Finding Your Purpose

Romans 8:28
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to [his] purpose.

Finding Your Purpose

God has a calling and purpose for each life that He creates. If we live in a perversion of our purpose then we will miss our destiny and our highest calling in Christ. God’s desire is to see you fulfill your destiny in concert with Him, but the enemy’s goal is to thwart and pervert the purpose God has for you. When we simply live according to our flesh then we have missed the greater calling and purpose we have been created for. We have settled for the husk when we could have had the corn.
What is your destiny, your calling and your purpose? Some people just know what it is that they are here for and to many others it may be unclear. Often our destiny is our discovery through our relationship with Christ and a living out of our lives in Him to find what it is He has for our life and what part we play in the grand view of things. Often it is tied to the passion God has put in our heart.
Never despise or berate what God has created you to be. We may not see much in ourselves, but we are just looking at the outline and the skeleton of God’s potential to work in and through us. In our weakness He is made strong. When Hebrews 11:33-34 recounts the men of faith is says, “Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, Quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens.” Never insult the Lord by underestimating your potential in Him. Often we are “nothing” that He might be the “more”. He honors His lesser members whose faith and trust are in their God. You and I are important to God’s kingdom purpose. We may not see how or why, but it is important that we press into Him until we discover who we are in Christ and the function that we have. Then do it with all of the passion of your heart in the fear and trust of God. Allow the Spirit to direct and use you in your purpose. You may already be living in your purpose and not even realize it. Our purpose is not to bring us glory, but to glorify the One who created us for it. If we can do that, then we are honoring the Lord by walking in our destiny.
You are important in the economy and kingdom of God. You have a purpose, find it and live fervently in it to the glory and praise of the Lord.

Blessings,
#kent

Advertisement

Lifted from Unworthiness

Lifted from Unworthiness

John 10:10-11
When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee?
She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

There are many who won’t come to Christ because of strong feelings of inadequacy, sin and failure in their lives. Condemnation and judgments, from themselves or others, have left them feeling like, for them; there is no hope, no salvation or redemption. Perhaps, if you are that person, you have had a “past”. There has been sin that you don’t think God would ever forgive you of, because you might not even be able to forgive yourself. You may be on a self destructive course, because you feel there is no hope, no more purpose to life and no more reason to live.
There is a word of hope and life for that person today. Jesus tells us in John 3:16-17 the plan of God for us, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.” What we must never let the devil rob from us is that no matter how deep our sin, God’s love goes deeper still. His purpose is not to condemn and judge because you missed it, His purpose is to restore you to life, to lift you up from your unworthiness and cloth you with His garments worthiness and righteousness.
What a beautiful example of this we have in the story where the woman was caught in the act of adultery. The Law, the Commandments said she should die. Her accusers surrounded her and demanded Jesus judge and condemn her. Jesus, with just a few words of divine wisdom showed that mercy is greater than the law, forgiveness is more precious than judgment. When He told them, “Let the one that is without sin cast the first stone”, He allowed their own conscience to judge themselves rather than the woman. Now instead of the finger pointing at the adulterous woman, they were confronted with the other three fingers pointing back at their own lives. None had the right to judge and condemn, but Christ. As our passage for today says, there was not a man that found place to condemn her based on their own righteousness. The mercy and love of God speaks to her and says, “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.” That is what He is speaking to you and me today. The Lord’s mission was not to judge us for our sins, but to deliver us out of them, to forgive us and set us free from the power of sin.
If there are things in your life that you haven’t been able to forgive yourself of, if there are things others won’t forgive you of; then know that there is one greater than your conscience. There is one greater than the judgments of yourself and others. It is the blood of Jesus that paid that price and there is no sin so deep and dark that the blood can’t cover it if it is simply brought to the Lord in sincere repentance. The Lord wants to put purpose, joy and hope back into your life today. He wants to lift you out of that place of despondency and despair that you have been living in. He is the doorway to that new life of righteousness that we can only have as we put on Christ Jesus by faith. And when you bring that sin to the altar and you lay it before Him in true repentance then do as the woman was told, “go your way and sin no more.” Don’t take that trespass up again and keep condemning yourself with it once it is repented of. Then you grieve the Holy Spirit, because you have not really released it and left it under the blood. As far as God is concerned that sin is cast as far as the East is from the West. 1 John 1:9 tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us [our] sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
He will wipe the slate clean for you today if you will let Him. With your repentance you no longer have a “past” that was filled with sin and failure; you have a future to no longer be a slave to sin, but rather a slave of righteousness as we live our lives, by the power of God unto obedience to Him. He has lifted you out of your unworthiness and clothed you with His righteousness.

Blessings,
#kent

His Wisdoms

His Wisdoms
Job 26:14
Lo, these [are] parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him? but the thunder of his power who can understand?

Never stop being passionate about who you are.
You were created for a distinct reason and purpose
And your purpose can only be fully revealed by the One who made you.
Your gifts and the talents He gave you can be used in many ways,
But they are best used and humanity best served by using them His way.
He has created you unique, special and one of a kind.
There will never be another you and that is why you are highly collectable.
God sees you as His treasure and desires to purify you into your most refined state.
How often do we insult our Maker by despising and disliking what He has made?
If you have weaknesses they can be a blessing,
They keep you constantly dependent and reliant on the One who is your strength.
Not even the best of us are complete in ourselves.
If we become an island, then we become disconnected and disjointed.
We fail to give out and take in the breath of other human lives.
Just like breathing our lives are a series of interactions of giving out and taking in;
It is the breath of life, blessings and struggles of other human beings.
As we breathe God in through our spirit we exhale Him out through our souls.
His people feeding and breathing in His life are the breath of life to the world they touch and live in.
Hope is based not on what we see, but on what we believe.
Faith is the wings that allows hope to fly into our reality.
Love binds the universe.
While hate destroys and tears asunder,
Love is the creative force that brings light out of darkness;
That overcomes and triumphs over all that is evil.
Love is the blood flow of God’s heart and it courses throughout His creation,
The Cross is the doorway through which the blood of Jesus, His Love flows.
God’s heart has been broken by our sin, but His blood poured out to cover them.
Because we are washed in the blood we are the instruments of His love.
He is our destiny.
His life is our reality.
His love is incomprehensible.

Blessings,
#kent

When God is Silent and Understanding Fails (Part 1)

 

When God is Silent and Understanding Fails

(Part 1) 

Job 23:8-17

8 “But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. 9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. 10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. 11 My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside. 12 I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread. 13 “But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? He does whatever he pleases. 14 He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store. 15 That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him. 16 God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. 17 Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.”

 

I ask God’s wisdom and counsel today in what we share.  There are times in our lives when we know and trust God with our heart, but we question Him with our mind, intellect and understanding.  We try and reason how God is, who God is and how He should act and work in our lives.  Life’s circumstances and trials can sometimes be very crushing and cruel.  They leave us in the wake of disasters that our natural reasoning struggles to understand and comprehend in the light of what we know about God.  The question is often asked and disputed, “If you are a loving and just God, how could you let this happen?”  Why do bad things happen to good people?  Many depart from their faith through the course of life, because God has disappointed them and failed to live up their expectations.  Sometimes when we are desperate for answers or a Word, God is silent.   

The book of Job has long been a source of comfort and strength to those of us who find ourselves in these places in life.  It is not uncommon for any of us at times in our lives to have these hard questions, because God does not always respond to us the way we think that He should.  About the time we think we have God all figured out and put in the box of our finite understanding, He blows the lid off of our box and defies our understanding.  God has defined Himself by certain characteristics and attributes, but His thoughts and ways are so beyond ours that they are unable to be corralled by human or conventional wisdom.  Some of you who are reading this now have struggled in your faith and perhaps have faltered because you couldn’t grasp why something happened as it did.  You prayed and you felt God didn’t answer.  You tried to walk in faith and you didn’t feel that God came through.  You may have trusted God and you felt He let you down or cried out to Him and it seemed He wasn’t there.  We may have said in our hearts, God, are you really real?  If You are who You say you are, then where are You, why have You abandoned me in my hour of need?  In times past we were so sure of His reality and we had experienced His presence, the joy of salvation and the precious power of the Holy Spirit.  Now our world has turned upside down and God seems nowhere to be found.  In the discourse of Job 29:1-6, “Job continued his discourse: 2 “How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, 3 when his lamp shone upon my head and by his light I walked through darkness! 4 Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, 5 when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me, 6 when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil.”  Has that ever been the cry of our heart from the hardship and trials we have experienced?  Many of us, like Job, have searched for the answers that could bring comfort, consolation and satisfy our dejected soul.  In these times and through these monumental trials, what is our heart attitude toward God?  Can we still maintain our trust in God’s integrity and righteousness, or will we forsake and curse our God and turn away from our faith?  When the fires of hell are brought to bear upon our faith, when we can no longer with the natural eye behold the evidence of God, but only see the devastation of the enemy in our midst through death, sickness, poverty or affliction can we maintain our integrity and faith toward God?  Sometimes the fire of God will try and test our hearts in the ways that blessings and answered prayers never will.  It is easy to love and serve God when all is well, when we are prospering, healthy, wealthy and wise.  It is easy when we worship and sense God’s presence, favor and blessing, but what about when all of that is withdrawn?  Can you still trust Him and hold fast to Him?

 

Blessings,

kent

Spiritual Water

John 4:13-14

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” 

 

Spiritual Water

 

The setting here is Jesus sitting at Jacob’s well and speaking to this natural woman of Samaria.  Jesus speaks a parable or metaphor that takes her natural needs and transcends them to a spiritual plane.  Here He is taking the essential need that we all have for water, which is a basic compound of life and showing us through this woman that He has something to give us where we will never thirst again.  This woman, like most of us, being naturally minded is still trying to comprehend this truth with the natural mind.  It becomes obvious that Jesus isn’t speaking about giving her some magical natural fluid where she will never experience natural thirst again, but He wants to give her the spiritual water of His life where she will experience having all that she ever needs and will see that all of her needs are met in Him.  Jesus makes this obvious when He tells her to go and bring her husband.  She responds in John 4:17, “I have no husband,” she replied.”  Jesus then says, “”You are right when you say you have no husband. 18The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” Like this woman, many of us go through life searching for the thing, that person, that experience or whatever it is that will fulfill us.  We are looking for what will give us our sense of purpose and being.  We can keep drinking from the natural wells of this world, but we will always thirst again.  Jesus is trying to communicate to this woman that I am the water that you need. When you drink of Me you are drinking of the eternal water that flows out of the throne of God.  In Me you can be satisfied and fulfilled. What begins as a drink will become in you a spring of water welling up to eternal life.  

Many of us have found this truth and have drank of this living water.  Some of us neglect and take for granted the dynamic power and life that is in what we have drank.  We become complacent and again turn our attentions to natural things.  This is a time that we want to be drinking deeply of Him.  We are His springs of living water that are coming forth throughout the earth.   We are His wells of life giving water that can refresh others with this living water.  Every day opportunities present themselves to share life.  Are we seizing those moments and offering the living water to those that are thirsting and searching? We are His springs, but we mustn’t allow ourselves to be a spring shut up and a fountain sealed.  With love and compassion let us give those a drink who are thirsting.  Let us share with them the living water, so that they may never thirst again.  

 

Blessings,

kent

When God is Silent and Understanding Fails (Part 1)

When God is Silent and Understanding Fails
(Part 1)

Job 23:8-17
8 “But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him. 9 When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. 10 But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. 11 My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside. 12 I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread. 13 “But he stands alone, and who can oppose him? He does whatever he pleases. 14 He carries out his decree against me, and many such plans he still has in store. 15 That is why I am terrified before him; when I think of all this, I fear him. 16 God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. 17 Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.”

I ask God’s wisdom and counsel today in what we share. There are times in our lives when we know and trust God with our heart, but we question Him with our mind, intellect and understanding. We try and reason how God is, who God is and how He should act and work in our lives. Life’s circumstances and trials can sometimes be very crushing and cruel. They leave us in the wake of disasters that our natural reasoning struggles to understand and comprehend in the light of what we know about God. The question is often asked and disputed, “If you are a loving and just God, how could you let this happen?” Why do bad things happen to good people? Many depart from their faith through the course of life, because God has disappointed them and failed to live up their expectations. Sometimes when we are desperate for answers or a Word, God is silent.
The book of Job has long been a source of comfort and strength to those of us who find ourselves in these places in life. It is not uncommon for any of us at times in our lives to have these hard questions, because God does not always respond to us the way we think that He should. About the time we think we have God all figured out and put in the box of our finite understanding, He blows the lid off of our box and defies our understanding. God has defined Himself by certain characteristics and attributes, but His thoughts and ways are so beyond ours that they are unable to be corralled by human or conventional wisdom. Some of you who are reading this now have struggled in your faith and perhaps have faltered because you couldn’t grasp why something happened as it did. You prayed and you felt God didn’t answer. You tried to walk in faith and you didn’t feel that God came through. You may have trusted God and you felt He let you down or cried out to Him and it seemed He wasn’t there. We may have said in our hearts, God, are you really real? If You are who You say you are, then where are You, why have You abandoned me in my hour of need? In times past we were so sure of His reality and we had experienced His presence, the joy of salvation and the precious power of the Holy Spirit. Now our world has turned upside down and God seems nowhere to be found. In the discourse of Job 29:1-6, “1 Job continued his discourse: 2 “How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, 3 when his lamp shone upon my head and by his light I walked through darkness! 4 Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, 5 when the Almighty was still with me and my children were around me, 6 when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil.” Has that ever been the cry of our heart from the hardship and trials we have experienced? Many of us, like Job, have searched for the answers that could bring comfort, consolation and satisfy our dejected soul. In these times and through these monumental trials, what is our heart attitude toward God? Can we still maintain our trust in God’s integrity and righteousness, or will we forsake and curse our God and turn away from our faith? When the fires of hell are brought to bear upon our faith, when we can no longer with the natural eye behold the evidence of God, but only see the devastation of the enemy in our midst through death, sickness, poverty or affliction can we maintain our integrity and faith toward God? Sometimes the fire of God will try and test our hearts in the ways that blessings and answered prayers never will. It is easy to love and serve God when all is well, when we are prospering, healthy, wealthy and wise. It is easy when we worship and sense God’s presence, favor and blessing, but what about when all of that is withdrawn? Can you still trust Him and hold fast to Him?

Blessings,
kent

The Labor of Love

The Labor of Love

Galatians 4:19
My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you,

A woman and prospective mother endures all of the discomforts and demands of pregnancy for the joy and the hope that she carries within her. Then comes the day of the birthing, which without modern medicine is on the extreme of pain, discomfort and tremendous laboring. Yet she will endure all of that, not only once, but often, again and again for the joy of the life that it brings forth. Out of all that pain, discomfort and labor a miracle is brought forth. The miracle of a newborn life, formed in the image of its maker and its parents. This was Paul’s analogy in describing what it was to Him to birth Christ in others. It wasn’t just about telling them about Jesus and having them come to the altar and pray the sinner’s prayer. That may have been where it began, but certainly not where it ended. That was only the conception. The process of Christ’s life being formed in these former Gentiles and Jews was a long process of intense prayer and intercession, teaching and counseling, living before them the example of Christ and by the power of the Holy Spirit, forming the likeness of Christ in them. Far too often, after Paul had poured out His heart and soul in love and instruction to these new converts to Christ, he would experience the heartbreak of them turning aside to another doctrine, or becoming caught up again in legalism or allowing sin to come again and pervert the purity of their faith. No one knows like a parent, the heartbreak you feel when your child turns away from the path of righteousness and understanding that you have laid before him or her. Slowly, patiently, repetitiously you taught your children from infancy, through childhood, puberty and into adulthood. You sought to instill your belief system and core values into them. All that you valued and hold dear, you tried to impart to them. You continually prayed for them and when they were younger you prayed with them to help them establish a relationship with their God and yours.
Oh, the sting and the heartbreak you felt if at some point they rejected your values, the truths you held dear, and made choices in another direction. You may not only have prayed for them, but pleaded with them and reasoned with them to help them to see and repent from the error of their ways.
This principle is true when discipling and pouring out your life so that Christ might be formed in others. Often it is those ones that so loved you and would have done anything for you that now take on a different spirit. Now they despise and reject you because of the truth you are trying to speak into them. In Galatians 4:16 Paul says, “Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” Often truth is no longer our friend, or the messenger who bears it, when it goes in the face of what we want to believe and the direction we want to go. As rebellious and as otherwise directed as some may become, the love of God compels the travail of love that seeks to love them and bring them back into the truth and right fellowship of who they are in Christ. It does not cease its travail until again Christ is formed in them.
We can all thank God for parents, teachers, pastors, mentors, friends and those ones God has placed in our lives to help establish and form Christ in us. Many of us can look back at times we may have erred or lost our way and yet these ones the Lord set in our lives did not forsake us, or reject us. They prayed for us, they may have tried to counsel with and speak the truth into our lives, but they continued to love us even when we rejected and were perhaps hateful with them. They continued to demonstrate the tenacious love of God for us that ‘it is not God’s will that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance’ (2 Peter 3:9).
Someone has labored over your life today so that Christ might be formed in you. Someone is caring and praying for you even in those times you may have slipped back or turned another direction. It is the Spirit of Christ in us that causes us to travail as Paul did. Sometimes the source of deeper inner groanings and utterances are birthed of the Spirit and not in the understanding of man. God’s desire for each one of us is not just for us to have a religious understanding of who God is. It is that the revelation of “Christ in you” is formed, birthed and established in you so that we would no longer live and function out of natural understanding and desire, but out of the mind, will, love and heart of the Christ that indwells us and of whose nature we now are. We all are the labor of His love.

Blessings,
kent

Faith

Hebrews 12:1
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Faith

Faith taps the aquifers of heaven’s blessings.
It is the light switch which illuminates the spirit,
It is the spiritual eyes seeing what natural ones can not.
It is the belief that supercedes the reason.
It is what brings promises into reality.
It is the confidence that only trust can bring.
It has the strength to stand when others give up.
Even our faith is a gift from God, lest we should boast
Through it we perceive, know and receive Spirit Life.

Hope stands ready to receive all that faith brings.

Blessings,
kent