When I get caught up in the craziness of life (I call it my rollercoaster ride) I seldom sit still long enough to think of anything but survival. The urgent takes precedence over the important and life just forges ahead, with me running at full speed. The crazy race usually comes to an abrupt halt due to someone being sick, myself included, or something that shakes me back to reality. I then have to re-assess my life and change, bringing the important back into focus, and stop being a puppet of the urgent.
You see, as long as we live as people who keep running from urgent to urgent, we forget the important.
Many times, the important is summed up in a few answers to some crucial questions like:
What am I here for? Just for survival or for some purpose?
Why did I have children? To slave away serving them or pass them onto someone else, or to make them disciples of my King?
Where do I spend most of my time and does it line up with my purpose and what God called me to do?
Who do I spend most of my time with? People that God placed on my path or people that I feel sorry for and sap the strength from me?
I love helping and serving wherever I can, but I had to realise that I am not God! That might sound funny, but sometimes – if you are like me – you jump in to save anybody and everybody! Only God can do that! And I am not Him! So, I need to pace myself and get into the rhythms of His grace and leading in my life. Those things are the things He purposed for me and the things that will be to the benefit of everyone, including me.
I have heard this scripture quoted so much:
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.
It is so beautiful and so encouraging, but the whole context is to a people who are in captivity and a God promising them this as they seek His face. So many times we want the blessing, the purpose and the peace, but we want to continue to do whatever we want to. It does not work like that; our purpose is locked up in a Father who wants the best for us. We THINK we know what the best is for us, but only He knows the real best. Our lives are to come into the flow, the rhythms of His plan and purposes for us. It is like an orchestra playing and when I join, I need to come in line with what the conductor is doing, so that the whole orchestra can benefit from the sounds I bring.
Each of us brings in a unique part or limb of a body:
Ephesians 4:15-16
…but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.
Each one of us is a joint, a limb, a part of God’s body. Each one of us has a crucial role to play. Ask anyone who has lost any body part and they will tell you they miss that part. It is the same: we are the body and Jesus is the head, and no matter what you feel like – the body needs you…. The body is missing something if you are away.
I love 1 Corinthians 12, where God speaks about the different spiritual gifts and how each of us has a gift that makes up part of a whole body. If we do not walk in that gift then we leave the body poorer or lacking. If we become consumed by the busyness of life, we forget to slow down and ask ourselves what we are here for. What is my purpose and what can I contribute to the orchestra playing for God’s glory? Where do I fit in and what do I need to let go of to walk in that?
God, the glorious, loving, Almighty Father, has a call for you and me, a purpose that will give us life. It might mean sacrifice, but it is so worth it to walk into that which God ordained for us, what was built into our DNA to be, do and achieve. It definitely does not have to fit into the mould of what the world deems success, but it will fill a purpose-sized hole in our hearts when we start walking in it. The prerequisite is not success or a glamorous CV, the prerequisites are to sit at God’s feet, become still and surrender. He wants to impart a vision; without it, we perish:
Proverbs 29:18 (KJV):
Where there is no vision, the people perish:
but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.
Quieten your world today: enjoy the journey of finding your purpose and be courageous enough to walk in it.
Liesl Mare is a regular contributor at Women of Reverence.
Read full bio here