Knowing Your Purpose In Life

I see wasted years in my life; days I’ll never get back, time that could have been spent a lot more productively. I carry some emotional, spiritual, and physical scars that probably wouldn’t be there if I had surrendered to His plan earlier. Way worse – others carry scars of my making, that wouldn’t be there if I had surrendered to His plan earlier.

God’s grace is sufficient even for that. He heals the wounds, self-inflicted and inflicted on others. He takes the tragedies and wasted time and stupid things I’ve done – things that were not in His purpose for me – and by His grace turns them to His purpose. When I’m finally ready to surrender to Him, he begins healing and restoring the mess I’ve made. He leaves some of the scars though; as reminders of what I can accomplish in my own strength.

Looking back, I can see how He has taken the wasted time and stupid stuff and big mistakes and turned them into preparation for what He wants me to be.

A million years ago, in my first semester in college, I signed up as a journalism major. That lasted ten weeks. When the first semester was finished, so was my career as a journalist. That was a long time ago and I’ve had a lot of “careers” since then. Roto-Rooter man, sign maker, carpet cleaner, pig farmer (yup, pig farmer), factory worker, salesman, businessman and now publisher. Funny how things come back around. The point is that, instinctively, I knew what I was supposed to do, what I had been created for, but I wasn’t ready and the time hadn’t come for what God wanted me to do.

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Moses was born to deliver the Jews from bondage in Egypt. It was obvious. As a baby his life was miraculously spared at a time when Pharaoh had decreed that all Hebrew baby boys be thrown into the Nile River. Moses’ mother couldn’t do that. She constructed a little boat and set baby Moses afloat on the Nile. Technically, she had complied with Pharaoh’s decree.

Miraculously Moses’ little boat drifted past Pharaoh’s daughter as she was bathing in the river. Pharaoh’s daughter saw the baby and a little warm spot opened in her heart. She adopted Moses as her own son.

It seemed that God’s plan had worked perfectly. Moses life was saved and he was installed in the house of Pharaoh, as his grandson. God couldn’t have orchestrated things more perfectly! With Moses as a part of Pharaoh’s family he would be in the perfect position to answer the plight of his Hebrew brothers.

Chances are Moses knew it too. It was no secret to him that he was a Hebrew and it was no secret that his destiny had been guessed at as the deliverer of his people. Why would God place him in this position of power unless He meant to use it to aid His people?

The Children of Israel had been in Egypt for four hundred years. By this time stories of the land promised to great-great grandfather Jacob had probably faded into myth. At least ten generations of Israel’s children had been born in Egypt. And they thrived. The family of Jacob, a mere seventy souls when they first arrived in Egypt, had become a people of two million strong. The flourishing of the Hebrews didn’t escape the notice of the Egyptians. To keep them in their place the Egyptians made the Hebrews their slaves and to keep their numbers in check they decreed that all Hebrew boys were to be killed at birth.