What are His Plans and Purposes for Me? // Power Unlimited, Part 4

Many people, many Christians even, let me say, live directionless, rudderless lives. Their lives don’t seem to be heading anywhere in particular. And at some point, as we realise that life is slipping by ever so quickly, that shocks us into realising that before long, this life will be over … and for what?

You know one of the most common things that we all experience at some point or other in our lives, is this dilemma, this crisis if you will, of, well where is my life headed? I think it’s because somehow we’re hardwired to have hope for the future, to be able to look forward to a good future, to have a sense of significance, to make our mark in this world. Where is my life headed? … can become a question of quite some desperation.

And for our lives to be headed in the right direction we need a few things to come together. The way we live, the things that we can control, and the things that go on around us, the ones we can’t control. That’s not easy. It’s almost an impossible juggling act. But … what if God has a plan? What if He has a purpose in the things that we’ve been travelling through? What if there’s meaning behind it all, and He does want to do amazing things and He does want to be involved in the choices we make today? What if?

Wouldn’t you want to tap into that? I mean, wouldn’t you want to know? Wouldn’t you want Him to speak those plans and purposes gently into your heart and let them make a difference for you, here and now? Just think … what a powerful way that would be to live.

Yesterday we saw that the biggest thing that we can get out of the Bible is discovering God Himself, who He is, what He’s like, how does He react to different situations and things?

To me that is the greatest prize of them all, God Himself, getting to know Him, having a wonderful, rich relationship that just gets deeper and deeper as time goes by.

Today I want to look at the second thing that I think the Bible is about, God’s plans and God’s purposes, both the big picture and specifically for you and me. The big picture is so important. What’s Gods big plan? What’s He up to?

A friend and colleague of mine, Dr Graham Pratt, he and I were speaking a few years ago at an IT conference in Singapore. We were talking over coffee about some technology thing and he said to me, “Berni, context is so important, in fact in understanding something, context is almost everything.” I’ll never forget it, it’s a pearl of wisdom. We want to know where our lives are headed, my life, my little piece of the puzzle, right? If we want to do that we need to understand the big picture; God’s great plan as well as His specific plans and purposes for our lives.

You know, when I read the Bible, the stories and the things that happened a long time ago, somehow God’s plan for my life becomes so crystal clear. For me, life was just a ‘here and now’ thing. It was about wealth and career. In reality, it was empty, hollow, directionless. Where was it headed? What was the point? But when I encountered Jesus, the Jesus of the Bible, when I started listening to Him by reading the Bible, I began to get a handle on God’s big picture. A big picture that’s best summed up in something that God says over and over again:

I will be your God and you will be my people. (Exodus 6:7)

From the beginning to the end of the Bible, you see God saying that and explaining it and sending Jesus so that it could happen. They’re not just words on a page. This is the very heartbeat of God to call us back to Himself, to call us back home, here and now and for all eternity, despite our rebellion, despite the fact that we rejected Him, despite all our mistakes; to give us a new life, an eternal life that’s not about rules and regulations but a relationship with Him.

And right through the whole Bible you see Him engaging with people and drawing them closer, people just like you and me, people in their weaknesses and their failures and yet He loves them and touches them and reaches out to them. Okay, we see His anger too sometimes, you see God getting angry and yet despite that He still reaches out to people from in the midst of His anger and that’s where we discover His grace and we see Jesus dying on a cross for you and me.

As we read those stories over and over again, His heartbeat touches ours, His desire touches us, His grace wraps itself around us and through us. I’ve only just started to wrap my heart around that as I’ve spent twenty odd years listening to Him, hearing His words and His stories and His heartbeat in the pages of that wondrous book – the Bible.

You know, you open the Bible and you read the story of Jesus dying on the cross and crying out:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27:46)

And from the pages of that book we hear God crying out to you and me, here and now; “Don’t you realise how much I love you”. And you know, as well as this big picture of God’s engagement of all humanity and His plans for humanity as a whole, the thing that, for me, so often leaps off the pages of His word are His specific plans for me. Sometimes we think that ‘Well, you know, God’s stopped talking. God had the prophets in the Old Testament and He had Jesus in the New Testament and He had some Apostles in the New Testament … but that was back then. Today though, here and now God’s stopped talking’.

But when we’re travelling through times that are uncertain, when we want to give up, when we’re in a relationship or in a thing we thought God had called us into but now we’re not sure, we need God to speak.

I cannot tell you the number of times, in the early days, that I wanted to give up on this ministry of Christianityworks that I’m involved in. I can’t begin to tell you. It all looked so impossible, it all looked so hopeless. How could this guy from the IT industry ever do this thing called ‘sharing Gods love with people through the media’? It was incongruous but as I look back on it now, that regular habit of spending time in Gods word, day after day, is how He touched me and whispered in my heart ‘just keep going’. That’s what happens, you read God’s word and you discover power … power unlimited … power to keep going with God’s plan for your life. That’s what happens.

Just when I was rock bottom I remember one time, reading this:

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2,3)

Another time, just when I was wondering whether or not to step out in faith by growing the ministry into Africa when we clearly didn’t have the resources to do so, I opened up to the next chapter and read about Peter stepping out of the boat. He didn’t wait for the storm to stop. No, he stepped out in the middle of the storm and walked on the water towards Jesus.

Just when I was feeling so incredibly inadequate one tome, I read about how Peter and all the other disciples deserted Jesus when He was being tried and crucified. And yet Jesus still went on to use them to start this thing He called “the church”.

The Bible is full of this stuff and somehow God, through His Spirit, takes those stories and connects them with our lives and in our hearts we just know that God is speaking to us. There have been so many times when just when I needed a gentle touch from God … then I read about how He healed the leper or the blind person or the lame man. The Bible is full of God’s promises and plans and purposes.

And when we establish a regular habit of just spending some time in there with Him, His Spirit writes His promises and plans and purposes on our hearts with indelible ink, in a way that no person, no man or woman, no situation, no trial can ever rub them off. God Himself brings His word to life and that changes everything.

So often I wonder where I’d be if I hadn’t established a regular habit of reading Gods word. You know, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.