So, why are we here?
One of the biggest conversations of culture and society today is purpose. Individuals both inexperienced and mature can often question themselves multiple times throughout life, "what is my purpose?" or "How do I find out what I'm here?". Well, we're here to tell you today WHY your purpose matters.
“It does not matter how young you are, how many years you got yourself, you still have some level of God influenced wisdom and experience to share.”
It probably is best we share our experience, breaks, and battles [if you will] with purpose. A little while ago I used to do a live show called 'A&E Live', I knew it was very original... This was in about the 2017 time frame and we were specifically focused on marriage offering some wisdom and advice around the topic. Granted we were babies ourselves [three years married], but we had a little bit of wisdom. This very thought is one of the first things the enemy can try to use through other people to get you to feel like your purpose doesn't matter. Although we were young in our marriage we didn't know if people felt we were "immature" or not seasoned enough to offer a valid and helpful perspective. It does not matter how young you are, how many years you got yourself, you still have some level of God influenced wisdom and experience to share.
Despite this start we ended up stopping our show after a few short episodes to chase after other things. The worries, stresses and desires of life sure have a way of distracting us. The interesting thing about this is that the distractions typically come from good and genuine sources. Essence ended up finding out she was sick and had to go through battle with being diagnosed with endometriosis and have an invasive surgery to treat it. Then shortly after that Essence became pregnant with our son Noah so we had some time raising him. We also spent a lot of time building businesses pursuing our own success and the life that we believe we deserve.
After a three year hiatus from our show to run a couple of other businesses we felt a call from God to stop and step away. The cool thing is we both simultaneously felt a call of God speaking to us letting us know that we had to move some things around and get refocused. It's not that we were doing anything bad, it's just that we were focusing on ourselves and not necessarily focusing on the kingdom. Boy, did God redirect us in a big way. Sometimes what happens is we put ourselves in these compromising positions pursuing things with only ourselves in mind. When God tells us to drop it we don't and we become stuck and God can't do what he wants to do with us. In our case we had to be able to hear God and realize if He was telling us to move then we had to do just that and trust that he was going to give us everything that we were wanting and more. So we dropped our business and here we are doing kingdom work for the one who created it all. The thing that we wouldn't have expected is the fact that we haven't felt like we dropped anything at all. In fact we've gained more than we ever have.
One of the most revealing things through this experience was the fact that we were giving more to our desires than we were to Christ. Studying on how to get better in one area but not studying our Word more. Building and networking as much as possible but not telling people about Christ as boldly as we were telling people about ourselves. The trick in this was that we never lost our faith, we just lost our focus. It's like when scripture talks about not being able to serve two masters; granted it's a very extreme example but revealing nonetheless. However, let us be clear there's nothing wrong with pursuing success. The definition of success is different for many people. For us, we were tired of living in a way where we were such a slave to time so we were pursuing all these different areas in order to gain success in time. Everything we learned in that journey we now have to take and put it to use for the good of the kingdom.
Getting back to the foundation of things was crucial for us in this. Before we got married we really began to have revelation and prophecy about where and how we would be used. It had been told to us several times the capacity in which we are called, but like so many, we took and received it and didn't really apply it. Maybe that was in the plan, maybe it was fear, or maybe it was just not taking it seriously, but it was there. We, as a people, have to keep a keen ear to these instances or we can miss what God has for us as well as for others through us.
When we got married we vowed that our marriage will be a true testament of Christ and his desire for marriage. And although we aren't perfect, we want to resemble the love of God and we want everyone to feel that when they see us. See that we spread God's love and that they have an idea of or a glimpse of what Christ has called marriage to be. We just wanted to be a ministry. It's just so crazy that through that He had to crash our plans. That's how it will always come about really. It's kind of dope that he did, but it's also an honor because He equips you and He calls you to do these things to be a blessing. God will always have far greater plans that we as humans could ever independently come up with.
With this platform, Refocused, it was put on Essece's heart shortly after He redirected us. When she got it, it made the most sense; especially with Anthony being a photographer. Think about it, whenever you're taking a picture of something and you want to get a clear image you have to refocus your lens sometimes. So, I think it's easy to get lost in today's culture and today's society. It is so easy to get confused or your vision to be blurred with what God's way is. Sometimes we you have to refocus your lens. With that our mission is to take everything that culture says is okay and "word it out" like our pastor says. So the purpose of Refocused is to re-establish and re-affirm God’s purpose for relationships, culture, and lifestyle by challenging the current norms with Word, wisdom, and love.
Through out the many episodes to come we're goin to be challenging a lot of things within society, and as we all know these things can get dicey sometimes and of course people can be offended. When we're coming with The Lord as the foundation we can only stand firmly on what He says. However, please know that everything we say is rooted in love and a desire to see individuals better off.
