Good morning DPR, I trust we had a productive week? WOOOW, we’re 9 posts gone into the New Creation Series already… Interesting!!! So like I said in previous posts, we’re just really getting started, and today we would zoom In closer on the first dimension of the prayer of Paul in Ephesians 1. Wisdom and Revelation in the heart of any believer will produce tangible results in his life. The reason Christians still grope in darkness is simply because they stayed in it, they have the ability to switch into Light and be delivered. The synonym for the kingdom of God, is simply the Kingdom of Light. Light is yet to have its first argument with darkness, and it never will. Whenever Light shows up, it is others that report about the fact that darkness just left… in other words, both light and darkness NEVER meet. Without proper illumination in our minds, our prayers are bound to be wrong. When a man’s eyes are closed, his perception of life is limited to what his hands can feel and touch. For a believer, your spiritual eyes must be your cursor and propeller of your decisions, not your feelings. I hope by now we have come to terms with the reality of the fact that the greatest prayer anyone could pray for us is that the EYES of our UNDERSTANDING be ENLIGHTENED. When your inner eyes are flooded with light, you are bound to operate at a realm higher than that of your contemporaries, what will make them fret will only reinforce your rest. God did not design man to toil or struggle… to God, it is not good. That is why He wants to elevate our mindset and thoughts to sync with His thoughts, so we can begin to operate like He does and get results like He does.
Romans 12:2(KJV) And be not conformed to this world:but be yes transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect, will of God.
So when the floodlight of God falls upon our eyes and we begin to see the way God sees, what does He show us? According to Ephesians 1, God begins to unveil to us the Hope of His OWN calling for our lives. There are so many things to glean from that. A lot of times I see young people (like I’m not a young person, lol) who hear powerful messages on purpose and just cannot wait to discover their purpose in life. There are a lot of self help books and tapes out there that primarily suggest that one must look within oneself for passion, talents, personality and innate abilities in order to discover purpose. This is not poised at discrediting anyone or message, as a matter of fact I believe all these factors have a big part to play in our discovery of purpose in life. I actually remember teaching a series on Purpose and Personality, it was such a huge blessing. So yes talents, abilities, passion and personality all have their place in the scheme of things as far as discovering purpose is concerned. However according to scriptures, for us to ultimately find ourselves, we MUST find God. There’s a wave of purpose discovery spreading across our generation, everyone wants to be “Great” and do something really big, which is a good and noble cause, but that should never be at the expense of He that sent us. No one knows us better than our creator and sender. God wants us to discover His call for our lives much more passionately than we want to discover it. Gideon was on his own, God went after him, Moses was tending to the sheep, God showed up in a bush just to catch his attention, David was a ruddy shepherd boy, but God instructed Samuel to go all the way to Jesse’s house to anoint David as king, examples are limitless. God will go crazier lengths than you could ever dream of going just to get you to know His purpose for your life. It is not your purpose, it is not your dream, it is not your calling, it’s God’s purpose for your life, God’s dream for your life and God’s calling for your life. Joseph later realised when he met with his brothers in Egypt, that the dream he had as a 17 year old boy was never his, it had always been God’s, he just simply carried it for 13 years.
Romans 8:28 (KJV) And we know that all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the CALLED ACCORDING TO HIS PURPOSE. 30 Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
I’d definitely have a problem with anything that I own but decides to have a mind of its own. Imagine you press the send button on your phone and hereafter hear a still small voice whisper to you, “I no dey send, na by force?” Hehehe, that’s funny but that how many believers have turned out to be. Life isn’t about fulfilling our purpose in life, life is about fulfilling His grand purpose for our lives and what a privilege it is to be used of God in achieving the biggest purpose in all eternity. The first thing God does when He opens our eyes is to introduce His purpose for our lives. In Acts 9, when Jesus “introduced” Himself to the then Saul tarsus and got him converted to the faith, by verse 15, Jesus was already relating His purpose for Paul to Ananias saying;
Acts 9:15 (KJV) But the lord said u to him, Go thy way: for he is a CHOSEN VESSEL UNTO ME, TO BEAR MY NAME BEFORE THE ENTITLES, AND KINGS, AND THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL.
When the great light shone on Paul’s eyes, his physical eyes got blind but his spiritual eyes got enlightened and he discovered God’s call upon his life. See the way Jesus describes the purpose, it was ALL about HIM and not Paul. He said Paul had been chosen unto Him, to bear His name before all men, what a radical perspective we see here. When you ask the average person out there to tell you his purpose, he begins to tell you what he loves to do, how he dreams of doing this and that, but is that God’s purpose for his life? Don’t get me wrong, God won’t purpose for you to do what He hasn’t wired you for, or something you detest, He would never make a demand on something He hasn’t adequately supplied. However, God will not judge you in heaven by your dreams and purpose, He will judge you by His own purpose for your life. It’s our responsibility to discover this purpose and pursue it with all our lives. Life isn’t about man, it’s about man pleasing God. We’ve got to be about our Father’s business and not our own business. There are too many confused people out there who keep running from pillar to post trying to look for what’s not missing, it’s all in God. When we come to terms with His light and His perspective in prayer, we see even more clearly what God’s purpose for our lives really is.
Ephesians 2:10(KJV) For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.
A workmanship has no glory to take for its beauty, it’s all to the praise and glory of the workman. When we see a workmanship, it links us straight to the workman. A painting talks more about the painter than itself, Monalisa simply glorified Picasso. We are all about the Father’s heartbeat, what am I here on earth for? To please me, or to please the Father? To discover me, or to discover the Father’s will for me? Maybe if Eve had not lost sight of the fact that they were in garden to please God and not to please themselves with juicy fruits, maybe it would have been impossible for the devil to lure her. Our first point of call in prayer is the Father’s heart. To see His thoughts for our lives and find perfect joy and fulfillment in doing what He wants while having no other tugging feeling pulling us in our own ways, that’s the place to be. For ye are not your own… I don’t belong to me, if I did, I’d need not give account about my life to anyone, but I do belong to God and must daily seek His face for direction, instruction and destination. To submit our lives to God in prayer is about the hardest thing we would ever do, albeit the most rewarding. He called us living sacrifices for a purpose, He knows we would always be tempted to walk off the alter of sacrifice, but the joy for Him is in that we stay on the alter, not because He strapped us there, but because we lay our lives down willingly and say to him; My life is all up to you. This is what the bible calls our highest form of worship, kjv says it’s our reasonable service.
Romans 12:1 (KJV) I beseech you therefore brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
We shall continue on The Hope Of His Calling in our next post. Have a great weekend.
