Activating My Purpose

How is God's purpose for us revealed to us?

(And all the people who heard this, including the tax collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John's baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God's purpose for themselves.) - Luke 7:29-30

According to Luke, in this explanation of what Jesus was telling the disciples and followers about John the Baptist.

Those who had been baptized by John acknowledged God's justice, and those who refused, missed an opportunity to know their purpose.

There is a lot of talk about justice these days, but not much talk about God's justice.  IT is as though we have forgotten that this world was not created by us.  We cannot make all things right.  The rules are not ours, but God's.

If through baptism, we accept that it is God's will and not ours that governs our lives, then we should accept that He will set things in alignment, and true justice will prevail, but in His time, not ours.

I have just finished reading Bryan Stevenson's book, Just Mercy, his personal story of trying to gain justice for those wrongfully convicted.  It appears that this was the purpose to which God anointed him on his baptism.

If we are all given an assignment in that moment when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, why is it that it takes some of us so long to discover what that assignment, that purpose is?

In Bryan's case, he admits that he began his ministry of justice as a naive young lawyer, and he gained his wisdom from those he met on death row.  Perhaps that is a clue to how we activate our purpose, in Bryan's case the purpose of finding justice.

While he tackled the impossible, changing the court system to be fairer toward the poor and oppressed, especially blacks, it was his clients who kept him going, giving him the love and support he needed to know he was doing God's work.

I believe that tells me that I need to be out there among the people to fulfill what God has in store for me.  I will gain nothing by offering support from afar.  But I will gain insight, wisdom and energy from those I seek to help, if I allow myself to get close.

That, I think, is what Jesus was saying when he asked why the followers of John went out into the wilderness to find him.

We begin our quest for God's purpose for us by accepting His Spirit within us, becoming adopted as his children, and accepting Christ as our savior.

Then the work begins.  Then we need to go out and discover that purpose by loving our neighbor as ourselves.  It is through their eyes, their lives, that we find our own.

If I only knew that when I was young.

More to come...