The word purpose means to make a plan and determined effort with a readiness of mind to take action and come to an intended conclusion. We see here that purpose has to be thought about in our minds and then, we have to be disciplined in our attempt to complete the goal that we’re looking for.

Before we discuss how purpose works, we have to discover, where did this desire for purpose in our lives come from? Solomon the King writes this vision that God gave him, when he says this in Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 “ to every thing there is a season and a purpose under heaven. ( Is submitted to heavens control and final authority. ) A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pick what was planted; a time to kill and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance; a time to throw stones and a time to gather them; a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to keep and a time to throw away; a time for tearing and a time for sewing; a time to speak and a time to be silent; a time to love and a time to hate; a time of war and a time of peace; What reward is there for the person that is doing all this fatiguing work ( or going constantly through these seasons.) I have seen the painful labor, concern and effort, which God has given to, the (sons of men) keeping him busy with all his duties or earthy chores. God has made everything beautiful in its time; He also has planted eternity in men’s heart and mind. (A divinely implanted sense of purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun, but only God can satisfy, yet no man in his own understanding will be able to figure out what God had in mind from His first thought until His plans will be completed.)”

Lets put this in modern day language. If we were to spend the time and give examples of all these activities, they would define all the things we encounter from life to our death. Where he states under the sun, this represents the every day activities of normal life. This is the environment we were subjected to live in when Adam gave up his protected environment of the Garden of Eden. It tells us in Genesis, that when God made Adam He breathed a healthy living beautiful soul into him. In that soul came the seed of purpose that all men were created with. Whether your a born again believer or not, we all have this need to express purpose in our lives.

There are some people that I have encountered that will not recognize this principle working in them. There are others who don’t know the Lord, but recognize that they have a need to function in a purpose and they have made up goals, with some measure of success. (Even though it’s been in their own understanding of what they thought success is supposed to be.) There are also born again Christians that I have spoken to and even though they’re saved, they have goals and purposes functioning in their lives that were never God’s intentions. This should not be so in the born again believer. We who are born again believers have the Holy Spirit living in us and He shows us our purposes according to His leading.

Somewhere along the line we never understood or forgot that, there is a higher purpose for us as God’s children that we need to function in. Too many of us have got caught up with this atmosphere of under the sun (meaning our daily earthly chores) with its timetables. Even though we live in these experiences, we must constantly be focusing in on the fact that, there is a higher calling for us. We have to be going about our Heavenly Fathers business on the earth. It’s God’s plan to make us successful. Our success’s and exposures to endless possibilities must have our whole understanding that, we were called to be a light for the Lord as we encounter opportunities to share the life of Christ with all the people we come into contact with. This has to be our ultimate purpose as we go through the seasons of our lives.

Now if this scripture says that purpose has to come into humble compliance under heaven then, it needs to be directed from that source and no other. Because of mans fall from grace. He created this concept of time that we see in this scripture, meaning under the sun. God lives in an environment of eternity and with Him there is no beginning or end or time periods. It was mans fall that created these seasons and times in his lives. Because of this condition God had to send Jesus to earth and enter the time zones of man. He experienced in His earthly flesh all these time periods. But His real purpose, which He never forgot, was to die on the cross for our sins. Well if you’re a child of God born again into His family. What is your purpose from heaven and why are you here?

By Jesus doing this it was to show us what His Heavenly Fathers purposes were for all of His creation. All of man born again or not has a choice by God to accept or ignore this concept. But no matter what ever life span or places that man roams, fulfillment will never come until we live in total submission to God’s will and purposes.

This scripture says “ the painful effort and concern which God has given to the (sons of man) has kept them occupied with their own interests with being busy.” All these seasons that we live in, can keep us so busy and by us putting our efforts in them as top priority, it allows us to miss God’s intended purposes for our lives. If you’re not a born again child of God, all you can look forward to is seasons of struggling in survival mode because you are a son of man. Meaning you had a mother and a father, but there is no eternal life in you. For us who are born again believers, we started out being a son of man, but since Jesus now lives in our heart, we have become sons and daughters of God. This statement and revelation is the meaning of all that life represents. I never get tired of acknowledging my thankfulness to the Lord for saving me.  Without Him there is no life.  He is the best.

11Cor 5:17 says, “when we became born again people. We became a new creature in Christ.” There is a life and death difference between being a son of man and then going on to become a son or daughter of God. There has to be a supernatural miracle that takes place in our being. We can’t blame God because of what man has done to mess up his life because, He may choose to not accept God’s mercy and grace. You have to go way out of your way to miss God’s love and grace, when God planted the seed of purpose in us, when He made us. You may ignore that seed of purpose in your life. But I believe God put it there to call us back to Him and make us recognize that, there is more to life then what we live in.

What really grieves me is when I encounter so many people living in survival mode. Just going about their daily lives working, trying to make ends meet. Trying to fit into a peer group and find someplace of belonging. Dealing with their sicknesses and struggles of acceptance. They may even be church people. Committed to a body of believers listening to a gospel that is peculiar only to their group of believers. This is called denominational teachings. This all sounds pretty good. Everybody in one accord. If anybody rocks the boat their out of line. Under all this nice front there is no real hunger for excellence at home and in the market places of life, where the rubber meats the road. No disciplined prayer life. No meditating on the word day and night. Just a casual tip toeing between kingdom living and the world trying to get by but, no real passion to walk in the inner circle with Jesus. This is living in survival mode, which is nothing more, then mediocrity.

When Jesus walked the planet even the people He came in contact with were amazed and made statements about Him. In Matthew 13:54-55 it says that, “ when Jesus went into the synagogue or (you may say the church meeting.) The people were amazed with wonderment at the wisdom and miraculous power He operated in. They said isn’t this the son of Mary and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph and Simon and Judas.” We see here that they knew a man called Jesus after His earthly flesh. But because He was under the anointing of His Heavenly Father there was a different aura about Him because He had come in the name of God to complete a higher purpose then to just have a trade of being a carpenter working in his earthly fathers carpentry shop.

If we do not recognize that as God’s children we have a higher calling like Jesus did then, I can understand why we live so far below our inheritance given to us by God the day we met Jesus. But to know that there is more to life and not seek after it has to mean that, we are living in some type of spiritual lethargy and need to be prayed for to be delivered and set free in our being.

This seed of purpose that God planted in us has His total endorsement and He is just waiting to water and nourish this seed if we will seek after Him. If we have a true desire within us to have God energize this seed, there is nothing we can’t achieve with His support. You might say that the seed of purpose is an extension of God Himself. I am assuming that if your reading our newsletter on a regular basis, it’s your intent to totally commit you life to Jesus Christ. Once we commit to Him, this seed begins to produce a hunger and thirsting after Him. We have to allow God to persuade us that His ways are better then us living in this survival mode time mentality.

Now for purpose to work, in Proverbs Chapter 2:6 it tells us that, we have to understand God’s plan and how to function in it. This plan falls into three categories, knowledge, wisdom and understanding. It says God gives skillful and Godly wisdom and from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding. Lets discuss these three terms. This word knowledge means, to know something through an acquaintance with someone. It also means to be instructed. First of all it has to be our intense goal in life to receive from God the knowledge of His ways of thinking. As we spend time in our every day travels, we need to start functioning in His purposes alone. The knowledge that He gives us in our spiritual ear has to be discussed in our thought life with Him, so we can be persuaded that His ways are better then ours. Scripture tells us if we are to submit and put purpose under His control, we have to allow ourselves to start functioning in a wisdom that is from heaven. This meaning that it’s only the Holy Spirit who can teach this. This type of wisdom makes us willing to listen to His reasoning and be willing to change and submit to the Holy Spirits leading. That’s how wisdom from God operates in our lives. We need to be spending more time talking to the Holy Spirit, because He is the one who will lead us into all truth about Jesus.

Before I go on let me say that I have used this phrase that, we need to be persuaded. Paul the Apostle in 1Timothy 1:12 says, “ I am not ashamed for I know and have knowledge of and am aquatinted with Jesus in whom I totally trust because, I have been totally persuaded, that the purpose He has entrusted to me and the commitment that I have given to Him to fulfill this purpose will endure until the day I see Him face to face.”

This word persuade in the Greek is peitho: meaning, to convince by argument, to bring peace or to be secure. I wonder if we in the body of Christ really recognize that, our own fallen nature or undisciplined soul has a will of it’s own and wants to do it’s own thing. Paul the Apostles life before he met Christ with all the passion he possessed went out in the name of God and killed born again Christians. After he got saved and his eyes were opened, he went through some argumentative prayer times in his passionate seeking of a new and anointed way of functioning in the power of the Holy Spirit. Meaning he debated with the Holy Spirit and had to repent or change his thinking and be retrained to God’s ways of doing things. His passion for God was what fueled his purpose. But the contents of his actions before He met Christ proved to bring nothing but havoc. Scripture tells us that he was lead for a season out into the wilderness (meaning this earthly atmosphere of seasons that we are living in.) One of these seasons was for a thirteen-year period by the Holy Spirit to be retrained and disciplined.

Why are so many people scared of a loving God who is our Father? He doesn’t have a tolerance level in His patience when we come to Him in our growing pains and growing’s for security in having our needs met. We still have a majority of people seeking Him for their physical and financial needs to be met. What is it going to take for us to grow up and seek Him just for the pure pleasure of Him reveling to us His great friendship and trust that; He put in us to do His bidding and to accomplish His purposes. If we are really going to understand God’s ways of dealing with our life issues, we must have this intense pursuit and tenacity to pursue our relationship with the Holy Spirit so; we can speak God’s wisdom out of our mouth under His promptings. What takes place is the same thing that happened when Jesus was born. The bible says that the word of God became flesh and Jesus lived among us on the earth, meaning that, Mary was impregnated by the Holy Spirit and Jesus was physically born. This is the same process that takes place in us as we live in this relationship with the Holy Spirit. The word becomes a part of our make up, because it is sown like a seed in our being.

Secondly this word wisdom means to be wise, intelligent and skillful based on a high degree of knowledge. This wisdom comes with our discernment, which is learned, from interacting with the Holy Spirit in meditating day and night in the word of God. As we read God’s word. The Holy Spirit mixes His thoughts with ours and we begin to hunger and seek after His advice in our decision making, in the seasons of our daily activities. The word of God tells us that, through trial and error we learn to know and trust that still small voice within us that says. Turn here or don’t turn there. So we see with out knowledge we have nothing to distinguish between our thoughts and the Holy Spirits thoughts. That’s why the word of God says, “ for a lack of knowledge my people perish.” Now as this process takes place we come to the third part, which is understanding.

Thirdly the word understanding means, that we come into agreement with God. Not only do we grow in our minds of God’s ways, but also we begin to experience an empathy and loving compassion for ourselves and  others.  In turn this gives our purpose meaning with intensity. It’s this process of understanding that secures and anchors our soul when the storms and seasons of life come. When we really understand it means that, our roots have become deep in our understanding of the great love God has for us. We can actually say with meaning that nothing can separate me from the love of God.

We said earlier that Paul had to be persuaded.  What was he persuaded about? He says it best in Romans 8:38-39 “ I am persuaded beyond doubt that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor impending threats, nor things to come, nor any kind of demonic powers, nor heights, nor depths, nor anything else that has been created will ever be able separate us from the love of God which we received when we received Christ Jesus.” How better can it be said? These things in this verse represent our battles in our seasons of life. This is the understanding we have to have with tunnel vision in seeking our eternal purpose in Christ. We must allow the Holy Spirit to give us the resolve and strength to complete the race set before us and run our coarse only as God shows it to us.