I wrote in an earlier letter (Purpose Vol. 1, Issue 10) that I wasn’t big on recipes or seven step strategies for spiritual success. Well, I’m not. But until now I may have been a little philosophical or “big picture” in my approach to understanding our real purpose and fulfilling the true potential God has given each of us.
In order to put the subject in a practical form that you can relate to your life. I’ve identified some aspects of God’s specific purpose for your life and how He works to fulfill that purpose. And, wouldn’t you know, there were seven of them. So, in the tradition of eating my words, we’ll discuss, over the next seven weeks, seven aspects of identifying and living in the specific purpose God has planned for each of our lives.
Thankfully, we’re clear of formulating a recipe and these seven aspects of purpose certainly aren’t strategies for spiritual success that I or anyone else have created. They’re just facets of our lives and His character in which we can begin to see how He weaves the tapestry of His eternal purpose in each of us.
Each week we’ll discuss one of these seven aspects. We won’t deal with them in order of importance or chronology; although there is one that is by far, first and most important … but that won’t come until week three. Today and next week we’ll explore two components of your own make-up and circumstance that reveals God’s specific and eternal intentions toward you.
Week three will be the biggee; without it, nothing else matters, with it everything else makes perfect sense. Weeks four, five and six cover the interaction necessary between you and God to make His purpose in your life a reality. Week seven refers back to God’s character and the perspective you must have regarding your own existence that makes flowing in His purpose possible.
We touched on some of these aspects already, a few we covered in some depth. In the next seven weeks we’ll present each aspect so that at the end of our discussion, on week eight we can put them all together to see how your purpose, more accurately - His purpose for you, is worked out in every fiber of your existence and every facet of His character.
Week 1: How You’re Built
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).
If God has a purpose for you specifically in the time and space of creation and if He considered you personally enough to give you your own unique personality and abilities, wouldn’t it also make sense that His purpose in your existence and His consideration of your unique personality and abilities may be a matched set? In short, you’ve been made to order.
God didn’t create you in such a way as to be incapable or disinterested in what He wants you to accomplish in your life. At times it may seem that what He wants you to do is beyond your capabilities or outside of your interests, but that’s just a part of growing and shaping process each of us must undergo to become useful to His purpose.
Who you are; your personality, your strengths and weaknesses, your likes and dislikes - those traits the make you distinctly you - are yours and only yours for a purpose. God knew who you would be long before you were ever born and He knew what He had in store for you as well. Who you are as a person is matched to what it is He has for you to accomplish.
I’m not talking about the bad habits you’ve picked up or the inherited rebellion of the old sin nature left to you by great-grandpa Adam. I’m talking about the character traits, natural talents, abilities and limitations you were born with; what you inherited from mom and dad. Yup, God knew who mom and dad would be too. He knew that you’d be a mix of their chromosomes and He knew how the mix would turn out.
Psychologists pretty much agree that who we are is a result of nature - who mom, dad, grandpa and grandma were - and nurture, how we were raised; our life experience. We’ll talk about the nurture aspect of all this next week.
Mom and dad each contributed twenty-three chromosomes to your genetic make-up. Chromosomes are rod-like structures made up of thousands of genes. Genes are made up of complex DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) molecules. DNA, we learned in high school biology, is the recipe that makes you, you. How you came out is kind of like shaking dice from a Yahtzee cup. Dominant genes push ahead, recessive genes shrink back and a lot of genes just kind of average out.
Little Suzie may have mom’s eyes, dad’s temperament and Grandpa Jim’s knack for math. It all depends on whether there’s a win, loose or draw between each of the twenty-three chromosome pairings. That’s why you are the way you are … as far as your first birth is concerned.
God also has in store for you a second set of chromosomes, a spiritual set, as a result of your second birth. When you accepted Christ you underwent a second birth, a birth of the spirit (see Purpose Volume 1, Issue 3). You don’t inherit spiritual chromosome pairs from mom and dad in your spiritual birth; but like your physical birth, who you are spiritually is the result of your spiritual nature and nurture. Your spiritual nurture, we’ll cover next week.
What makes up your spiritual nature are the gifts and the measure of faith you were endowed with as a result of your spiritual birth. “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith” (Romans 12:6).
The physical traits - strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes - you inherited from your parents aren’t any more of an accident in God’s plan than the spiritual traits you received as a result of your spiritual birth. He made you physically to fulfill His purpose just like He made you spiritually to fulfill His purpose.
I’m not talking about just the good stuff either. Your weaknesses and dislikes have been given to you to serve His purpose as well. Too often we think of our strengths as a blessing and our weaknesses as a curse. We want to surround ourselves with people and things we like and eliminate from our lives everything and everyone we dislike. That’s man’s economy and man’s plan; not God’s.
God has a purpose for each of your strengths and has instilled in you natural preferences, those types of people and things you’re naturally attracted to. But He’s also allowed your weaknesses and your natural dislikes to be an integral part of His purpose. The apostle Paul knew too well that God chose to use his weakness as well as his strength. Paul carried with him what he called, “… a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” Three times Paul pled with God to remove this weakness from his life. God’s answer to Paul showed His purpose. “… My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Even those people and things to which you have a natural aversion or find unlovely have their purpose in God’s plan for your life. Jesus taught, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that” (Luke 6:32-33).
There is nothing in your natural make-up, those traits you inherited as a result of your natural birth, or in your spiritual make-up, the gifts and proportion of faith you received as a result of your second birth that isn’t a part of God’s perfect will and plan for your life.
Your strengths, the things you’re really good at, glorify God because He gave them to you. Your natural talents and abilities were given to you with a purpose for their use in mind. Do you really think God would have given you an eye for beauty and a hand with the natural dexterity to translate the pictures in your mind onto a palette painted for the eyes of others if He didn’t mean for you to share it as part of His purpose? Do you think he gave you a knack for business and leadership if He didn’t want you to use it in His eternal purpose?
How about your love of animals? You’re nuts about anything with fur. Did you ever ask yourself, or ask Him, why? It’s the same if you have a deep natural love for music, nature, or architecture. What about your love for children or the empathy for those who are hurting? Did God give you those natural loves without a purpose in mind?
It’s easy for us to see our talents, abilities and interests as gifts from God, to be used for His purpose. But what about our shortcomings and handicaps? What about those natural aversions, the things and people we just can’t seem to gather up any sort of natural affection for? Are our weaknesses and dislikes a part of God’s purpose as well?
When you’re focused on your purpose the most important thing to remember is that your purpose is really His purpose for your existence. God’s purpose for man is to glorify Himself. His purpose for your existence is that you may glorify Him. You were designed to do that with every aspect of your being, even those you sometimes wish you didn’t have.
*****
Moses was a man full of insecurities. When God assigned him the task of delivering the Israelites from Egypt, Moses made every excuse possible to get out of the job and begged God to send someone else.
Peter couldn’t help running his mouth before engaging his brain. He was known as the disciple with the foot shaped mouth. He was weak and wishy-washy. One moment he was ready to kill anyone who meant harm to Jesus, in the next he denied even knowing Him.
Paul had a weakness so cruel he called it a “messenger from Satan.”
*****
God put your weaknesses there for a purpose, for His purpose. When your weaknesses become tools for God’s glory it’s obvious to others that some greater hand is at work than your own.
Just like your weaknesses, when God turns your natural aversions around to His glory the world takes notice. Saul was a Pharisee. He was a Jew’s Jew. Anything gentile including the Gentiles themselves were unclean and objects of disdain. That is, until he met Jesus on the Damascus road; the resurrected Messiah to the Jews and the Gentiles. God turned Saul’s natural aversion into Paul’s mission of being the apostle to the Gentiles.
How you’re built, the gifts and handicaps you’ve been given, your likes and dislikes - all things that bundled together make you, you - are there for a purpose. The spiritual gifts God has given to you and the measure of faith allotted to you are sufficient to accomplish the purpose God put you here for.
Don’t think too highly of your talents and abilities; they were given as a gift, to use in His purpose. Don’t cling too tightly to the people, traditions and things you love; they are blessings on loan for His purpose. Don’t mourn your shortcomings or be disappointed in your handicaps; they may be your greatest gift in His economy. And be careful about what and who you disdain; they may be the very palette on which God paints His purpose in your life.
*****
Don’t miss next week. We’ll talk about nurture – how what happens to you prepares you for His purpose.
