“Your time at this company is done.”
While this wasn’t something anyone around me knew, God had just told me point blank that everything was about to change.
It was so clear, so strong, and so completely terrifying.
At the time, I was a corporate trainer by day and a budding fiction author by night. It was a normal day at the office, and I’d been sitting in a conference room, putting the finishing touches on a large-scale project that would be just pushed out the door to tens of thousands of associates across the corporation. I wasn’t thinking about God or gathering closer to Him in that moment, and I certainly wasn’t considering changing who I was or the career I’d built.
Jesus was calling out to this worker, busy in her boat, fishing for the accolades of the world. He was summoning me to experience a completely different story with Him.
After that initial moment there was a slow build and tons of prayer, and that small flicker of a flame God put in my heart, to step out and truly follow Him, caught fire. My husband and I made the decision to leave the lives we had built up on our own and step out on a new path—it was like walking a road you never thought you’d travel, trusting God to lead, even when you didn’t have all the answers or roadmap in front of you.
I resigned from my job and the next day I went into my closet, gathered up all my best suits and I drove them to the nearest donation center to give every stitch away. It was my way of saying we’ve made a decision and there is no turning back.
On day two, I reached out to church and joined a women’s Bible study for the first time. I gathered with sisters around a table— each one with a different story of stepping-out and a version of a pivotal change-everything moment they’d experienced. It was affirming to find that every one of them shared my same desire to know Jesus more deeply.
The Bible teacher in that study spoke with passion for the Word that was both inspiring and convicting. As we watched I could tell that God had grabbed ahold of her heart and she was studying the Bible with a fervency I’d never had. It was that fervency I saw that showed me I needed more out of my Bible study. Years of shallow growth was finally catching up to my heart.
It was because of this desire that I discovered verse mapping. Verse mapping is a method of studying the historical context, transliteration, connotation and theological framework of a verse in the Bible. That’s the textbook answer.
But in short? It’s serious study. It’s taking a verse and researching everything you can about it—the process of finding the framework of the teaching content gave purpose and understanding to my time in the Bible.
Verse mapping allowed me to stop sleepwalking through my faith and actually own it. I didn’t want to just need God when I was in a tight spot—I wanted Him to be front and center in my life every day. I wanted to really understand what I was reading in the Bible and opened to confidence to go verse by verse, and do just that.
Leaving behind my longtime career was hard, but it drew me down the story road that led to my heart’s calling. It also helped me develop a stronger, more authentic relationship with my Savior by giving me the time, and equipping me to truly study His Word. That’s worth more than any success than the world could offer.
I don’t know where you are in your faith journey but if God’s put something in your heart, if He’s calling you to step out of the boat and follow Him… then take that step. It may seem scary. It may feel uncomfortable and unknown for a time. But in the midst of it, God will never fail you. He’ll never leave you to walk your story road alone, because He can already see a greater plan than we could have imagined for ourselves.
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Kristy Cambron is an award-winning author of Christian fiction, including her bestselling debut “The Butterfly and the Violin,” and an author of Bible studies, including the Verse Mapping series. She is a passionate storyteller who travels to speak at ministry events across the country, encouraging women to experience a deeper life in the Word through verse mapping.