Divine Opportunities & Purpose

Introduction

Our lives matter to God. There is a purpose behind your existence…

Ephesians 2: 10 tells us that there are good works which God prepared in advance for us to do. Those good works are God’s plan and purpose for our lives; what He created us to do. God doesn’t wait for you to be an adult before He starts thinking about what you can do for Him or how you can impact lives. He doesn’t even wait until the day you become born again to decide what He wants to use you to do. David, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Paul all discovered that before they were born, God had a plan and purpose for their lives. In Psalm 139: 13, David said “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb”. In verse 16, he went on to say “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”. So David discovered that long before he was even born, God had a plan for His life.

God Himself specifically told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:4-5 that “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”.

Isaiah and Paul also got to understood that God had put in place a plan for their lives even before they were born. In Isaiah 49:1, Isaiah said “Before I was born the Lord called me; from my birth he has made mention of my name”. While Paul in Galatians 1:15 said God set him apart from birth to preach Christ to the Gentiles. That purpose did not change even when men like Paul were persecuting Christians and going in a direction completely different from what God originally planned for His life.

These were men who understood that they were created for a purpose and that understanding greatly affected how they spent their time here on earth.

God’s Purpose for Our Lives Is Actually the Reason Why We Are Alive Today

I don’t know how many of us have bothered to ask about the circumstances leading to our birth. For some of us, it’s a wonder we are alive today because we have been through situations that ordinarily should have taken our lives. We have had some real near death experiences but somehow, through it all, God preserved our lives. Some people had actually tried at some point to even take their lives, but nothing happened. The overdose of drugs and various suicide attempts failed. There are even some of us that before we gave our lives to Christ, we were involved in all kinds of wild and dangerous things. You were drunk and drove into an electric pole, yet came out of that accident without even a scratch. God has been preserving our lives, saving us again and again from all kinds of dangers and attacks because of His plan and purpose for our lives. So it’s not about you, that you are safety conscious person, or you know how to pray and fast very well, or because it has always been your desire to start your own business at 40 that’s why God preserved you to see your 40 birthday. It’s all about God and His purpose for our lives (2 Timothy 1:9). We are alive today because of the divine purpose behind our existence.

Moses should have died when Pharaoh gave a law that all Hebrew children should be killed. But somehow for three months while so many boys were being killed, nothing happened to Moses. It wasn’t because his family did a pretty good job of hiding him that was why nothing happened to Moses. Babies will naturally cry and make noise so how can you keep a child from crying so no one will hear the child’s voice? It was because the eyes of the Egyptians were covered from seeing Moses, their hands were kept from touching him, that was why Moses was kept safe (Exodus 1:15 – Exodus 2:3). Even for the period he was kept in a basket on the Nile, no harm came to him. The basket didn’t sink. While floating on the River Nile, a river with snakes, crocodiles, mosquitoes and other insects, nothing happened to Moses. These things weren’t ordinary. It was God taking special care and attention to see that nothing happened to Moses because He had a purpose for Moses’ life which He wanted to see actualized. I pray that every attempt to end your life before the fulfillment of God’s purpose for your life will be frustrated.

The Two-Fold Nature of God’s Purpose

In Jeremiah 29:11 God says “For I know the plans I have for you”. So God has plans for our lives. He has a purpose for our lives. There is the general purpose which applies to everyone generally. This general purpose is that we all have a genuine salvation experience and we grow to become disciples. Reading the Word, praying regularly, knowing God; having a close relationship with God, worshipping the Lord on a regular basis and bringing others to Christ all fall within the ambit of discipleship. Then there is the specific purpose. That is the specific assignment, work, or ministry God has sent you to do here on earth. It is the calling of God upon your life.