Thursday, March 22, 2018

Purpose of God

Submitted by Lara Cook
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.  Jeremiah 29:11

What if the life you’re living right now is the life you are supposed to live, the life God planned for you. What if you there is no more?  Would you be happy about that?  It seems we spend so much of our lives trying to escape the life we have, as if that will give us the life we want, only to find out that what we thought we wanted was not actually what we want at all.  Sometimes it is because we are searching for our “purpose”, like we shop for the latest fashion trend.  In the process we can miss out on God’s purpose altogether.  “Finding your purpose” can be painted as a midlife scavenger hunt that we partake of when we don’t know why we are where we are or what to do next.  We don’t make the plan, God does.  We can ask Him to reveal our purpose to us, but we don’t draft our own purposes if we truly want to follow His plan.  We are desperate for something but we don’t know what.  We need change and we need meaning so we grasp and we pick something that sounds impressive. 

Sometimes the purpose God has for us is not glamorous. In fact, most often it is not.  That really hard, messy situation you are up to your elbows in is probably where you are supposed to be, and it’s not easy to break free and run.  God uses His people for the most difficult jobs because He has prepared us for this assignment in some way.  This purpose is usually two-fold. He is using you in some way for His plan, but He is also preparing you for the next step in His plan for you. Sometimes instead of feeling honored that He put us in this position, we feel baffled and confused and wonder what God is doing.  We may be doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing right now, but we don’t want to identify it as our “purpose”.  Fulfilling purposes are not always beautiful and neat times in our lives, but that doesn’t mean it will be that way forever.  We have many different purposes in our lifetime.  If you are in a difficult season with a challenging purpose, take heart in knowing that another season is coming and with it new purpose. 

It has been said, “Find your purpose and you will find your life”.  Truly, if you find your purpose, you will lose your life, because purpose involves letting go of how we think it should go.  Complete surrender to God’s plan is required to fulfill your purpose, and that means laying aside your desires in full pursuit of His.  Then you will find your life.


When God moves us out of our comfort zone — into places that are way bigger than us, places that are difficult, hard, painful, places that even hurt —this is a gift. We are being given a gift. These hard places give us the gift of intimately knowing God in ways that would never be possible in our comfort zones. –
Anne Voskamp

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