New Creation Prayers (12)

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Good morning Divine Perspective Readers, I believe we had a fun filled weekend? God has called us unto Glory and Virtue, and we are meant to be partakers of His divine nature here on earth. Let’s not wait to get to heaven before we begin to express the God kind of life in every situation of our lives. Jesus was never perturbed about any circumstance whatsoever. Whether it was lack, or death, or sickness, He simply superimposed His authority over such circumstances… That’s what glory and virtue look like. We are still on the New Creation Prayers and it’s been very insightful, it’s fast becoming one of my best series so far. Many times I hear a lot of people ask me questions like “how do I know for sure what God’s purpose for my life is?” But I believe the quest to discover our God ordained purposes starts with this understanding… “God is much more interested and passionate about me fulfilling His purpose for my life than I could ever possibly be”. Sometimes we just think and act like we are the ones with “plenty” passion and urgency about fulfilling purpose. As though God needs some incentives from us in order to be faster with revealing our destiny to us. We must understand that God is far much more passionate about us fulfilling His call upon our lives than we could ever desire. No painting is more eager than the painter in getting the painting to the exhibition. We are God’s workmanship and God is sooo willing and passionate about exposing us to the world. He wants to display His many sided wisdom and dexterity through us to the world.

2 Tim 1:9 (KJV) Who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own Purpose and Grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.

So if God is more passionate about me fulfilling purpose than I could ever be, why is it so hard for Him to just tell me what to do? It’s simple, the reason is because there is a preconceived notion about what we actually want to do, and we are looking in the wrong places for God’s leading. Our desires have been shaped by what we see on the tv, hear from friends, family and preachers alike. We want our purpose to be something we like, something we enjoy doing, something we have talent for, so somehow we have “boxed” God into a cage of options. We list out our talents, strengths and abilities and figure out the range of our options. This automatically shuts God out, He doesn’t work where human factors are being considered. Pay attention to the verse we put up in 2 Tim 1:9. Bible says He did not call us according to our works, in other words, God did not consider our unique abilities and giftings (which He gave us) as the only basis for His calling for our lives.

1 Cor 1:26(KJV) For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: 27 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty; 28 And those base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to nought things that are: 29 That no flesh may glory in His presence.

This might not be the popular trend of thoughts on the subject of purpose, but it’s fundamental for the believer to understand on how God ordained His purpose for our lives to be run. We will look into the place of our personality, abilities and talents in the next post, but we just understand this first. Because no matter how far God takes us, we must never think it was about our talents and giftings. He wants it such that all the glory reverts to Him. Thank God He didn’t choose Moses based on eloquence, then Aaron would been the obvious choice. Moses really then had to depend on God since he had no ability of his own. He called us basically according to His own purpose and His own grace. He is the Director not our talents. From these verses, we see the resume of those GOD works with; the weak, the ignoble, the unassuming, etc, if you belong to that category, then rejoice… God is interested in using you. Are your talents, giftings and abilities connected to your purpose? Most definitely, but are they the decider of your purpose? Certainly not. I realise that the most gifted people are about the most confused when it comes to discovering God’s call for their lives and it’s understandably so, they have a lot of things they can do, but don’t know which is the grand purpose. Here’s my bit on this;

Romans 11:29 (KJV) For the gifts and the calling of God are without repentance.

Many folks have taken this verse out of context and induced many meanings from it, one of which is that once God gives a gift He can not retrieve it… That is not the context in which Paul was writing here, He was referring directly to the house of Israel who had been irrevocably called by God. I’m not saying the inferred meanings are not true, but we must learn to stick to the context of scriptures, so we don’t get conned…Hehehe. Context is King. I made a quick deduction from this verse however… if you check the verse properly, you will realise that “gift” is pluralised while “calling” isn’t. I’m heading somewhere, please follow me closely. Our calling is One, like we discovered in the last post, we need to be distinct in order to be clear and impactful, we can’t be about many things and be as effective in all areas. However we might have so many gifts to accompany the calling but they do not replace the calling. Our calling is One, our gifts could be diverse. If we use our gifts as cursor to find our calling, we will get confused, we must seek our calling first as though we had no gift. That is, we seek our calling in God, blinding our minds to the preconception our gifts may offer. Our calling is just one thing, but the beautiful thing is that, nothing fuses ALL our gifts into one productive unit like our calling would. Your calling will maximise your life. Just like the palm tree, when we’re in the place of our call, every part of our lives becomes useful and purposeful, we are not clueless, confused or caged. Discovering God’s purpose for your life is one of the most liberating experiences you will ever have, stress will fly out of your life, fulfillment and satisfaction will take abode in you. Greed, comparison, jealousy, envy and every evil tendency will lose its hold over you. You will know that the marking scheme of your life is different from others and you will mind your own business fulfilling God’s plan for your life. Notice that 2Tim1:9 makes it clear that immediately after getting saved, being about the father’s business in fuelling His purpose for our lives is the next most important step in the right direction. There’s really no time to waste. The best time to discover God’s purpose for your life was “before” you were formed in your mother’s womb, the next best time is NOW. How do you do that? You seek the caller, so you know His designation. Seek Him with all your heart, take your mind off your gifts and talents and focus on the one who called you. Don’t be so fixated on the tools (talents) that you lose sight of the assignment. He’s got bigger dreams for you than your mind can capture and He’s more than willing to let you on in on them as long as you’re yielded to Him. It’s the easiest thing to do if you do it right. God is a gentle man, He won’t undo your thoughts and capture them to reveal His purpose to you, you’ve got to yield to Him.

Eph 1:18 (KJV) The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of His calling…

You see why it’s such a powerful prayer? Your provision is connected to your calling, at the very least, if you get this right, your petitions will reduce drastically. If all God wanted for your life is for you to get saved and be with Him in heaven forever, then He wouldn’t have bothered sending you down here in the first place, which was a risk. He would risk the possibility of you rejecting Him after landing on earth because you’ve got your free will. Being in heaven with Him would have guaranteed your abiding with Him forever… But His purpose for you was strong enough to deserve such a risk. If all He wanted was for you to keep His company in heaven, then every believer ought to be killed immediately after getting saved so they can get to heaven on time. We’re here on earth to carry out His agenda and not ours. That’s why the prayer Jesus taught us to pray is “thy will be done on earth (through us), as it is in heaven”. We are going to go to a step further in our discussion on The Hope Of his Calling in our next post. Have a purposeful week ahead… 🙂