What Has You Stuck?

Filled with scriptures, the book contains numerous exercises to help you identify areas in your life that need attention and how to figure out the WHYS behind your seemingly delayed destiny.

Drawing on her own experiences and the Bible’s teachings, Dr. Vickie helps you:

• improve relationships with family and friends;

• challenge preconceptions and prejudices;

• share your personal story to advance God’s kingdom; and

• recognize what’s truly important in life.

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Friends, if you are reading this book, you have an incredible destiny waiting for you! I do not believe in chance. I believe God led you to this book to help you answer the question, “Why can’t I move forward?” Prayerfully, this book will help you figure out the reasons or the whys behind your seemingly delayed destiny. Why do I say seemingly? Because God’s timing is always perfect! God may have given you a vision, and you have diligently been working toward that vision. However, you seem to be getting nowhere fast.

One of the most important parts of your destiny is reaching other people for Jesus Christ. When God places something on your heart, He never lets up. However, He may tarry on giving you the tools you need or putting you in the place where your destiny will continue because there are issues that need to be resolved first! For one, people are procrastinators. Most of the time, people do not feel adequate enough to accomplish what God laid on their hearts.

After reading this book, I hope you realize no one is adequate! We need God to fulfill His side of the promise. We must get up, do what God leads us to do, stop our pity parties, realize we are not alone, and trust God to help us! If He laid a desire on your heart, He knows you will accomplish what must be done. Jeremiah wrote: “For I know the plans that I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11 NAS)

Other translations use “an expected end” (KJ2), meaning God expects you to complete it and knows you will. Paul confirms: Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and anointed us is God, who also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge. (2 Corinthians 1:21–22 NAS) God pledges or guarantees what is to come. What He laid on your heart, He will do through you. You just have to let Him. Paul reiterates: Such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. (2 Corinthians 3:4–6 NAS)

God created you with a purpose. He promised to take care of you, and He also had an ulterior motive: He needs people to know who His Son was, is, and is yet to come. Since God sent His Son once and raised him from the dead to reign by His side in heaven until it’s time for Him to return, Jesus counts on you, me, and others—through the guidance of the Holy Spirit—to introduce Jesus to our friends, neighbors, and strangers. To capture their attention, we must live the way God wants us to live yet be transparent enough to let them know we are not perfect.

Are you ready to find out what is holding you back? As you read this book, continually be in prayer for the Holy Spirit to reveal areas in your life that need attention.

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SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY

Before we can understand where we are going, we must learn where we have been. First, let us consider how truly we are made in the image of God. Just as God is a triune, all-in-one Godhead—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—we are tripartite beings comprised of a spirit, a soul, and a body. The following scriptures represent this truth as found in His Word. Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” (Genesis 1:26) Now, may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:23 NAS)

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The human spirit along with other parts of the human being are important to its existence. Therefore, it is critical when dealing with issues such as being stuck on the path toward a given destiny that people must consider their whole being. Doctors are beginning to realize this during treatment of various ailments. A certain cancer-focused organization even establishes this as their belief in their advertising. Many times, the root of an ailment does not have to do with the physical symptoms people observe on the outside; instead, it has everything to do with the spiritual or soulish issues people are dealing with on the inside.

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My journey started at about three o’clock in the morning one night in 1998 about three or four months prior to my graduation from the University of Central Florida. I was working on homework while listening to Christian instrumentals in the background. At the time, I was not saved. I do not remember asking Jesus into my heart even though I remember attending various churches growing up. As a child, I would be the only one in my family looking for a church bus to pick me up. In high school, I attended a church just because my parents knew some of the members. It is sad, but I do not remember what they taught.

Nine years into my first relationship, three young children were running around. All of us were living in a two-bedroom mobile home. I felt something tugging at my heart. During intermission of the Christian music, a pastor came on to talk about Jesus Christ. After his ten- or fifteen-minute synopsis of the Savior, he made a call to those who wanted to know Him more. He led me down that Romans’ road, and that night, I asked Jesus into my heart. A night that changed my life forever!