purpose

Rock climbers

Do We or Don’t We?

By / 3 minutes of reading / , ,

Some will look out at the ocean
But never set foot past the shore
While others set sail and never look back
And go where no man’s gone before
…
Anything’s possible if you have faith
Just keep your head up and stay in the race
Others before have known this is true
And now it’s time for you
To know anything’s possible, too

Gary Chapman, youtube.com

I love that song. It taps into a struggle we often go through in life; do we or don’t we? Sometimes we overthink a thing we know God wants us to do. At other times, we pray too little, seek no counsel, and throw around theologically inaccurate memes to whip up our human confidence while giving little attention to God’s will and our lack of effort to know it. Humans are a strange creation.

Anything is possible, but not all things are God’s will. Right now, I’m in my deer-in-the-headlights pose. It happens to me when God puts something in my hands to do, but I lack any natural ability to do it. Though I am in one of those problems right now, I keep reminding myself what the apostle Paul wrote:

“Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

2 Corinthians 12:8–10

The man Gideon had this same problem. Gideon was the poster child for weakness. Yet, God made him into a military leader for a battle to deliver the Israelites from the oppression of a neighboring country. Here is God’s first message to Gideon:

“Gideon son of Joash was threshing wheat at the bottom of a winepress to hide the grain from the Midianites. The angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!’”

Judges 6–8

God doesn’t see us the way we are. Rather, God sees us as how we will be when He steps into our story. We do not exist because of some mistake, some carnal act in the backseat of a car, or some foolishness. No, you and I exist for a divine reason. We exist to do some specific works that God planned before His Creation. God made a plan, and He is working His plan, and now it is your turn and mine. It’s time for us to do the things God created us to do.

You and I are part of God’s will that He planned for you before He created anything[1]. He isn’t going to let anyone or anything spoil His plan.

While writing this post, my heart has been changing. I have been frozen by what Christ Jesus has given me to do. But now, not so much. Writing this post has reminded my worried mind that I’ve been here before. Just as David said, “Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God.[2]” I pray the Holy Spirit also reminds you.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

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[1]: Ephesians 2:10 NIV – For we are God’s handiwork, created – Bible Gateway.
[2]: 1 Samuel 17:34–36 ESV – And David said unto Saul, Thy servant – Bible Gateway.

Do You Realize Who You Are?

By / 3 minutes of reading / , ,
Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/thorge-4613952/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3670674">Thorge</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3670674">Pixabay</a>
Image by Thorge from Pixabay

The lineage of God’s chosen people traces back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We know His promise came through Isaac even though Abraham had at least one other child. (Romans 9:7) But Isaac was the child of God’s promise. God told Abraham that: “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.” (Genesis 21:12 )

“This means that Abraham’s physical descendants are not necessarily children of God. Only the children of the promise are counted as Abraham’s children.”

Romans 9:8 NLT

Of the children of Abraham, it was Isaac that God chose. Then, of the children of Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, it was Jacob who God chose. And now, if you have received Christ as your beloved Savior, it is you that God has chosen, for you did not decide to live a Christian life by your intellect nor by some sense of family tradition.

Spiritual Awakening

“Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? (Galatians 3:2)” It was by faith. Only by the Holy Spirit’s call was your spirit awakened, and by faith, you received salvation. And, by the blood of Jesus, you were made right and reconciled to God, for these things are the will of the Father. For Jesus is the only Son of God:

begotten from the Father before all ages,
God from God,
Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made;

Nicene Creed

Therefore, you are a child of Abraham since you were chosen just like Isaac and Jacob. You can be confident that God called you for a purpose. We can confidently say that you are a child of the promise, and therefore, you have the full backing of Almighty God for your purpose in life.

But What Is My Purpose?

Now you may say, “I don’t see my purpose, or how can I find God’s purpose for me.” God is not playing a trick on you, but you must see with spiritual eyes. Look at what God has put in your hands to do; that is where you start. But growth only comes through your faithful actions.

Fake faith is foolish, but God grows us through Spirit-led faith. As the famous missionary Hudson Taylor said, “Unless there is an element of risk, there is no need for faith.”

Called To Be An Ox

Look and see what God has already placed in your hands. Do that work by faith in God. Working in harmony with Almighty God will equip you for more wondrous works. God’s will is for you to grow and be productive. We know Jesus said that seeds that fall on good soil produce a crop. (Matthew 13:8) And we know God wants us to be productive from the wisdom found in Proverbs 14:4: “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.”

I pray that you have the strength of an ox!

Image by Thorge from Pixabay

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Bible Bible Study Hand Assign Read Christian

Your Holy Calling

By / 2 minutes of reading / , , ,

I admit that I’m a magnet for phrases. I have no explanation; it just happens. One that is stuck in my brain is from the movie “The Blues Brothers.” It’s when, in unison, John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd yell, “We’re on a mission from God!” Well, I have good news. If you have received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you’re on a mission from God. How wonderful is that!

who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began,”

2 Timothy 1:9 emphasis added

Before Creation

When I read this passage of Scripture, my spirit stirred in me. Before anything existed, God decided a holy calling for you and me. Our callings were before His creation and are part of His Creation. We each received our holy calling in Jesus Christ only after becoming a child of God.

To add some perspective:

“Astronomers have imaged a beam of matter and antimatter that is 40 trillion miles long with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The record-breaking beam is powered by a pulsar, a rapidly rotating collapsed star with a strong magnetic field.”

Chandra X-Ray Observatory

This forty trillion miles long antimatter is but a speck in the cosmos that our God created. Yet, He thought of you and gave you a holy calling before He created any part of our universe. That’s how important God’s call upon your life is.

Our Divine Purpose

In Jesus, we each have a divine purpose. It may manifest itself in some profound visible way or profound but hardly be noticed way. We must not covet anyone else’s calling. That’s insulting to God. It’s like saying we don’t want a gift someone gives us. So today, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal even more of His calling upon your life; God is the God of abundance. There is always more there than you or I were initially aware of.

Irrevocable

God will never take back the call He places on you. We know this from Romans 11:29: “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.” This should be a great encouragement to every child of God. Too often, we give up on ourselves, but God doesn’t. He knows the end from the beginning, and He always completes what He starts. Trust in Jesus, talk with our Father, listen to the Holy Spirit. And remember, where God guides, He provides.

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Man praying

Jesus Cares About Our Faith

By / 2 minutes of reading / ,

As I was reading my Bible this morning, I was again reminded of the importance Jesus placed on faith. Our personal salvation begins with the grace given to us through the faith given to us (Romans 12:3). And without faith, it is impossible to please God. Through faith, we gain access to God (Hebrews 11:6).

“When faith ceases to pray, it ceases to live.”

– A.C. Dixon

Jesus Cares About Our Faith

Through faith, our prayers do the impossible because God comes into the need through faith (Mark 6:5). Nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37). To understand just how much importance Jesus places on faith, He said, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”  (Mark 11:24) The prayer of faith aligns us with the inescapable will of God, and by God’s will, mountains are moved. (Matthew 21:21). This doesn’t mean faith changes God’s will, but it does mean that God wants us to use the faith He has given us; faith gives us the ear of God (Matthew 7:7).

So important is faith that Jesus said to Peter, “but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail…”  (Luke 22:32). At a time that would test the Apostle Peter perhaps more than any other time, the concern of Jesus for Peter was that Peter’s “faith may not fail.” It was Peter’s faith that needed guarding. And when Jesus spoke of His return to Earth after His ascension, Christ’s first concern was, “I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8)”

The Purpose of Faith

The purpose of the faith of a believer is to enable us to enter into the work God is doing.

By faith, the Spirit of Truth leads us into the unknown. We enter by the name of a Man we’ve not seen, whose greatness we cannot comprehend, to do a work that is not ours, by abilities we don’t possess, so our Father may glorify His One and Only Son.

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Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash

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