Discipleship
Purpose: Seeking God's Will for Our LivesDiscussion
In my quiet time studies these past two weeks as I’ve continued reading through the Old Testament I cannot help but go back time and again to something I read at the beginning of Jeremiah, specifically Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you: Before you were born I sanctified you; And I ordained you a prophet to the nations.” It hit me immediately that God had a purpose for Jeremiah when He created him. What struck me even deeper is that God has a purpose for everything and everyone he creates. And He had that purpose in mind before each of us were created.
Do you realize the impact knowing that has? It means that none of us are here are accident – regardless of who your parents were, or weren’t. No matter your current circumstance you were created by God for a specific purpose. The question that has haunted me these past two weeks is what is mine? Have I been going through life believing the reason I’m here is because my parents had a baby? Is life simply a long series of events where chance and happenstance affect us all differently and then we die? Or, is it that God had a purpose in mind when He created each of us and if we seek Him with all our heart and soul He’ll not only reveal that purpose but he’ll actually accomplish that purpose in us?
I’ve come to realize even more this past two weeks just how precious each living human being is in God’s eyes and how greatly He wants to have a personal relationship with each of his creations. He wants to walk with us daily as he did Adam, as he did with Jeremiah. He wants to show us His love and the plans He has for us. In Jeremiah 29:11 God tells us He has plans for us, plans to prosper and not for harm, plans to give us a future and a hope. God wants us to glorify Him through our lives and He is anxious to make that happen.
As we as Elders seek God’s direction for the church at Southview we are considering this very point – that God had a purpose for each of us before we were born, and He has a purpose for the church at Southview which He has built on the shed blood of His Son Jesus. Before we can become the New Testament Church He desires us to be we need to first consider what God’s purpose is in our lives, so that His perfect will can work in and through them.
I commend to you the book of Jeremiah this week, and I challenge each of us to seek God’s purpose for our lives and for the church so that we may be prosperous in His Kingdom.
In Christ,
Wes
June 15, 2008