A Note To My Church: Will We Embrace Our Destiny?

It is exciting to see the great outpouring of God's blessings on our church here in Montreal, but it is God who is doing it. It is great to see old friends renewing relationships and new souls coming to the Lord, but it is God who is doing it. It is great to see revival taking root in God's children and the freedom that is being given to the Spirit to move in our hearts, but it is God who is doing it. Unless he calls us we cannot answer. Unless he invites us in, we cannot go. Unless he seeks us we would never desire to seek him. So we rejoice in his love, goodness, joy and blessings. It is a wonderful thing to serve him. But now what?

Do we just sit back and hope there are more blessings? After all, it is God who is doing it.

When God rescued Israel from Egypt and called them his people, his nation, his children, he also put a structure in place so he could glorify himself through them. When God rescued us sinners from slavery and called us his people, his nation, his children, he also put a structure in place so he could glorify himself through us. It is called the Church, the Body of Christ, of which we are functioning members, called to a specific purpose. It is time to walk fully in this function.

Each of us has a destiny to fulfill and the last thing we want to do is fail to enter into it. King Solomon had a great destiny but failed to walk in it. 1 Chronicles 17 has a recording of the destiny God had planned for David's son:

I’ll choose one of your sons to be king when you reach the end of your life and are buried beside your ancestors. I’ll make him a strong ruler, and no one will be able to take his kingdom away from him. He will be the one to build a temple for me. I will be like a father to him, and he will be like a son to me. I will never put an end to my agreement with him, as I put an end to my agreement with Saul, who was king before you. I will make sure that your son and his descendants will rule my people and my kingdom forever. (1 Chronicles 17:11-14)

Now God kept his promise to David about always having a son on the throne but note what he said about Solomon: "I will be like a father to him, and he will be like a son to me." What an incredible promise and Solomon started off well in it. God gave him wisdom to be a great King. He subdued all his enemies. There was peace in the land and Solomon had a great relationship with God. But Solomon got distracted. He allowed his head to be filled with other people's ideas and opinions. He lost sight of his destiny, of his relationship with God. He lost his purpose, not as king, but as a child of God.

It is possible for us to walk in a shadow of our responsibility and miss our destiny. It is possible to go through all the motions, use the right vocabulary, to look the part but fail in the most important thing; our relationship with God. Our destiny is for him to be our Father and we his children. If that is in place and our greatest desire is to love him with our entire being, then everything else about our destiny will fall in place. Obedience becomes an easy thing, and his equipping for his chosen task for us flows without fail.

In our church we must submit ourselves to the truth of what Jesus taught: Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him. The first part is all about relationship, living only through Jesus and denying our selfish motives and desires; living his will and his purpose. The second is to step into our calling, responsibility, task, purpose. We have to take it up, bear it, operate in it, embrace it. The last part is to follow Jesus'example, our teacher, the first born of the many who would follow (you and me). This is where we need to go, to become, our destiny, which is great and glorious because it is how Jesus will be glorified through us. No one is unimportant. No one is permitted to be a spectator. No one gets to decide for themselves. No one gets to retire.

It is time for us to accept and understand the structure God has put in for the Church, to allow him to reveal our place in it. It is all laid out for us, to accept and to grow in it. The question is church, will we embrace our destiny?

Employing A Weed Whacker To My Life

Your life was meant for something more than what you have allowed it to become. I think you already know that. I think you already know you are not living what God has planned for you. I am not referring to what you do for a living but the condition of your heart and the lack of depth in your relationships. Most of us are surface dwellers but we were created to be people of the depths and people of the wind. Remember this from Jesus:

The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)

Does this not speak of freedom to you? Not freedom to do as you wish but freedom in our obedience to Jesus. Nothing to cage us in or hold us back. You can't bottle a hurricane or can a tornado. You can't even package the delight of a summer breeze. Nothing holds the wind back and nothing prevents it from coming and going. That is our life in the Spirit, with no ties or bondage to this world.

Jesus told a parable of a farmer scattering his seed which, for me, speaks much of our destiny and God's purpose for us in this place. He described how the seed fell in different types of soil. First some fell on the walking path which was packed down from all the walking. This seed was easily carried away by the birds. It never had a chance. Then there was the seed that fell in soil that was not really prepared, having rocks just under the surface. The roots could not grow so when it became hot the plant simply dried up and died. The third fell in soil that also contained many weeds. The plant grew but it was so chocked off by the weeds that it produced no "fruit". The last seed fell in well prepared soil, minus weeds, where it grew and produced a huge harvest:

Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, multiplying thirty, sixty, or even a hundred times. (Mark 4:8)

That seed is the Word of God, the Holy Spirit, our life in God, and the plant is what God produces out of our heart. It is our kindness, good deeds, healing power, words of knowledge and the Word of salvation we carry with us to share with the nations. We are meant to be fruitful; it is our destiny to be multipliers of the Kingdom. It is our purpose for being in this place, to share Jesus with everyone. Unfortunately, we are more like the seed among the weeds.

We are meant to be as free as the wind from the trappings and sins of this world. Instead, we try to live a life of duplicity, chasing after the things of this world. We are more concerned about jobs, money, girlfriends and boyfriends, making the right connections, credit problems, mounting bills, health issues and so on. All the time we have the solution for all of it right in front of us in our Saviour Jesus. We fill our life with sorrow, producing nothing in our lives for the Kingdom, whereas Jesus designed us for joy, peace and his prosperity. We keep forgetting that we have died to ourselves and all of this. We act more like a sinking rock than the free roaming wind.

The solution is not a complicated one. It's time to take a weed whacker to the weeds of our life. It's time to cut loose a few things that no longer belong to us, that are no longer part of our "living for Jesus". It's time to throw off our bondage and set our sails. It's time to simplify a few things, change some priorities, face a new direction, take in a new view and step out in faith. It is time to step into our destiny and allow Jesus to produce in us a great harvest so that we can be used for his glory. It is time to move from consumer to producer, from useless to useful, from empty to full, from life to death back to life again in Jesus. It is time my friends to change from being a sinking rock to the free flowing wind, where God can be glorified in us and through us.

It is a decision. It is a decision to turn our back on the pattern of this world. It is a decision to step out of the garbage heap and into the freedom of life in the Spirit. It is a decision to say no to this world and yes to the lover of our soul. It is a decision you can make right now. Let's get that weed whacker out.