Friday, March 05, 2010

Created for a Purpose

Like many people, I participated in the six week study on a Purpose Driven Life, using the text written by Rick Warren. It was a best selling book and inspired a lot of people to think for a short period of time about what might be the reason they were placed on the earth.

If you look at your life right now, are you fulfilling your purpose? Are you doing what God called you to do? If not, why not?

When I was in third grade, I nearly died. All of a sudden the top chambers of my heart would beat abnormally fast. Sometimes the heart would slow itself, but things got to a point where it didn't slow down. We rushed to Iowa City (lived in eastern Iowa at the time) and before I knew it I was hooked up to an EKG for two days, had a rather large needle full of digitalis thrust into my upper thigh and slept with my parents kneeling beside my bed in prayer. What I didn't know at the time was the doctor had told them that if I didn't die, I would have such massive heart damage that I wouldn't be able to live a normal life.

They prayed. Neither thing happened and as I grew older, the problem presented itself as an annoyance, no longer life threatening.

When I was a senior in high school, we took our senior trip to St. Louis. The charter bus was going under bridges in the city when someone up front called my name. I leaned forward just as a very large bolt flew through an open window, ripped an hole in the head of the seat where I had just been relaxing, flew on to another window and shattered it. I saw the face of the person who was talking to me turn ashen and I realized that in that moment my life was spared.

I always knew that God had a purpose for my life. As I prayed about it over the years, I wondered what that purpose might be. I don't know that I have an answer.

But, I do know that I will continually search for that answer. I don't want to sit back and assume that I've either already fulfilled my purpose or maybe I just don't have one. We all were created by God with a purpose.

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart..." (Jeremiah 1:5)

Each of us has a reason to be here. Each of us has a reason that we continue to be here. As long as we live, as long as we can take a breath, God will continue to work out His purpose in our lives if we allow Him to do that.

As long as we sit still and do nothing with our lives, we deny His work within us. He calls us to be all that we can be - not to sit still and allow the world to move around us. He doesn't call all of us to be writers or artists, presidents or physicians. He calls teachers and mothers, construction workers and nurses, gardeners and architects, assistants and salesmen. He calls each of us to find who we are in His will so that the world will see Him through us.

We are created for a purpose. This is not something to take lightly. We can't allow others to define that purpose for us, we can't allow ourselves to be less than who we are. We are created for a purpose.

1 comment:

Beccah said...

So your about the third person to mention this book to me in a weeks time.... I suppose I should read it! I love this post and it is so exciting to remember we have a purpose and are not just little floaty dust dots slamming together for no reason!