Who doesn’t want to live an extraordinary life? The author highlights that too often many of us settle for a lackluster life even though we long to discover the overarching purpose for our lives.The problem is we aren’t too sure how to discover our purpose. The author uses a combination of biblical stories, current events and as well as experiences from his life and ministry to illustrate his ideas.

Using the biblical story of Elijah as a backdrop, Dr. Robert Jeffress walks us through how we can go about living a truly extraordinary life. While I have heard the story of Elijah quite a few times the author managed to bring another angle to the story which I hadn’t thought about before. He uses the story of Elijah to help draw a parallel to help the reader discover the divine purpose that God has for your life while navigating through periods of waiting and really bad days to ultimately living out God’s purpose for your life.

Throughout the book he dissects seven secrets. While I wouldn’t necessarily call them secrets, the author shares with us seven steps towards transforming your life from ordinary to extraordinary. These seven steps are:

Secret 1: Discover Your Unique Purpose
Secret 2: Determine to Influence Your Culture
Secret 3: Wait on God’s Timing
Secret 4: Burn the Ships
Secret 5: Unleash the Power of Prayer
Secret 6: Learn How to Handle Bad Days
Secret 7: Live Life With the End in View

In discovering your unique purpose, the author teaches us that the beginning point for identifying our purpose should be grounded in saturating our minds with the commands of God. By spending time with God, you will gain a clear picture of what he expects of us. 1 Corinthians 10:31 reminds us that in whatever we do we should do it to the honor and glory of God. The author also provides actionable steps on how we can get a clearer understanding of our gifts.

I particularly enjoyed chapter three as it was a friendly reminder that sometimes God takes us through a waiting period to teach us something. It might not be clear while we are going through it but often when we look back we can truly say, yes God knew what he was doing. We might question God’s rational but rather than question we should trust that the same God who led you to the point where you are currently at, will lead you away from there when he is ready.

While I like the concept of the book and it had stories that helped to make the concepts easier to understand, a bit more in-depth details on how he found his overarching purpose would have been a welcomed addition.