Leave a Mark: The Complete Guide to Pursuing Your Dream and Fulfilling Your Destiny

By Troy Blain Borden

If youre searching for your destiny and arent sure what it is or how to get there, Leave A Mark will guide you through the process of discovering your destiny and pursuing a dream that will enable you to fulfill your destiny.

Leave A Mark contains a study guide with thought-provoking questions presented in progressive phases. As you answer each question youll discover lifes deeper meaning and your own truly unique purpose.

Learn how easy it is to pursue your dream and leave a mark, while becoming the person you really want to be.

Leave A Mark is a Christian perspective on life in which God provides the perfect example of a destiny and dream, as well as an amazing master plan in which you can play a role.

Leave A Mark is your source for definitive answers. So relax and enjoy reading it. Youre about to uncover your hidden purpose and experience a dynamic hope for the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Dec 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781490858296

Troy Blain Borden

Troy Blain Borden is an author and public speaker who has spent decades helping ordinary teenagers discover their destinies and pursue their dreams. He has a passion for helping teenagers and believes that, given the right tools, any teenager can become the person they really want to be and get to know God better in the process. Troy is an award winning Real Estate professional in Central Ohio where he and his wife Tammy have raised three children and attend Leave A Mark Church.

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Copyright © 2014 Troy Blain Borden.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica US, Inc.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5830-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5831-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-5829-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014919337

WestBow Press rev. date: 12/19/2014

Contents

Preface

Preparing for a Dream

Part I Creating a Dream

Chapter 1 Discover Your Purpose

Chapter 2 Define Your Destiny

Dream Machine Phase One: Needs and Weaknesses

Chapter 3 Design Your Dream

Dream Machine Phase Two: Destiny

Dream Machine Phase Three: Preliminary Dreams

Chapter 4 Imagine If Your Dream Came True

Dream Machine Phase Four: Final Dream

Chapter 5 Who Says It’s Not Possible?

Dream Machine Phase Five: Research

Part II Pursuing a Dream

Chapter 6 Now You’ve Done It!

Dream Machine Phase Six: Action

Dream Machine Phase Seven: Assets

Chapter 7 Fight or Flight

Dream Machine Phase Eight: Facing Your Fear

Dream Machine Phase Nine: Life’s Junk Food

Dream Machine Phase Ten: Changing Your Mind

Chapter 8 Hope Changes Everything

Chapter 9 Confidence, Compassion, and Conflict

Dream Machine Phase Eleven: Confidence

Part III Leaving a Mark

Chapter 10 Don’t Look Now, but You’re in the Lead!

Chapter 11 Expressing Who You Are at Your Core

Dream Machine Phase Twelve: Love

Dream Machine Phase Thirteen: Journal

Dream Machine Phase Fourteen: Fun

Chapter 12 The Amazing Master Plan

Postscript

Notes

Leave a Mark is dedicated to Tammy, my soul mate and the love of my life; my children, Brandon, Molly, and Blain; and my grandchildren, in hope that all of them will discover their destinies and pursue their dreams.

And to my parents, Mark and Diane Borden,

in appreciation for the encouragement they have given me and the example they have set.

And to my Grandmother Ethel Varee Russell.

And finally to Steve and Ginger Combs for founding Leave A Mark church.

Preface

The Dream Machine is a study guide incorporated within most chapters of Leave a Mark, giving you the chance to pause for a moment, think about what you’re reading, and apply it to your own life. The Dream Machine study guide can be used to facilitate learning in home groups, singles’ groups, and youth groups. It marks points throughout the book where you can discuss the information presented in Leave a Mark, measure the progress of each person in your group, and ensure that everyone is advancing at a consistent pace.

Preparing for a Dream

Do you have a lifelong dream? Is it well defined and written down? Does pursuing it give your life purpose? Experts speculate that only 3 percent of Americans have a dream they have written down. This number is surprisingly low, considering the dynamic role a dream can play in your life. You’ll improve your life dramatically and change the world in amazing ways by pursing a dream.

Martin Luther King Jr. captivated an entire nation by declaring, I have a dream!¹ Those four words are full of potential, yet rarely spoken. Two years after declaring his dream, King witnessed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and became the youngest person ever to receive the Nobel Peace Prize—all because of his dream.

Your dream plays a crucial role in the purpose of your life because your character is uniquely challenged and purely refined while you pursue it. For decades I have helped countless people pursue their dreams. In the process I have learned that, given the right tools, anyone can pursue a dream and achieve his or her destiny.

It’s not surprising to find that Christians such as Martin Luther King Jr. have been among history’s most profound dreamers. They have also been few and far between, pursuing their dreams sporadically throughout history. Despite the numbers, their stories show how much God was able to accomplish through them. Jesus is the ultimate example of all God can do through one person with a dream. Today, God is looking for untold millions of people to discover their destinies and pursue their dreams.

Dreams are a natural part of life and one of the best ways you have of expressing your faith. All of the ancient heroes of faith mentioned in the New Testament book of Hebrews have demonstrated by the way they lived their lives that even if you love God and love others, you ought to also be pursuing the dream that will enable you to fulfill your destiny.

Do you ever wonder about your purpose in life or your destiny? If you have ever asked for advice about what you should do with your life, in response you were probably asked to define what you are good at. Then you were probably encouraged to do whatever that was. This advice is confusing because it’s great advice for establishing your goals but not for identifying your destiny. Yet the advice is usually the same whether you ask a parent, professor, pastor, or priest. You’re left to speculate that there may be more to life than goals, but you are at a loss for where to turn for answers.

Pursuing a dream and fulfilling your destiny doesn’t mean doing more of what you are already good at. Instead—and it’s critically important for you to understand—pursuing a dream means becoming the person you really want to be. The dream that will enable you to fulfill your destiny is not a type of goal. Goals come from your strengths. Goals represent wants and desires that you try to obtain with your natural abilities, skills, and ambitions. A dream is different because it comes from a predominant need or weakness that keeps pushing you until you finally begin pushing back. Your dream is designed to confront the shortcoming that plagues you most. A dream challenges you to excel where you are most vulnerable. You never begin with the strength you need to achieve your dream. But if you embrace it anyway, you will learn how to grow in new ways, depend on God, and develop as an individual. It’s a fact of life. However, it’s not presented as a guide for living in many sources other than Leave a Mark.

You only get one shot at a rewarding life. At the end of your life, as you look back at your experiences, if you achieved your goals but only grew in the areas of life you were already good at, how satisfied are you really going to be? What if, at the same time, you also faced your predominant need or weakness and designed a dream that challenged you to be strong and competent in that area of your life too? Then, with God’s help, you could achieve your dream as well as your goals and finally become the person you really want to be. Won’t that be far more satisfying?

Try to achieve something more than just surviving comfortably in life. A more rewarding and balanced life—that’s what you will find in a dream. Your natural abilities, skills, and ambitions all help you achieve your goals and improve the quality of your life, but they may not improve the kind of person you are. You cannot expect your goals alone to somehow transform your life. You must pursue a dream as well as goals in order to experience a balanced approach to life.

Leave a Mark takes the complex and mysterious idea of designing a dream and turns it into a manageable process using the Dream Machine. The Dream Machine is an easy-to-understand study guide that poses coaching questions. These questions are designed to help you easily apply the information presented in Leave a Mark to your own life. The Dream Machine won’t spell out specific answers. Instead, it will help connect the dots in a way that enables you to determine the answers that are right for you. Each person will arrive at a different conclusion, even though you will all find your answers in the same way.

You will design several dreams that match up with your well-defined destiny, determine which dream will make you happiest, and research the facts concerning that particular dream so you know exactly what to do in order to achieve it. Finally, you will take the first step necessary to begin pursuing your dream. At that point, you will discover something your goals never gave you: a powerful and dynamic hope for the future, and the expectation that you are actually going to achieve your dream.

Afterward you will be ready to embrace your role as an expert—to be optimistic, have fun, and love others while expressing who you are at your core. Then you will be able to help others achieve their dreams and observe how their dreams and yours all play a role in an amazing master plan. You will also be able to speak with others about God more easily once you understand God’s dream, Jesus’ dream, and the Spirit of God’s dream.

A voice from somewhere inside tells you that even though you might feel insecure or incapable, you can actually achieve an extraordinary dream once you decide to face your most predominant need or weakness. The voice you hear is not meant to make you feel uncomfortable with yourself. Instead, it holds out a promise, a clue that will guide you to something you ought to be searching for: a better life.

People hear the voice in different ways and search for their destinies in different areas of life. Professionals like to be motivated. Single adults strive for happiness in relationships. Homemakers try to find identities beyond wife and mom. Blue-collar workers yearn for more than a paycheck-to-paycheck existence. Empty nesters start over, while teenagers try for the first time to figure out what life is all about. College students often struggle to determine what to major in, while graduates begin building their careers. Everyone’s searching for some sense of destiny for his or her life.

As an infant, Helen Keller contracted a deadly illness that left her deaf, blind, and mute. When Helen was seven years old, Ann Sullivan began teaching her to communicate. Once she began communicating, Helen developed an insatiable appetite for learning. She eventually became the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college. Helen realized her destiny and became a world-famous speaker and prolific author who said, I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. The world is moving along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.²

Pursuing a dream is not a great or noble task. Instead, it’s a humble task that produces a great and noble life—a life that’s full of meaning and purpose. Leave a Mark is your chance to break away from the daily grind. You’re about to discover that having a dream is not so difficult. In fact, pursuing your dream will prove to be one of the most enjoyable and meaningful experiences of your life!

PART I

Creating a Dream

CHAPTER 1

Discover Your Purpose

Steve Combs is a natural-born dreamer who, like many pastors, has transformed his own way of life into an entire culture at Leave A Mark church. He has experienced firsthand exactly what it means to leave a mark. A few days before Thanksgiving, Steve’s eight-year-old son, Jordan, had invited his best friend, Robbie, over to play. Robbie brought his little sister, Kalli, along with him. It was cold outside, so most of their time was spent playing in Jordan’s room. They had the time of their lives.

A few weeks later, Steve received an urgent call from Kalli’s parents. She had gone to see Sesame Street Live with her aunt, and on the way home they were involved in a multicar pileup. Kalli sustained life-threatening injuries and had to be rushed to Nationwide Children’s Hospital for emergency surgery. People were praying throughout the waiting room when Steve arrived. He joined them and occasionally spoke with the doctor about Kalli’s condition. Eventually the doctor came out one last time to deliver the awful news—the precious little girl they loved so much had not survived.

The unbelievable pain was still being felt months later when Steve’s wife, Ginger, was with Jordan and Robbie as Robbie blurted out a confession. The last time we were at your house in Jordan’s room we opened a bag of Cheetos and got them all over our hands. Kalli was trying to jump as high as she could on Jordan’s bed and when she finally got high enough, she reached up and put her hand on the ceiling.

Then Jordan explained, It’s true, Mom. We didn’t tell you because we didn’t want you to wash it off.

Each morning when he woke up, Jordan looked up at the ceiling over his bed to see the Cheetos handprint of a special little girl whom he would never forget. Jordan and Robbie wanted to forever remember the fun they had with Kalli that day.

You might assume you will have the greatest impact on the world around you through your daily pursuits—your money, appearance, reputation, employment, and education. That may be the case for some. However, even though these pursuits are necessary for a happy and productive life, they don’t accurately or completely define who you are as a person. Like Kalli you are more likely to leave a mark while you’re having fun, sharing your thoughts and emotions, expressing what’s in your spirit, or simply being who you are as a person.

Steve Combs believes wholeheartedly that you ought to leave a mark as much as you can. He says, It’s the only way to live! Your dream enables you to leave a mark by enhancing and developing your thoughts, emotions, and spirituality. In doing so, a dream also enables you to have more control over your life, giving you the sense that your life can be anything you want it to be.

Jerry spent seven years in college but never really decided what he wanted his major to be. He ended up graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business. With the help of family connections, he got a job as line manager at a local manufacturing plant. The pay was decent, and he was able to buy a three-bedroom home for his wife and two young children. Years later, the mandatory overtime occupied a lot of Jerry’s time. During quiet moments of introspection he often looked back over his life and concluded that his ordinary pursuits had become a matter of obligation instead of a matter of choice. His success seemed to be a mixture of luck