Tag: Bible

What is my (our) Purpose in Life?

About five years ago, this question became more important to me: “What is my purpose in life?”

(To be honest, this question was lingering in me, unrecognized as a teenager too, but I never put much thought into it. I would make decisions about my future when I felt like I was running out of time, and had to choose something, then I’d quickly make a decision, go with it, figuring out how to make it work over time.)

As time passed, I truly wanted to know the answer because I felt like there had to be more to life. I felt like I had been wasting time, and didn’t want to continue this way, so I started searching for the answer. I can remember thinking: “We can’t just be here to eat, sleep, and do whatever it is that keeps us busy during the day and night?” There should be something more important, more meaningful in life, than “existing and taking up space:” a Purpose.

I finally stumbled upon the answer to this question in the Bible:

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10

So the answer is: God created each of us with a specific purpose to fulfill. But when we find an answer like this, let’s be honest: “Who is looking to do MORE work and have MORE responsibilities than we already have?” Probably not many, UNLESS the REWARD is worth it, right? So is the reward worth it? YES! For this answer to be personally true, meaningful and understood for each of us, it requires a relevant context, because without that, we are probably not interested.

So why is this information relevant to each and every person?

It is relevant because it affects our future: what happens to us and is something that only we, personally, can direct, through our daily choices. To receive the reward, we must have faith in Jesus, however we will be judged on our faith through our actions (our works and obeying the Ten Commandments). “Faith without works is dead.” James 2:14-26

So why would we trust what the Bible has to say?

The information in the Bible is from God, our creator, Who speaks only in truth, and reveals some of the mysterious aspects of our existence through the Bible about what is happening and why it is happening. The Bible is an historical book providing reasons why some events took place, giving proof of God through miraculous events, prophesies that came true and through living proof when Jesus was present on earth and teaching, died and rose from the dead. All of this was done to help us, strengthen us and for God to see what choice we will make once we find out and learn about this. (Think about this: Have you ever evaluated a relationship to see if it was worthwhile? That’s what God’s doing with us: He’s giving us a choice about a relationship with Him.)

The Bible is like an “open book test”: the answers are there, but will we seek them and then apply them to be successful? What we are experiencing in our lives right now is something more significant in process: it is a test with a significant reward (heaven/eternal life), if we are successful and horrible consequences (hell) if we fail. So this is why it is important to know what’s in the Bible and apply what we learn.

This is personal: the best way to get answers to our individual questions is by reading the Bible and praying for the understanding of what we read, because this is how God communicates with us; God will provide clarity, directly to each of us when we are looking for answers in the Bible and through prayer. Seek God first in everything. (Matthew 6:33)

So getting back to our purpose in life, I wondered: We were created to do what specific “good works”?

Doing these “good works” and obeying is evidence of our Faith, which is required to receive God’s reward and our life right now is a TEST. The day-to-day “worldly” things that we experience and worry about are truly UNIMPORTANT and INSIGNIFICANT when we understand the high level reason we were created and what we should have our focus. There is so much to focus on in life, but if we make God the priority and focus in our minds, everything else will fall into place. That’s why the Bible tells us not to worry: God provides what we need in support of His plan for us. (Side note: this also explains the reason for some unanswered prayers.) This also requires faith; we have to have faith in God to really believe that He provides, but little by little as our faith grows, we start seeing this come true, which grows our faith.

Getting back to “good works” I also found this answer:

“We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” Romans 12:6

The gifts, given by God for the purpose God determined when He created us, are:

  1. Prophesying: boldly proclaiming God’s word
  2. Serving: physical and spiritual help provided to others
  3. Teaching: applying information from the Bible in a clear, accurate and understanding way to others
  4. Encouraging: motivating others to take action and fulfill their purpose
  5. Giving: providing material and financial resources to others
  6. Leading: various Leadership Roles
  7. Showing Mercy: comforting those in need

What gift is mine?

When we work using the specific gift we were created for, our actions happen with ease, we are comfortable and enjoy what we are doing, using the gift feels natural to us, personally. The specific gift we were given is also something that others will notice in us, and likely tell us we seem so “natural” in our actions when operating in that way.

Life is complicated, but the overall simple goal and purpose for us is to Love. Love God and each other.

In summary: God created each of us for a specific purpose of His, and provides us unique gifts to fulfill His plan; which also means every person is very important and is here for a reason!

by Categories: Dating, entrepreneur, Face Fear, FAITH, FAMILY, Following Passions, FRIENDSHIP, HAPPINESS, Improvement, Letting Go, Love, Make It Count, RELATIONSHIPS, WellnessTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

7 Fascinating and Important things I learned from the Bible

I was surprised to find out how much I didn’t know about what is in the Bible, even after going to a religious school from grade school through high school and attending various religion based churches throughout my life. I thought I knew all the “important parts” but what I found out was: I was missing the details; the very important details! I only knew the “big picture” mainstream biblical stories. These details from the Bible answered several questions I had:

1.  "Spiritual Warfare" (This explains why certain things happen)

I never heard of this “spiritual warfare” or understood this until reading the bible. So this topic may immediately make you think, “uh oh, she’s one of those crazy people!” That would have been my reaction too, before I read the Bible. But after reading the bible, it became clear that we are the subjects of the spiritual war: between God and Satan (a.k.a.the devil, Lucifer and other names…) We were created by God but given freedom in our choices but Satan continues to try to gain people turning us against God through sin, because sin separates us from God. (God gave Moses the 10 Commandments for us so that we could identify sin and stay away from it.) The book of Job mentions Satan being in the presence of God, telling God he was “roaming the earth”, in fact the entire book of Job is about Satan testing Job, trying to turn him from God. Peter also mentions Satan roaming the earth in a similar way. (1Peter 5-8: “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”) Jesus was also tempted by Satan for 40 days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-11)

Why is this happening? Satan had once been a high ranking spiritual being, but filled with excessive pride, wanted to BE God, wanted to be worshiped and was disobedient, so God cast him from heaven. Satan is described as intelligent, the father of lies, deceitful, clever, the accuser of us in God’s presence, the prince of the earth, and powerful. Also, the bible states one third of the angels were cast out with Satan and considered fallen angels, and these spirits also align with Satan’s efforts. But God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit is more powerful than Satan or anything evil.

From the beginning of the Bible until the end of the Bible there are stories of the ongoing spiritual battle: sin vs. obeying God. It is also stated that if we are not for God; we are against Him. If we do not have the Spirit of God (the Holy Spirit), we are at risk. In the bible, Jesus cast out spirits that no one else could conquer, but then his disciples and apostles also were able to do this after Jesus ascended to heaven. (This was after the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and the casting out of spirits was done in the name of Jesus, not by any other power.) But then there was this unsettling story about some Jewish people who knew of this “power” and thought they could do the same as the apostles, casting out spirits in Jesus’ name, and they were successful until one demon actually spoke to them and attacked them terribly (Acts 19: 13-16)

The spiritual war is mentioned in Ephesians 6: 10-12 (written by Paul an apostle approximately 60 AD) which states: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power…For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against…the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

2.  God uses unexpected people for His purpose (This explains how important "insignificant" people are to God)

Growing up learning about religion, I always thought the famous biblical people were special, different, good, holy people, but in reading the bible, they were not, or maybe they were good at some point, but they failed at some point also. Some examples: Moses, who delivered the 10 Commandments actually killed a man (but it was a man mistreating someone), Moses also surprisingly had no self confidence in fulfilling God’s request, but God kept pursing. Moses was chosen by God to further God’s purpose. David was also God’s chosen one but he arranged for Bathsheba’s husband to be killed so he could be with her. God punished David for that (by their first child’s death) and David accepted God’s punishment, repented and never turned from God. David and Bathsheba’s next son, Solomon, became a great leader and built a phenomenal temple to worship God, but he also had numerous wives and relationships and later worshiped idols, but he also fulfilled God’s purpose and had a significant role in the Bible. Joseph was the youngest brother and was mistreated/treated like he was insignificant by his own brothers, but God gave him the gift of interpreting dreams and put him in an important role in Egypt. Paul had persecuted Christians, but Jesus appeared to him and temporarily blinded him, calling him for God’s purpose, then Paul changed. Paul is the one who wrote most of the Letters to the people of various cities found in the New Testament. The main point is the people who were significant in the Bible, were not who we might have expected, but God chooses people for His plan and purpose and Jesus often said “the least will be the greatest” 

3.  How to get to Heaven? (Good question to know the answer to!)

I have to admit, growing up I also thought that we had to be “good” to get to heaven. But after reading the Bible, that is not how we get to heaven. We could do all sorts of good works, but still not get to heaven if we don’t have saving faith in Jesus. The only way to heaven is faith in Jesus, but faith without good works is not the saving kind of faith. If we have true faith, it will be demonstrated by our actions. (Ephesins 2: 8-10, James 2:26, 1 Corinthians 6: 9-10, Matthew 7:16-23)

4.  Believer defined (And it's not what most of us think/thought!)

This was significant to me because I, like many people I know, thought that if we say “I believe in Jesus,” we are saved. But that is not how the bible defines a “Believer.” Finding this out truly changed my mind and also made me realize, it’s not that “easy.” This is also something that I think a lot of people don’t understand: the biblical definition of a “Believer.” It makes a tremendous difference too. A “non-practicing” person is not a believer according to the Bible (Read: 1 John 1, 1 John 2, 1 John 3, 1 John 5)

A true believer:

  • has friendships with those redeemed and Jesus
  • lives as Jesus instructs
  • admits and confesses our sins (we do not think we are sinless)
  • keeps God’s commandments
  • loves God, not worldly things
  • does what is right
  • seeks to maintain a pure life
  • experiences less sin in our lives overtime; we don’t keep sinning
  • shows love to other Christians
  • “walks the walk” not just “talks the talk”
  • has a clear conscience
5.  Repentance (John 3:3, 5)  (It's necessary)

Repentance is defined as: deep sorrow or regret felt for a sin we committed, followed by deeds that demonstrate repentance (Acts 26:20) Repentance matters each and every time a sin is committed (Ezekiel 33:12) Jesus preaches repentance (Matthew 4:17) John wrote: “We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the Godly person who does his will.” (John 9:31) It sure sounds like getting right with God comes before God will consider answering a prayer we say!

6.   Obedience (It's necessary)

This is repeated over and over in the bible: follow the 10 commandments, which can be summed up as love God and love your neighbor (if you practice “love” then you will be keeping all the 10 commandments). Love is another word that is defined in the Bible and is probably more comprehensive than what we typically think “love’s” definition is. (Read: Romans 12: 9-21 and 1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

7. Our Purpose? (This was an unanswered question in my mind for years)

Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Daily reading and prayer: After reading the Bible, I realized how it can transform a person’s mind in a good way. Like anything we repeatedly pay attention to; we begin to absorb. So it’s important to me to have something “good” as a focus. The Bible is God inspired, so this is a way to begin and continue building knowledge and understanding of who God is and more. I read the Bible out of curiosity and ended up realizing there were many important things I didn’t know. As I read the Bible, I began summarizing sections, impactful statements and creating a visual that I can go back to in the future to find a quote that stood out to me, my goal is to post daily eventually, to keep me focused on reading the bible. You will see there are quite a number of posts already made from when I first started reading the Bible. (This is a link to the page.) I hope you found some of this information as beneficial as I did.

by Categories: FAITH, Improvement, Love, RELATIONSHIPSTags: , , , 1 Comment

Being “called”

Have you ever heard someone say “I was called to …”? I have before, and often thought with a bit of skepticism and doubt: “How did THAT happen?” when I heard someone say that. A little concern about “brain wash,” or “over compensating” to be honest.

Does that happen “magically” one day? How does one know that is happening? Is the person saying this to make themselves seem important or special? What’s the ulterior motive in this? Are they going to be judging me now because of this? then…I don’t know if I can relate to them anymore…

I can’t tell you what it is like for others, but I can tell you what this is like for me and the only reason I’m writing this is because maybe this is happening to you and you don’t recognize it? Because I didn’t. I was opposite of “that” person who received a calling (I never knew what my purpose was, or what I should be doing); just an average “normal” person. But something in me is changing over time, for years in fact, VERY gradually. So gradually, that I didn’t recognize it was happening, until now.

How did it start?

Hindsight always makes everything clearer. As a child, I learned about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit. I learned how to pray. I believed in what I was taught and off and on, randomly, throughout life at various times, I prayed but not consistently. I always seemed to keep my belief, but the belief was often buried and personal and I lived a “normal” life.

How did it progress?

  • My conscience. My inner conscience would conflict with the way I was living and as I struggled with the conflict, I would make gradual changes, a little at a time. I made bad decisions and then suffered the consequences, over and, over and, over again! There is a quote about change:

CHANGE occurs when the PAIN of doing the same is GREATER than the FEAR/UNCOMFORTABLE process of CHANGE.

  • Other people in my life: mentors, those whom I respected influenced me: not by “preaching” to me; I didn’t want or need that, but by me paying attention to how they lived, by the example they gave, by their actions, not by their words and through the respect I had towards them. This contributed to my inner conscience tugging of knowing right from wrong. And honestly, those who were not living in a “biblical” way also had an influence on me: I could see the pain they brought into their lives by their actions, similar to my own pain. I wanted change, but didn’t know how.
  • Finding a church that felt welcoming. I participated in a few churches over the years, but always felt like an “outsider.” I believed in the biblical teachings, but didn’t get a good feeling/connected feeling from the people who were there. I didn’t fit in, so I didn’t participate fully. Years went by and because of a tragedy/death, I visited a non-denomination church, one that many people had suggested to me, but I didn’t even give it a chance; I thought it was “too different” from what I knew growing up. It was different, but why didn’t I realize the obvious: It WAS different, and all along I never felt like I connected anywhere else, so why did I resist trying something new? I was looking for something different! I don’t have the answer to that question, but do know that it took a tragedy to get me there; the year was 2015. I started going to church occasionally, then started getting more involved in exploring and understanding what this church was all about. I found a connection here. It was a non-denomination, Christian church, based on the direct teachings of the Bible and nothing else. Every question was answered with: “What does the bible tell us?”
  • Exploring the bible. This was something I never accomplished: reading the entire bible, and I still haven’t, but I found there are too many things that pointed me back to the Bible being the truth and knowing that various religions acknowledge what is in the Bible, but have different beliefs. For example, Jesus. I was amazed to find out that Muslims acknowledge that Jesus lived; but they do not believe He was the Son of God. I knew Jewish people felt the same, but also acknowledge Jesus’ existence. I also thought: how could this book survive over 2,000 years if there wasn’t a strong basis in truth that was passed on for generations? 2016 was the year of exploring this non-denomination church further and by 2017 I decided I needed to “Surrender to God” knowing that I needed change and wanting God to direct my life.

What happened during this change?

Well in my mind, I had the following expectations: once I “surrendered to God” my life would be peaceful, without pain and wonderful. I was wrong! Almost immediately bad things started happening in my life: personally, financially, relationally; some of the worst hardships I ever experienced. I struggled more than ever and I didn’t understand why this was happening, but I still had hope that I did the right thing, things would turn around and I kept faith in God to see me through all this. So then 2018 arrives and I’m still hopeful, there were many good things that happened that year, and I focused on the good, but the bad was still weighing heavily on me and I was still struggling. Then I was again hopeful about 2019, but 2019 was even harder than the prior two years that I thought were the worst I had experienced. Almost everything was going opposite of good and getting worse, not better. This was not the “story” I expected!

Reflection: In 2017, I considered getting baptized as an adult in this new church (even though I was Baptized as a child and Confirmed later- I went through the motions in doing this Confirmation, because that was what everyone else did. I recall my confirmation was a renewal of the baptism beliefs my parents said on my behalf and I still had those same beliefs, so I was Confirmed).

This “new” baptism commitment, that was offered and happening at this church, was different to me as an adult. To me, this meant if I did it, I am making a promise to God to live my life according to his commands, no loopholes, no excuses for behavior, no leniency. I decided in 2018, while I was changing for the better, I wasn’t ready to completely change and make that commitment. In 2019, I questioned it again: why I should consider being baptized, if I made the commitment personally to God, then why would I need to be so “public” with it? Is it for show? So I didn’t go through with it again.

During 2019, I started looking up things in the bible to gain knowledge and answers about questions I had. And I started reading a little here and there with the end goal eventually getting through the bible over time. Then one night before I went to bed, I decided to randomly open the bible and read whatever I opened, hoping that God would give me some insight into my life and struggles. Wow! So I opened it to the book of Job and started reading: It started with Satan telling God he could gain Job’s soul basically. Satan took control over Job’s life and destroyed everything about it, convinced that Job would reject God. The majority of the book was Job questioning why this was happening and why God was doing this to him (but God wasn’t, Job didn’t understand) when Job was living his life in accordance with God’s commands, bad was happening. He challenged God, was angry with God because he felt unjustifiably harmed, but maintained his faith and trust in God throughout all the bad that was happening in his life. His friends even thought he was being punished for doing wrong and told him he needed to repent and ask for forgiveness. As I was reading this, it’s a long book, I had to skip to the end because it was so depressing and it was making me even more sad, feeling like giving up. I could relate it to my life and how I was feeling about all the bad in it, I wanted to know how the story ended. I was glad to see in the end that God restored Job and Job’s life was even better than it had been in the past. The story taught hope through perseverance. That was what I needed.

Again in 2019, I found, exploring the Bible, more answers to questions I had, but again, these were not the answers that I wanted. They were answers that caused me even more pain, sadness and loss of hope. It was so painful to me that I decided to speak with a Pastor, which I did a couple times. And it was helpful, I gained insight into parts of the Bible I had not yet explored and it gave me hope once again.

At the same time, I talked to my sister, who has always been one of strong faith and she introduced me to a Bible app that she has used before and found beneficial. She texted me a link so I decided to download the app and explore what was in it. I was completely amazed at how much work went into creating this app and how effective this app is. Everything is from the Bible (you can choose what version you use; I use the NIV version) and there are reading plans for every question or situation you could imagine. You can search a word and it will find biblical passages or reading plans that relate to your interests or questions or situation. This is something so helpful, the app will audibly read the bible to you, so you can listen when you are driving, or before you go to bed, or anytime you need, or want it and it’s a resource you have with you all the time, because it’s on your phone. You can download it here: https://www.youversion.com/the-bible-app/

Conclusion.

I am still on this slow journey, but I do believe that God put people in my life and allowed things to happen in my life to bring me back, wake me up, make me change my ways and I am committed more than I’ve ever been to doing this. My story hasn’t finished, but I’m realizing through this series of events, that I am “being called” to make a change in my life.

by Categories: Face Fear, FAITH, Following Passions, HAPPINESS, Improvement, Letting Go, Love, Make It Count, RELATIONSHIPS, WellnessTags: , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments