Day 40 ~ The Purpose Driven Life ~ Living with Purpose
Which type of verse in the Bible speaks to you?
Don, my brother in Christ likes to quote “We are spiritual beings having a temporary earth experience.” The question in Rick Warren’s book “The Purpose Driven Life” is what is our purpose? Over these 40 days that have gone by as if in a dream I will come away with some realities and revelations about God rather than having found some unique identity of what I am.
My identity, and your identity can only be fully realised and lived out in the full and complete identification with Christ’s indwelling Holy Spirit.
Possibly, answering the question of what I am built for is somewhat easier, than God’s question “What is God’s purpose with me?”
With all the problems that mankind creates and his ineffectiveness, inability, to live according to God’s will it really begs the question as to why does God bother at all?
A question that has dogged me for ages was “How is man created in the image of God?” (Genesis 1:27) The revelation which sticks in my mind, which I only discovered during this period, was that God’s ability to create not only in singular fashion but in absolute diverse design, always exploring extremes within those designs is a reflection of mankind’s godly nature. Just look at the number of models of cars that we have. (See also Day 22)
You would think that if you designed a beetle, 10 or 20 designs of the beetle would be sufficient to serve the natural world of mother Earth. Wikipedia* talks about approximately 400,000 species.
God shouts out at man through creation in such abundant diversity that it can only be by intelligent design. How can we look at this abundant diverse earth with all its species and not see God’s hand paint a tabloid far greater than the wildest dreams of man. **** (Job 12:7-10)
Creation was God’s first missionary.
“For what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship, so that men are without excuse.” Romans 1:19-20 (BSB) **
God has empowered Us the “Human race”
He created us in His image and gave us some of His attributes. The ability to create, not only that but in abundant diversity. Our creative powers are such a natural ability of the human kind that we do not even realise when we are using them.
In Deuteronomy 8:17-20 we are reminded of our obligation to God’s graceful impartation of His abilities on us. With it follows a stark warning that we should never take lightly.
“Otherwise, you may say in your heart, ‘My power and the strength of my hand made me this wealth.’
“But you shall remember the LORD your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day.
“It shall come about if you ever forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish.
“Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so you shall perish; because you would not listen to the voice of the LORD your God.” Deuteronomy 8:17-19 (NASB)
From Genesis to Revelations this warning is echoed for man to fathom. There are only two types of verses in the Bible, those echoed in resonance by the Heart of the converted and those to be faced by the deniers of God’s supremacy. Jesus in his ministry talked more about Hell than about heaven is not true by most accounts. Do not let that deter you from the fact that he mentioned the Judgment and it’s result without any shadow of a doubt. (5*)
The evidence speaks for itself, God is the creator of you and I.
We have been imparted with limited and confined God’ly abilities.
We have free will to choose our expression of life now and afterwards.
So if you asked me “What do you think is God’s purpose with our existence on this earth?”. My reaction would be “It is to find out what spirit I display now in this life to determine my place and possible existence in the afterlife.”
“What does this afterlife that you talk about look like?”
Jesus says, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and welcome you into My presence, so that you also may be where I am.” John 14:3 (BSB)
“I really do not care, it does not matter one iota to me. I think our minds are too small to comprehend the full extent of what will happen when we have passed through this crucible of life. I trust God in the fullest sense that he knows better than I, and his intentions are nothing but good towards me. I know I’m going to enjoy it, and I will stop at nothing to have my name written in bold in the book of life. I throw myself fully on Christ.” (Revelations 3:5) (Revelations 20:15) (Revelations 21:27) (Revelations 5:9-13)
My purpose is to seek the will of God.
My purpose is to be sensitive to what he wants me to do.
And that is my purpose!
From what I see, we have a really short time to choose our alliances. I would not bet my future on anything, or anyone, other than the one and only man in History that defied death through His own resurrection. Let alone the countless miracles he performed in front of witness upon witness. What I witnessed daily in the presence of God and his children leaves me no doubt as to who He really is. That is the secret I want everybody to know.
Further reading; http://www.purposedriven.com/day40/
Reference
Full exposition of how we are created in the Image of God; https://pfojc.org/day-22-we-his-offspring-live-our-being-in-him/
“*” – Beetle – Wikipedia – ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beetle
“**” Experiencing God through His creation. ; http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/activistfaith/2012/06/6-bible-verses-on-experiencing-god-through-his-creation-2.html
“****” – God’s diverse creation outstrips the Universe by the simple bacteria a Million Times;
“An Inordinate Fondness for Bacteria? Where is most DNA found, and what does it code for? The human intestinal tract contains more than ten times as many bacterial cells than the total number of human cells in the whole body. The total number of bacteria on earth is more than a billion times as large as the number of stars in our universe. According to data in a wonderful table in a recent review article (Kyrpides 2009), if one were to take all the bacterial viruses on the earth, and stretch them out end-to-end, they would be about a hundred million light years in length — a thousand times the length of the Milky Way galaxy. And there is perhaps a thousand times as much bacterial DNA on the planet as viral DNA, meaning that the total length of bacterial DNA on earth is a million times the length of the Milky Way galaxy. So if a theologian were to ask me what I could say about the Creator, based on my knowledge of how DNA is distributed, I would likely paraphrase of the response JBS Haldane and reply, “God must have an inordinate fondness for bacteria.” (http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/CBS/courses/genomics_course/Meyer_review_NCSE2010.pdf)
“5*” – Jesus speaks more about Hell than about Heaven – Good article on this – http://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2015/01/did-jesus-speak-more-about-hell-than-about-heaven/
Is your name written in the book of life? – ; http://www.allaboutgod.com/book-of-life.htm