I am not really talking about it literally. I received God’s vision for my life in March of 2021 and it has not changed because i believe it is a life vision because of how big it is. So what i do at the beginning of each year is to use my prayer and fasting time with God for the first 21 days of the year to ask God what aspect of the vision I must hone in on for the year. So i break down the bigger vision into years and what I do each year builds upon that bigger vision. As a result, my decision-making and priorities are relatively easy to make.

As a third-year student in college, I have watched over the years how many college students are constantly frantic about the future yet pursuing majors that are “supposedly safe.” Many of them abuse their time on things that feel cool in the moment but will become wounds they have to recover from 5 years from now and avoid God and anything to do with him because it’s not cool to do that in college. Don’t think I look at them with judgment because i don’t. It makes sense because only knowledge of God and applying it in one’s life is powerful enough to help you live tall with your convictions in an environment that constantly pressures you to conform. If you are out of college there are so many similar environments that test your spiritual stability. At workplaces, social gatherings, and social media. We will all and that includes me will always be tested on how strong our convictions are and any area you end up compromising in is an area where convictions are either weak or absent. A true God-given vision gives you an undeniable and unwavering conviction to do certain things and pass on other things. It is not that you can’t or dont want to, but the discipline that the conviction births is stronger than the external pressure.

Maybe God has given you the vision to be healthy emotionally and heal your father wound so you can build a kingdom-driven daycare or what Britain and its former colonies call “creche.” Your affliction when healed will enable you to build a place where children can be taught, developed, loved, nurtured, and protected in a way that honors God and plants kingdom seeds in their hearts. You may also be under 25 and thinking of my word, that is too big and I can’t do it by myself and i want to suggest to you that is exactly what you want. God’s vision will always make you dependent on him and demand that you work on your relationships with people because you will need their help to realize the vision. It is our need to want to control everything that causes us to self-manufacture our own visions that we can control, but end up exploding in our faces hurting us and those connected to the vision.

“It is our need to want to control everything that causes us to self-manufacture our own visions that we can control, but end up exploding in our faces hurting us and those meant connected to the vision.”

Remember, without a vision from God, the word says you will perish. It does not necessarily mean you will physically die immediately because if it were the case many of us would already transitioned. The perishing he meant was the perishing of your spiritual health, mental health, emotional health, financial health, physical health, relational health, and intellectual health. As someone who has lived many years without God’s vision and a few years now with a God-breathed vision, what I have come to realize with that G-vision you will slowly start subtly, indirectly, or directly wasting away spiritually, emotionally, mentally, relationally, financially and intellectual. What would be the point of sharpening those areas if that vision is not bigger than you and has no person bigger than you to whom you are accountable? 

So I want you to think about your vision for the year this week. If you already have it, that’s even more beautiful. Consult that vision with God and sit with him to check if it came from him and if you have no idea that’s okay. Approach him with honesty. He wants to guide you lovingly along a path that will bring so much peace, joy, and fruitfulness if you let him. 

Don’t forget to share this post with someone else if it helped you in some way. Know and believe that you are deeply loved, seen, and heard by God and me. I will see you next week!