by Ricky Chelette, Executive Director
What’s the most meaningful gift you ever received?
Chances are it had nothing to do with the inherent value of the gift but with the intentionality of the person who knew you well enough to give you something that would be uniquely meaningful to you. He didn’t rush to the drug store, grab something off the shelf, stuff it in a decorative bag, and hand it to you moments after he purchased it. Forethought and intentionality are the hallmarks of meaningful gift-giving.
When we do things on purpose, the results are amazing!
You were made on purpose.
God created you on purpose. There is nothing accidental about you. Our world may tout a message that who you are is up to you, determined by how you feel about yourself. It even extols the virtues of changing who you think you are to something very different from who God created you to be. But remember, God intentionally made you.
Isn’t it beautiful to embrace the reality that God created you on purpose? That means you have a purpose. You were anticipated, expected, and intentional, and God had you in mind before you had a mind! That’s incredible.
Psalm 139:13-16 says,
13 For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.[a]
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Notice the affirmation of verse 14, “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Wow! You were fashioned, designed, planned, thought out, and purposefully created. That simple truth can change your life if you embrace it.
We have a Creator.
The fact that we were “made” mandates that there is a maker, a Creator and that Creator not only made you on purpose, with a purpose but intricately created you and saw your life from beginning to end before you were ever born. In a word, you are a MASTERPIECE (Eph 2:10), created by God on purpose.
In Genesis, we see that God was intentional about our creation, purposefully made us male and female, and gave us a purpose. The general purpose of man and woman is expressed in Gen 1:28, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” In other words, we reflect God’s image as image-bearers (Gen 1:27) by being stewards of the world in which God has placed us. We are at the top of the food chain and responsible for the welfare of everything in God’s created world. What an incredible privilege and opportunity.
We must embrace reality.
To live out that purpose, we must first embrace its reality. We must believe there is a God, and we are His creations. We are not God. We didn’t create us, nor can we. We can bring life into this world, but only when we partner with our compliment – our created other – and God’s Spirit to initiate new life. The new life we bring into the world should result from a loving and committed mother and father who, on purpose, welcome new life into their family.
However glorious this reality was, man wanted something more. Genesis 3 explains the fall and man’s attempt to be God rather than trust God. In doing so, man lost the privilege to live in the perfect environment created specifically for his thriving, and humans also forfeited aspects of their intimacy and attachment with God. No longer would humanity walk face to face with God in the garden. No longer would the world willingly submit to their dominion. No longer would the man and woman be naked and vulnerable with each other and be unashamed. Rather than trust in God, they would trust in their knowledge and make decisions that they felt were best for themselves. We still believe the same thing today—the result: disaster.
There’s more to your story.
But thank God, that is not the end of the story. Our Creator already had a plan to redeem us from our mess and rescue us from our self-destructive and self-centered lives. On purpose, He sent His Son into the world to accomplish what we could not. Jesus came to rescue us and offer Himself as a sacrifice for our rebellion.
It is hard to imagine a God so loving and gracious that He, on purpose, would give His very life to secure our freedom, but that is precisely what He has done through Christ.
We can spend a lifetime believing we have a better plan and purpose than God, but we will fail. History tells that story repeatedly. Or we can embrace God’s plan and purpose for our lives, submit to His will, and find joy in His presence and pleasures forevermore (Ps 16:11). Let’s celebrate our on-purpose created selves and faithfully follow Jesus.