In my walk through life, as I’m sure there is in everyone’s journey, I have discovered that every part of your past has had a part in shaping you for today. Are there things that I would’ve liked to avoid? Of course, but as I have been a student of the Bible for the past eleven years, every wobble and misstep has a purpose. God used so many things in people’s lives to bring about something good and glorious for each of their lives and Himself as well. He did it in the book of Genesis and He did it all the way through the Bible, right down to the book of Revelation.
Some of you might remind me that most of the book of Revelation hasn’t happened yet. Hang on, it’s coming. Every detail and every curse that is foretold in it will come to pass and I don’t believe we will have to wait very long to see it. Most of you who have denied the truth of God’s Word will see its Truth come to light when the church is taken away from the Earth. There will be many “explanations” for why people vanished but the only one that will be based on fact is the one found in the Bible. God’s facts, not mankind’s ideas or fabrications.
Each part of your life and mine has been a part that shaped each of us into the person that is here today. You read on social media about “what would you tell your younger self if you could”, even knowing what I know today there isn’t anything that I could tell my younger self that would make any real difference. Because if anything was changed in my past life, I wouldn’t be the same person that I am now. If I had stayed in the Air Force my future would be entirely different from what it is. My family would have been different, and my outlook on the world would be altered from what it is now if that one change had taken place.
God knows the person that we are and when He has a plan for your life in the future, He will make sure that you are that person at the appointed time.
You might ask “Does that mean that I’m not in control of my destiny?”. Well…the answer is more of a yes and no when it comes to your destiny. If God has a plan for your life but you choose not to listen to His voice and go off doing your own thing then the answer is yes, you are in control of your own destiny. But if you have given your heart to Jesus and then decide to go your own way for a while, then God will bring you back in line one way or another. When I say “given your heart to Jesus”, I mean truly repenting and turning away from your old life and following Him, at least for a while. Totally refusing to listen spiritually to the prompting of the Holy Spirit and going your own way is rebelling the way that Satan did. That is where freedom of choice comes into play.
God gave the angels and humanity the freedom to choose because He never wanted us, all of us, to be obedient because we didn’t have a choice. He wanted us to love Him and choose to obey Him because we loved Him because He loved each of us first, even before we decided to love and follow Him.
As human beings, I think our ability to enjoy life is very important to each of us. How we go about that is different for each of us, sometimes it is culturally different even in the same geographical area. We have different beliefs and cultures in every group of people in a city or a community and in the state or in the nation where we live. It is what makes us human. God created each of us in the womb to be special and to be specifically the person that He knows we can be. Sometimes it takes us many years to find that purpose because until we find our life in Him there is no way to know our true purpose.
Humanity has found a reason not to follow God’s ways and it seems that we are moving away from Him at a terrific pace. People don’t want to hear about your beliefs and few will tolerate it if you say “I’ll be praying for you”. It seems that the past few years, since the pandemic began, have taken most of our hope from us. The virus that we’ve had to deal with has killed many people, most of whom already had some serious health issues before they got the covid virus, so it made a bad situation worse. Most of the research shows that the virus by itself was about as deadly as the flu. But if you had an underlying condition, such as diabetes, the virus would increase your mortality because it would make your condition deadly.
This is the pestilence that was prophesied in the Bible long ago. Although it didn’t specifically name it we have so many other diseases like cancers and auto-immune disorders and heart disease and COVID-19 just makes all of those even more deadly than they are. What is my point? Our purpose in this life that God granted to each of us is to find our Savior and find our purpose in Him. Then live in that purpose until we are called home to be with Him. I pray that everyone who reads this will seek out their true purpose in Jesus Christ and live in it until that day!
The increase of his house shall depart, And his goods shall flow away in the day of his wrath. This is the portion of a wicked man from God, And the heritage appointed unto him by God. Job 20:28-29 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/job.20.28-29.KJV
But, what about those who don’t follow God and seem to be blessed beyond measure? God may be testing them to see if they will acknowledge Him and the blessings that they have. It is also possible that the devil is making sure that they get their “wants” in this life so that they might not seek God for His blessings. There is always a struggle in this world between our needs and our ideas of what we “need” to have. One of those is an actual need and the other is just something that we think we need.
When you are following God’s precepts and His wisdom, He will supply all of your real needs if you are depending on Him for your provision. But…for many people, Christians or not, truly depending on God for your daily needs is not as easy as it sounds. Most people don’t wake up thanking God for giving them another day to be in this world. Many don’t even give any thought to Him until something in their life goes wrong or turns in a direction that they weren’t expecting. Then many of them blame Him for whatever is going wrong!
If you don’t know God or Jesus as your Savior, why would you blame Him for whatever is going wrong in your life? He doesn’t punish you for things that aren’t going your way just because you haven’t heard His voice in your spirit/heart that you need Him. Many times that small voice may not show up in your “spiritual ears” until He gives you a seed of faith that will allow you to hear it and sometimes it takes a bad diagnosis or some other problem in your life that will get your attention!
When you hear Him and decide that you need Him as your Savior, I’m loathed to tell you this but this is when the devil puts a target on you and your life. Why? Because now you have gone over to the enemy’s camp. While you are living your life without Jesus as your Savior, the devil doesn’t really care what you do. But when you give your heart and your life to Him then you become a problem in his eyes. You will have trouble in the world even after you’ve given your heart to Jesus and possibly even more than you had before but now you have Him to lean on for strength and protection.
She was into witchcraft until she got to college and her Christian roommate asked her to go to a sermon. Then something wonderful happened!
When we hear the call of Jesus in our hearts and choose to follow Him our faith is the drip that becomes, or should become, a roar in our lives. God uses the Holy Spirit to touch our hearts and plant a seed that will grow into a new creation. It is our responsibility to help that seed to grow by watering it with the Living Water of God’s Word.
Some people tend toward watering it occasionally, like once or twice every year. Some who feel God leading them into a deeper relationship will water it a few times every month. Those who demand to be His disciples and want an intimate relationship with Him will water that seed every day regardless of what is going on in their lives. On the drive to work, while they are at work they will listen to Bible readings when they can. They will listen to praise and worship music and be in the spirit of worship on their way home.
I’m sure there are some different people who fit into a category in between those that I spoke about in the paragraph above and there are a few who dive deeper into the Scriptures than the disciples I spoke about as well. My point is that we, as Christian believers, fall into all sorts of slots and categories. Some are deeply involved in the mission field, some teach classes at the church, some lead Bible study sessions/classes at their homes and then there are some who have received Jesus and are confused about their role so they don’t do anything with it except attend church…sometimes.
There were people in all of these areas even in the early church but not many. Why do I say this? Because, most of the people in that early church just fifty to one hundred years after Jesus was taken up to Heaven were Jewish converts to Christianity. They had the Scriptures that were taught in their synagogues and had learned to have faith in God from their history and the prophets and had been persuaded that their Messiah was Jesus Christ! While it was true that there were also many pagans who had come to know Jesus as their Savior, a good percentage of the early church were, like Paul, converts from Judaism. Their faith was built on the Old Testament and what they had heard from the disciples and Paul himself. Most of them had unshakable faith.
The church today has become more “flexible” in their teachings and in their faith which can be a good thing but in some areas of the “message” flexibility can be a bad thing. Because it can lead many to believe that they can live like a Christian and not commit deeply to it. Being “like a Christian” is like being “sorta pregnant”, it doesn’t work that way! You either are or you’re not!
The Living Message of Christ 