Messages From Heaven: Defined Purpose!

Messages From Heaven: Defined Purpose!: When Wayne was just six years old, his father built an ice rink in the family’s backyard in Ontario, Canada. Why? “It was for self...

Defined Purpose!

When Wayne was just six years old, his father built an ice rink in the family’s backyard in Ontario, Canada. Why? “It was for self-preservation,” his father, Walter, said. “I got sick of taking him to the park and sitting there for hours freezing to death.” All his son wanted to do was play ice hockey. He had been skating and playing hockey since the age of two, and by the time he was six he was competing in youth leagues far above his age group. When he retired from his professional career in 1999 at age thirty-eight, “The Great One” was considered the greatest hockey player ever. Wayne Gretzky knew from the beginning that hockey was his life’s calling.
            Celebrated athletes like Wayne Gretzky understand the connection between purpose and passion. The deeper the conviction about purpose in life, the deeper the passion to excel. But I’m not just talking about athletes. Life is filled with people who are passionately committed to fulfilling what they know is God’s purpose for their life.

The Power of Purpose
            Whether in a spiritual or a natural sense (and sometimes they go together), there is great power in knowing one’s purpose in life. If one knows that his purpose in life is “A,” then “B-Z” will never prove to be a temptation. Focus, and the ability to say “No,” is made easier. There are fewer distractions and an increased sense of esteem and self-knowledge.
            The sooner a calling is recognized, the sooner the fruits of that calling can be shared. And nowhere is that more evident than in the kingdom of God, where life and ministry callings come from God Himself. The Bible is filled with examples of God’s call on an individual’s life. Abraham, Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, Jeremiah, Gideon, Mary the mother of Jesus, the original twelve disciples, Saul of Tarsus who became Paul—the list goes on of those whom God called to do something specific for Him.
            The reality is that all Christians are “called to be saints” (Romans 1:7). Every Christian has a divine purpose: “to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called” (Ephesians 4:1). We have a purpose as servants of Christ to carry out the instructions He left with His apostles—to proclaim the Gospel and make disciples in all the nations of the world (Matthew 28:19-20).
            That purpose alone—called individually by God, to enjoy fellowship with Him, before the foundations of the earth were formed (Ephesians 1:4-6)—should be enough to keep us focused, energized, and prioritized for a lifetime. But there is an even deeper degree of calling and purpose I believe every Christian should seek, find, and fulfill.

Pursuing Your Personal Purpose
            When pursuing your personal purpose in life, here are some things to consider:
            •Be obedient to the will of God you know today. Every moral and spiritual command in Scripture is the will of God for your life.
            •Expect God to guide you into His will. Live, pray, and minister expectantly based on the conviction that He has a calling for your life.
            •Identify your spiritual gift(s) from God and seek out ways to minister with your gift(s). Get counsel from others about the effectiveness of your ministry.
            •Live actively, not passively. Assume that you are in His will today and that He will guide you and reveal more as you walk with Him.
            •Ask! Tell God you want to do what He has created and called you to do. Don’t be guilty of having not because you asked not (James 4:2).

Perfecting Your Personal Purpose
            Discovering God’s will is only half the task. The other half is being faithful to what God has called you to do. It is God’s responsibility to show us His will for our life. But it is our responsibility to nurture His calling and perfect it for His glory. I know of no more energizing factor in the Christian life than a personal conviction of knowing and fulfilling God’s call for your life. Pursue His will and perfect it for His glory.
            Rejoice always—this is God’s will for each of His children.

Messages From Heaven: Trustworthy Answers in Untrusting Times!

Messages From Heaven: Trustworthy Answers in Untrusting Times!: From the human perspective, life doesn't always make sense. It is a difficult journey with obstacles to face and pitfalls to avoi...

Trustworthy Answers in Untrusting Times!

From the human perspective, life doesn't always make sense. It is a difficult journey with obstacles to face and pitfalls to avoid. All of us have asked the same hard questions: "Is there a God?"; "Does He really love me?"; "Why am I here?"; "Why did this have to happen?"; "What is life really about?"
Life is a process of seeking answers for the road ahead. But the real question is: "Where do I go to get the answers to those questions?" Philosophers can only speculate about the meaning of life. At best, they can suggest theories for the reasons of suffering, the existence of God, and other basic spiritual questions. In the end, philosophy's answers are totally unsatisfying. Even Bertrand Russell, perhaps the premier philosopher of the twentieth century and a man totally opposed to Christianity, admitted before he died that philosophy had availed him nothing.
I'll never forget a man I once met while hiking through the mountains of northern California. He was a graduate of Boston University who lived in an overturned Frigidaire box by a stream.
I saw him there and introduced myself. After describing his frustrating search for the meaning of life, he told me, "I've escaped."
"Well, have you found the answers?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "but I've put myself into a situation where I don't have to ask the questions!" Unfortunately, that is the best human wisdom can do.

Information, But No Answers
The last fifty years have produced an information explosion unparalleled in human history. Yet with all we have learned and with all the volumes that have been written, modern knowledge has been unable to shed any new light on the most basic spiritual questions facing the human race. That's exactly the situation the Bible ascribes to mankind in the end times: "always learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 3:7).
Man has solved incredibly difficult problems in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, microbiology, and even space travel. But the true meaning of life stubbornly eludes those whose methods of pursuit are merely rational. They end up totally puzzled about life, death, God, man, sin, heaven, hell, love, joy, and peace.
The problem is that spiritual answers cannot be deduced by human reason alone (1 Corinthians 2:14). It's not that spiritual truth is irrational or illogical, but human wisdom is defective because it is tainted by man's sinfulness and unable to perceive the things of God.

Trustworthy Answers from the Unchanging God
That is why the Bible is so important. It gives us the answers we can't find on our own. It is God's Word to mankind. Scripture is divinely revealed truth that fills the vacuum of spiritual ignorance in all of us. Psalm 19 contains a hymn of praise to God for the wonders of His Word. It is also a marvelous lesson about the authority and sufficiency of Scripture to answer all the questions of life.

Perfect Answers
Verse 7 says, "The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul." "Perfect" comes from a Hebrew word that means comprehensive, or complete. In other words, the Bible contains all the truth that is necessary to transform and restore the human soul.
Thus the Bible offers hope for those weighted down by a sense of their own failure. Because it is perfect truth, it can revive man's broken soul and offer new life to those defeated by sin and failure. If you are apathetic, Scripture will convict you of sin and show you your real needs. If on the other hand you are crushed with emptiness, guilt, and anxiety, God's Word contains truth that can transform your soul with new life in Christ.

Certain Answers
The psalmist goes on: "The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple" (v. 7). Natural intelligence is at best a leap in the dark. Even the most perceptive philosopher will tell you that there is no certainty in human wisdom. At his best, man is totally inadequate in the pursuit of truth.
Not so with Scripture. God's Word is sure, certain, infallible, inerrant, and totally reliable in every sense. In contrast to human wisdom, which is based on academic pursuit, the Bible can make a simple person wise. What a fantastic promise! Whatever you need to know in life is covered in the Word of God. Study it for yourself. It will tell you how to build lasting friendships, how to develop communication skills, and how to build a solid marriage. All you need is an open mind, a receptive spirit, and an obedient heart.

Satisfying Answers
Verse 8 continues: "The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart." Everyone wants a happy and contented life. The problem is that people look for joy in all the wrong places. Real happiness cannot be found in pleasure and materialism. You can't find lasting joy in sinful self-gratification and the hedonistic pursuit of money, sex, alcohol, and drugs. All these things lead to a dead end.
God offers real satisfaction to people who obey His Word. He wants us to be happy. Too many people think of God as a joyless ogre who stamps out pleasure wherever He finds it. God does not look at mankind from heaven saying, "There's one having fun; get him!" He designed us so that the greatest possible joy comes as a fruit of our obedience to Him.
Best of all, the gladness He gives is not the kind that ends when the party is over. It is a rich, deep joy that operates even in the midst of life's most difficult trials. No matter what pressures you may face in life, He will strengthen and guide you through His Word.

Enlightening Answers
"The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes" (v. 8). Scripture makes sense out of life. It helps us understand the depth of man's depravity without God. It is no wonder our world is filled with lying, cheating, murder, war, and tragedy. It is easy to understand why someone without spiritual understanding would want to escape into a box and hide!
What comfort does philosophy offer to someone who loses a child? What can human wisdom say to a person whose spouse has cancer? Only God's Word can speak with authority to the deep needs of life as it enlightens the eyes of those who submit to its truth.
The Bible may not always give easy answers to the hard questions we ask, but the truth it reveals is far superior to the pat answers of human wisdom. The Scripture declares the character of God. It shows Him as a loving, caring, all-wise, and omnipotent Sovereign who remains in control — no matter how bleak this world may seem.

Enduring Answers
Verse 9 says, "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever." "The fear of the Lord" is parallel to "the law," "the testimony," "the precepts," and "the commandment" (vv. 7-8). It is another of the psalmist's names for Scripture. More than that, "the fear of the Lord" signifies the sum of man's response to God's Word.
The Bible, unlike any other book, endures forever. It is relevant in every generation — never out of date or obsolete. Though it is an ancient document, it never needs another edition. It has been translated to update the language, but for two millennia it has remained the same in content. It speaks to us as pointedly and authoritatively as it ever did to any generation since it was written.
Human philosophies come in and out of style. Every field of science known to man is constantly in a state of flux: changing, growing, discarding one maxim and replacing it with another. But one thing that never changes is the eternal Word of God.

True Answers
Finally, the psalmist says, "The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether" (v. 9). What a bold statement that is! God's Word is true. This is the unequivocal testimony of Scripture to itself. It is hard today to find anything we can count on for truth. The media, politicians, and even some preachers all have a reputation for lacking credibility. In fact, we take it for granted that they regularly distort the truth.
In a world of lies, people despair of trying to find the truth. That was even true in the time of Christ. Pilate, facing Jesus on one hand and an angry mob on the other, cynically asked, "What is truth?" (John 18:38), as if to say, "I give up" — just like the man in the refrigerator box!
Franz Kafka, the brilliant German novelist, used a parable to illustrate the futility of man's search for truth. He described a bombed-out city of rubble where death and ruin were everywhere. People had been crushed under debris, where they lay dying in agony. In the middle of this total holocaust, one solitary figure sits in a bathroom. Kafka calls him the defiant fisherman. He sits on a toilet seat with a fishing line dangling in the bathtub. There is no water in the tub, and obviously no fish, but the defiant fisherman keeps on fishing anyhow.
That, said Kafka, is what the search for truth is like. It is a futile quest for something that isn't really there. It is a worthless pursuit for meaning, while the whole world is dying all around.
It is a hopeless picture, but that is exactly what it's like to look for truth apart from the Bible. The natural man cannot find truth in the spiritual realm. He is spiritually dead and unresponsive to God (Ephesians 2:1-2). The only way he can find truth is if the spiritual realm invades his coffin of flesh.
That's exactly what the Bible does! It is a supernatural revelation from God that invades the human heart with the sum of spiritual truth we need to know. If you are looking for the transformation of your soul; if you are in need of true wisdom and real joy; if you long for eternal life, the only place you'll ever find it is in the pages of God's Word, the Bible.

Messages From Heaven: How Do I Choose a Spouse?

Messages From Heaven: How Do I Choose a Spouse?: Give me some practical suggestions for the selection of a husband. I sure want to get it right and don't think I should depend ...

How Do I Choose a Spouse?

Give me some practical suggestions for the selection of a husband. I sure want to get it right and don't think I should depend just on looks or personality. What are the factors I should consider before saying "I do"?

Let me list a few things that you might want to consider:

1. A Sunday school teacher gave me some advice when I was thirteen years of age that I never forgot. He said, "Don't marry the person you think you can live with. Marry the one you can't live without." There's great truth in this advice. Marriage can be difficult even when two people are passionately in love with one another. It is murder when they don't have that foundation to build on.
2. Don't marry someone who has characteristics that you feel are intolerable. You may plan to change him or her in the future, but that probably won't happen. Behavior runs in deep channels that were cut during early childhood, and it is very difficult to alter them. In order to change a deeply ingrained pattern, you have to build a sturdy dam, dig another canal, and reroute the river in the new direction. That effort is rarely successful over the long haul. Therefore, if you can't live with a characteristic that shows up during courtship, it may plague you for the rest of your life. For example, a person who drinks every night is not likely to give up that habit after the honeymoon. If he or she is foolish with money or is basically unclean or tends to get violent when irritated or is extremely selfish, these are red flags you should not ignore. What you see is what you get.
   Of course, we all have flaws, and I'm not suggesting that a person has to be perfect to be a candidate for marriage. Rather, my point is that you have to decide if you can tolerate a quirky behavior for the rest of your life-- because that's how long you may have to deal with it. If you can't, don't bank on deprogramming the partner after you've said "I do." I advise you to keep your eyes wide open before marriage and then half-closed thereafter.
   
3. Do not marry impulsively! I can think of no better way to mess up your life than to leap into this critical decision without careful thought and prayer. It takes time to get acquainted and to walk through the early stages of the bonding process. Remember that the dating relationship is designed to conceal information, not reveal it. Both partners put on their best faces for the one they seek to attract. They guard the secrets that might be a turnoff. Therefore, many newlyweds get a big surprise during the first year of married life. I suggest that you take at least a year to get beyond the facade and into the inner character of the person.
4. If you are a deeply committed Christian, do not allow yourself to become "unequally yoked" with an unbeliever. You may expect to win your spouse to the Lord at some future date, and that does happen on occasion. But to count on it is risky at best, foolhardy at worst. Again, this is the question that must be answered: "Just how critical is it that my husband (or wife) shares my faith?" If it is essential and nonnegotiable, as the Scriptures tell us it should be for believers, then that matter should be given the highest priority in one's decision to marry.
5. Do not move in with a person before marriage. To do so is a bad idea for many reasons:
   • First, it is immoral and a violation of God's law.
   • Second, it undermines a relationship and often leads to divorce. Studies show that couples who live together before marriage have a 50 percent greater chance of divorce than those who don't, based on fifty years of data.¹ Those who cohabit also have less satisfying and more unstable marriages. Why? The researchers found that those who had lived together later regretted having "violated their moral standards," and "felt a loss of personal freedom to exit out the back door."
   • Furthermore, and in keeping with the theme of marital bonding, they have "stolen" a level of intimacy that is not warranted at that point, nor has it been validated by the degree of commitment to one another. As it turns out, God's way is not only the right way--it is the healthiest for everyone concerned.
6. Don't get married too young. Those who wed between the ages of fourteen and seventeen are twice as likely to divorce as couples who wait until their twenties. Making it as a family requires some characteristics that come with maturity, such as selflessness, stability, and self-control. It's best to wait for their arrival.
7. Finally, I'll conclude with the ultimate secret of lifelong love. Simply put, the stability of marriage is a by-product of an iron-willed determination to make it work. If you choose to marry, enter into that covenant with the resolve to remain committed to each other for life. Never threaten during angry moments to leave your mate. Don't allow yourself to consider even the possibility of divorce. Calling it quits must not become an option for those who want to go the distance!