God's Purpose And Destiny For Our Lives

Part of our destiny is to grow up to be like our Father God, because we have been adopted into His family, and we are His sons and daughters. It you think about it, it is natural for a child to grow up to be a lot like its parents. There are obvious physical traits, like the shape of the nose and chin, the hair, the eyes, etc, where you can see the physical resemblance. But it goes even deeper than that--there are also character traits where children end up a lot like their parents. Many children end up embracing the same values and ideals that their parents hold. It is so common that we have a saying for it: "Like father, like son. Like mother, like daughter." It is only natural for children to grow up to be similar to their parents.

We are God's children. Part of our destiny, part of the reason that He created us, is so that we can emulate His character. It is so that we cam become more like Him. On first examination, that sounds like it should be a very pretty easy task, especially since we were created in His image. But there is a problem that complicates things: we have been marred by sin. Our character and nature have been misshaped and deformed by the fall, and we have gained an unwanted sinful, carnal nature. That nature interferes with us becoming more like God; it gets in the way--so it has to go.

Colossians 3:3 talks about dieing to self (the old nature) so that we can become fully alive in our new nature in Christ. That is not something that happens instantly, it is a process that God takes us through. We have come up with a term to describe that process--maturity or spiritual growth. It is where God forms the character of Christ in us by doing two things--taking out the old (the carnal stuff that doesn't belong) and putting in the new (the stuff that makes us more like Him).

God can't just pour the new nature into us if He doesn't remove the old stuff first. Think of it like when someone is cooking and they want to scramble some eggs for breakfast. But the frying pan they have was already used the night before to blacken some salmon. It has some little black chars in it, as well as the grease that has set out all night, and maybe a fly or two in it as well. You can't just put the eggs to the pan and start cooking, or you will end up with a pretty disgusting breakfast (and a little extra protein from the flies). What do you do? You wash the pan first. You get all the gunk that was in it out, so that you can start with a nice clean pan.

And that is what God is doing in our lives. He is cleaning us up from all the gunk of the past so that He can begin creating His masterpiece in us. His process of maturing us has two stages to it--emptying out the stuff that doesn't belong and filling us with the stuff that does belong. The reason He is doing all that is to help us fulfill our destiny of becoming more like Him.

God uses various assorted things to empty out (or chip away) the old. We looked at some of them in previous lessons. Lesson 12 looked at how God uses trouble, hardship and difficulty to teach us to trust Him. At times, He brings us to the place where we can't handle it on our own, so that we will stop relying on self and start relying on Him. That helps our godly character to mature and develop. Then in lesson 13, we looked at how God uses temptation to help us grow and mature. God does not tempt us, but when we are tempted, He works in it to help us learn to overcome temptation and be victorious over sin.

There is another thing that God uses to chip things away from us is. God will use trespasses to help us to forgive. Let me try to put this in perspective for you. Trials and troubles are simply something that God allowed (or even designed, or was a part of) to teach us just to trust Him. Temptation is designed by the enemy to bring us to ruin. A trespass is something that is caused by other people to hurt us--some people do it intentionally and some people don't. But the truth is we all carry offenses and we're offended all the time.

That is why in the Lord's Prayer is important--what does He say? It says, "Forgive us our trespasses as we..." Yeah, we like that first part: God forgive me for all the things I've done against You. Then we stop right there. We think, "What do you mean about that other part that says, 'forgive them?' You don't know what they did to me--they don't deserve to be forgiven. I can't believe that and I am not going to forgive them. They need to be punished. Somebody got to remember this." That is how we feel.

But, what happens when you don't forgive? Who is in bondage there? Yeah, you are! It is not the person you don't want to forgive. Do you think that is really punishing them? They are not here with you, wallowing in your unforgiveness. They are over there, just carrying on and having a great time--watching television--and not even thinking about you.

"But oh, yes, I'm really hurting them by stewing in this. I hope they are feeling punished now." Wrong. The only one who is getting punished is me. I'm punishing myself; I'm hurting myself when I don't forgive them. I need to forgive so that I can be free, because if I don't forgive, then I've kept myself into bondage.

If you like being in bondage, then don't forgive. But if you want to get free from bondage then let go, because you are the one who is getting hurt. You are not hurting them, you are hurting yourself. They may not like that you don't like them or haven't forgiven them. But, the truth is the one who's being hurt and wounded is you. And it is not your job to punish anybody.

The bible says, "'Vengeance is Mine,' saith the Lord,'" not saith you. Bitterness is unfulfilled revenge. If I hold bitterness in my heart, then I am trying to take revenge, and I can't quite bring out my revenge. Let me just say this also, there's nothing that they can do that will actually pay for their sin against you. They can not do enough, or have enough remorse. No matter what they do; it will never be enough to pay the debt that they owe you, because the debt that they owe is too great. Your only option is to release the debt, because there is nothing else you can do. They can't suffer enough--I mean, you can start chopping off their hands. There is nothing they can do that will satisfy the debt that they owe you. So, your only recourse is to forgive and if you do that then you'll be just like Jesus, because that is what Jesus did.

Remember when Jesus was hanging on the cross. People passed by Him, shook their heads, they hurled insults at Jesus, and the elders made fun of Him. Even the bandits who had been crucified with Him insulted Him in the very same way. What was His response? He said, "Father, forgive these people because they don't know what they're doing."

How can you forgive? Well, you can because Jesus forgave you. God has forgiven you and He's forgiven me. The bible says in Ephesians 4:32, "forgive others just as God forgave you, because of Christ." How completely did God forgive you? Did He like forgive like 75% and leave like 25% for you to work on your own. No! It was a complete forgiveness, and you benefit as you forgive.

Remember also that God is in control. Do you remember Joseph's life? First of all, his brothers stuck him in a ditch and a hole. From there, they sold him into slavery. He went to Potiphar's house as a slave, and that wasn't a good deal for him. Then he ended up going to prison, and that was an even worse deal for him. But eventually he became the second most powerful man in the whole world, because Egypt was the major power of the world in that day, and he was the second under Pharaoh.

His brothers eventually came to buy food. After a while, Joseph reveals who he is to them. and they thought, "Oh no. He's going to take us out for what we did to him." He didn't at first, and the assumed it was because of his father. They figured that Joseph would wait until their elderly father died, then he'd take his revenge. Their father finally dies and all of Egypt grieves for him. Then the bothers are thinking, "Dad's gone and now he's going to wipe us out." Then Joseph said this to these guys: "you meant to hurt me, but God turned your evil for good to save the lives of many people." In other words, 'you meant it for bad, but God meant it for good. You meant to hurt me, but God turned it into something awesome.'

I've learned something important from reading my bible and studying the lives of God's people. God is going have us all go through stuff to be like Jesus in many respects. We are all going to go through Gethsemanes. We are all going to go through times of the cross. We're all going to go through desert experiences and we are all going to go through tough times. Every one of us goes through them. God has given us a promise to get us through. The promise is in Romans 8:17--that we go through exactly what Christ went through. And if we go through the hard times with Him, --here's the promise--then we will certainly go through the good times with Him. Keep your eyes on that.