This one thing!    PURPOSE

Greetings to you dear reader, If you have been following this blog you will agree with me that God is at work and He expects you to play your part. The Bible says in John 9:4”I must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day. The night is coming, when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world."  Everyone was created for a PURPOSE and you have to discover who you are and what you are called to fulfill on earth but many times we fail to transform the communities we live in because we lack the knowledge. The word of God says in Hosea 6vs 4 "My people perish for lack of knowledge", and that the knowledge I believe you and me need oh dear reader. 

I have a habit of reading a lot of books and when I say books I don't mean academic books which are full of theories and formulae. I am not discouraging them though because we all came from that background, and in my reading I have come across a lot of stuff that I believe you and me need, for us to be able to transform our surroundings. I previously mentioned purpose and it is this purpose that gives you direction, but exactly how do you know your purpose. Pastor Rick Warren in his book, The Purpose Driven Life had this to say, "It's not about you. The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were placed on this planet, you must begin with God. You were born by his purpose and for his purpose. The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That's because we typically begin at the wrong starting point-ourselves. We ask self-centered questions like what do I want to be? What should I do with my life? What are my goals, my ambitions, and my dreams for my future? But focusing on ourselves will never reveal our life's purpose. The Bible says, "It is God who directs the lives of his creatures; everyone's life is in his power”    People are wandering like lost sheep that has no shepherd because hey have tried many things to discover who they are but to know avail. The greatest pit that most people including you and me dear reader, is trying to change our surroundings without changing ourselves first.  Mahatma Gandhi once said that, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.”  We must be the change we want to see in the world, my Pastor Dr. Mutungamiri always says ASK NOT WHAT THE CHURCH CAN DO FOR YOU BUT RATHER ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR THE CHURCH.  

If you change yourself you will change your world, if you change how you think then you will change how you feel and what actions you take. And so the world around you will change. Not only because you are now viewing your environment through new lenses of thoughts and emotions but also because the change within can allow you to take action in ways you wouldn't have – or maybe even have thought about – while stuck in your old thought patterns. Romans 12:1, "Therefore I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what is the good, well-pleasing, and perfect will of God".  The problem with changing your outer world without changing yourself is that you will still be you when you reach that change you have been striving for. You will still have your flaws, anger, negativity, self-sabotaging tendencies intact.

And so in this new situation you will still not find what you hoped for since your mind is still seeping with that negative stuff. And if you get more without having some insight into and distance from your ego it may grow more powerful. Since your ego loves to divide things, to find enemies and to create separation it may start to try to create even more problems and conflicts in your life and world. 

I think I have to define what PURPOSE means for us to understand, the Webster’s dictionary defines purpose as “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists” It also means the same as aim, goal, object, intent, end. The purpose is the root of why things happens the way they do. If we fail to discover purpose we are surely lost and will struggle the rest of our lives.

The bible says in Ecclesiastes 3v1 “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose” 

Clarke on Bible commentary says “God by his providence governs the world, and has determined particular things and operations to particular times. In those times such things may be done with propriety and success; but if we neglect the appointed seasons, we sin against this providence, and become the authors of our own distresses.

God has given to man that portion of duration called Time; the space in which all the operations of nature, of animals, and intellectual beings, are carried on; but while nature is steady in its course, and animals faithful to their instincts, man devotes it to a great variety of PURPOSES; but very frequently to that for which God never made time, space, or opportunity. And all we can say, when an evil deed is done, is, there was a time in which it was done, though God never made it for that purpose.

To say any farther on this subject is needless, as the words themselves give in general their own meaning. The Jews, it is true, see in these times and seasons all the events of their own nation, from the birth of Abraham to the present times; and as to fathers and their followers, they see all the events and states of the Christian Church in them!

It is worthy of remark, that in all this list there are but two things which may be said to be done generally by the disposal of God, and in which men can have but little influence: the time of birth, and the time of death. But all the others are left to the option of man, though God continues to overrule them by his providence”.

The purpose of every man is outlined in the Word of God in Colossians 1v16, “For by him all things were created, in the heavens and on the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through him, and for him” We are all created by God and for God but we spend all the days of our lives trying to figure out why we were created-our purpose. I like what the bible says in Jeremiah 1vs 5 “…I am your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me to the nations" [CEV]. God knew you and I way before our birth , he had a purpose for us to be on earth, like I said earlier on that we were created for HIM we should look no further to discover ourselves. God is the author and finisher of our faith and he knows exactly what we want and desire but a lot of people have gone around everywhere trying to discover themselves, trying to change people but they themselves do not know about themselves.

The moment you discover that you were created by God for Him then you can have a new beginning and it requires knowing God personally, having an intimate relationship with Him. I read a lot of books like I mentioned about discovering my purpose and the suggestion that were there were very brilliant but unfortunately they couldn’t work for me. I want you to take an example of an Apple IPad, the inventors of that phone are the ones who knows the good, the bad and WHY they developed a phone like that. Those guys did not just dump the product on the market for people to use it but they did a research through their research and development and they saw a gap or situation that needed a solution they came up with the product. Nothing is new dear reader, they copied from God because God created the heavens and the earth and darkness was upon the face of the deep and God said let there be light. This is interesting, God saw a situation that needed a solution, wait! It doesn’t end there, the bible says behold it was good and God then saw another situation and this one now needed Him to be there and he created you and me in His likeness after Him to fulfill his purpose on the earth. The Lord’s Prayer says … “let thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” so our purpose is to do His will on earth as it is in heaven.

To be continued……