God has a specific plan for your life. Are you ready to begin taking steps to fulfill your God-appointed destiny? Understanding these simple yet powerful concepts will start you on your journey. (No. 2 could change your career!)
“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that we should walk in them“ (Eph. 2:10).
There are many different words for God’s plan for our lives—you could call it your destiny, calling, purpose or life’s goal. But when we read Scripture, it is undeniable that our Creator has a plan for each one of us, and He desires to see us walk out this plan. He has uniquely crafted each one of us in a specific way so that we are able to carry out the good works that He has planned for us. He longs to see us fulfill our destiny.
The problem is that many people do not have any real sense of what God’s plan for them is. They feel the external pressures of the world that push them toward conformity. Get an education, get a high-paying job, make your life comfortable and stable, and then perhaps you can begin to figure out God’s plan for your life. We hear these messages all the time. But this line of thinking does not take into consideration what God has designed you for and created you to do. This is hardly a recipe for success—in fact, it often leads to feelings of discontentment, ineffectiveness and powerlessness. I have been there before, and so have many millions of others. Do you feel like you have missed it? That you have wasted your time pursuing inconsequential things instead of pursuing God’s plan for your life?
I have good news for you. God still has a plan for you. There are still good works prepared for you to accomplish. And if you seek the kingdom of God before all else, He promises He will meet every need you have (Matt. 6:33).
So how do you begin to decipher your purpose, your calling, your destiny? I have actually written an entire series of books around the subjects of understanding how you were designed, finding your life’s purpose, and successfully walking it out. It’s called The Kingdom System Series, and you can find out more about the books at kingdomsystemseries.com. But today I want to pass on to you four key concepts that you must understand in order to fulfill your destiny.
Income vs. Outcome
Often for the first 20-plus years of our lives, we pursue an education solely for our selected employment based on the achievement of the desired income and the earthly benefits that we want to experience and to achieve. This view and this perspective are based completely on horizontal and temporal considerations. These observations act as our motivation for the chosen achievements in our lives. This is decided on by things we see and consider to be what we believe, and what our society perceives as achievements of value. Sadly, this does not work. A purely secular or temporal motivation for the success of our lives can provide a chosen lifestyle that often provides excellent benefits, but too often the experience is empty and void of meaning and fulfillment. Humanity does not do well when our lives do not have meaning, when our lives are just about “things.”
Instead of focusing our time and energy on achieving—and in turn, maintaining—a certain income level, we must concern ourselves with the outcomes of our lives. Do we want to be admired in our social circles for our material wealth? Or do we want to be respected by our families as people who invest in our closest relationships? Do we desire to enjoy a certain status as important movers and shakers who rub elbows with the elite? Or do we truly want to make a lasting impact in our society and culture? You see, when the outcomes of our lives take priority over our income, we gain perspective, clarity and motivation. We can more easily leave behind unimportant things for the most important things.
Employment vs. Deployment
Humanity has come to look at work as a necessary evil. Work is considered to be undesirable. Work was the first thing given to humanity after creation and after the gift of our likeness to our Creator. We are designed to be engaged. The difficulty is that we see work as employment and not as deployment. Employment is the activity and/or occupation that we perform in order to receive revenue for our livelihood. But deployment is the process of bringing forces, materials, or people into action. I believe that culture can be divided into seven spheres, or seven mountains as they are often referred to: Government, Business, Media, Family, Education, Arts and Entertainment, and Religion. And I believe that at this moment in history, God is deploying His people into each of these mountains to spread His love and His light. We are to communicate and represent the face, the will and the plan of God for humanity. We are not to be content with dwelling and making our livelihoods at the bottom of these mountains. No, our Creator is calling us to rise higher. He wants us to occupy the tops of these mountains, and thereby hold positions of influence in our culture. We are to be modern-day Josephs and Daniels.
So we are to have a job, a vocation, a means of being productive and of producing results that can be measured by increase. However, this may not be our deployment. We are given the charge to be fruitful and to multiply, to increase. Man was made to work. Humanity has been called to a vocation or profession from the very beginning for the purpose of our deployment. Labor became a curse and a painful process only when we considered our efforts as employment and not as deployment. Although the two can be the same, very often they are not.
We are no longer meant to experience our work as a curse. God Himself as Jesus Christ provided His blood as the perfect sacrifice to redeem humanity from sin. In His resurrection and in taking the keys to the kingdom from the defeated Satan, He restored humanity to the position enjoyed before the choice of transgression. We are free from the oppressor. The blood of Jesus has provided this. We must now become free from the oppression. This only happens when we change the way we think. We have been victims of oppression for thousands of years. We must reprogram our thoughts to become agreeable with His thoughts. Then our plans will be established and we will succeed. We must become driven and motivated by deployment, and not by employment.
How do we human beings begin to think and to believe in a manner so completely opposite to the teachings of our Creator? I believe the kingdom of darkness bombards humanity continually with lies and misrepresentations. These lies look so believable, and much like the truth. The truth becomes difficult to detect and often is very challenging to identify from the lie. Employment usually is about income. Deployment is about fruitfulness and fulfillment.
Temporary vs. Eternal
In our Great Book of Learning, or the Book of Kingdoms, eternity and the things that are eternal are a predominant theme. In the King James Version the words “eternal” or “eternity” are used 48 times in 48 verses. In the New Living translation, “eternal” or “eternity” is used 122 times in 117 verses. Very few subjects have that many references. Most of the major doctrines of the church are not close. Yet there is very little taught about the subject of eternity other than as a consideraton in the preparation for dying. The understanding and the application of eternity are so much more than just as our preparation for dying.
To miss the full understanding and the enormous benefit of the application of eternity in our lives and into our daily living is to miss our deepest meaning and the very purposes of our lives.
Mark addresses both the experiences of being “in time” and of being “in eternity.” Clearly both provide impact in benefit and in relationship for the life experience for believers and for the followers of Jesus.
“… who shall not receive a hundred times as much now in this age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields, with persecution, and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:30).
The most important things in our lives are eternal. In order to live out your destiny, you must recognize and prioritize eternal things over temporary things. So many times, people are ensnared in sin and strongholds because they choose to focus on that which is temporary—fleeting pleasure, earthly comfort, short-term gains. If we truly understood how short this life inside time is compared with our life outoftime (in eternity), we would use every single moment to make an eternal impact in our world.
Religion vs. Relationship
There is a difference between relationship and religion. Religion does not require relationship. One must simply follow the rules and stay within the established parameters. Our Creator does not accept religious acts as relational worship. There seems to be a contradiction between what our Creator declares to be an authentic relationship and the daily lives of many of those who call themselves believers and followers of His message. Could we have confused religion with relationship? In all of the major areas of the lives of humanity (financial, health, relational, mental, emotional, spiritual, family) what does the visible evidence say? Is there significant, observable difference between those of faith and those with no claim of faith? What is needed to make the experiences of our lives the victorious, powerful, overcoming walk described by our Creator God in His declaration of who we are and what our experiences are to be?
The discrepancy between His description of what our walk is to be and what our actual experience is, cannot be because of any deficiency of His provision. He has done everything necessary for us not only to be redeemed but also to be restored. Must He revisit the cross? Must He offer the sacrifice of His blood again? Must He return to the tomb, descend to hell, take the keys of the kingdom from the defeated Satan, and ascend to His throne in Heaven again? No! Of course not. There is absolutely nothing left for our Creator to do to provide redemption and complete restoration for Humanity. His work is complete.
That implies that if our experience is lacking something, then the deficiency is because of our personal lack of understanding of the benefits that are available both relationally and experientially. The results manifested in our lives are completely and entirely determined by our management. This relationship is provided for humanity to employ and to engage in for ourselves. The gift of relationship is provided and is readily available. There is nothing for us to do to make it become available. It is available now. It is our acceptance and our management of the gift of relationship that determines the outcomes in our lives.
This relationship with the Creator is the most important factor in the process of determining and fulfilling your destiny. In order to discover your created design, you must know the Creator. To find your eternal purpose, you must become close with the Eternal One. Participating in religion is no substitute for actually knowing, spending time with and establishing a relationship with the one true God. As you draw close to Him, He will make clear to you His plan, purpose and destiny for your life.
If these concepts have resonated with you today, then I encourage you to visit shop.CharlieLewis.net and order my first book, The Kingdom System: A Pattern for Guaranteed Success. This is the book I wrote when God began teaching me about the power and provision available through the kingdom of God to every believer. This book will broaden your perspective, help you understand what God’s kingdom is, and give you the tools you need to successfully live out your calling and destiny.
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