God's Vision, Plan, and Purpose for You
Walking with Purpose Series — Discovering God’s purposes and learning to walk in step with Him.
Written by Ken Grenfell, with Chantelle Kate
From the very beginning, God has always taken the initiative to draw people into relationship with Himself. He is the One who calls, the One who works, and the One who fulfills His purpose in and through us. Over the years, I have learned that the more we understand God’s ways, the more we begin to live not for our own plans, but for His. My desire in sharing these thoughts is to encourage you to view your life through the lens of God’s vision, His plan, and His purpose.
The apostle Paul writes,
“…work out your salvation [that is, cultivate it, bring it to full effect, actively pursue spiritual maturity] with awe-inspired fear and trembling [using serious caution and critical self-evaluation to avoid anything that might offend God or discredit the name of Christ]. For it is [not your strength, but it is] God who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energizing, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfill your purpose] for His good pleasure.”
— Philippians 2:12–13 (Amplified Bible)
What wonderfully powerful verses full of promise and vision! Not only does God take the initiative by pursuing a love relationship with us, but He also invites us to be more involved with Him in His work.
God doesn’t consult us before He begins His work, yet He invites us to be partakers in it. Therefore, in order to be rightly oriented to God, we need a God-centered life. When our focus is on Him, we are far better positioned to recognize what He is doing and how He wants us involved.
Throughout Scripture, we see this pattern again and again. In Genesis, we read about how God accomplished His purposes through Abraham. But while we see a record of Abraham’s walk with God, the focus is always on God and what He is doing.
Whenever God is about to do something significant, He takes the initiative to speak to someone:
Genesis 6:5–14 — When God was preparing to judge the earth with a flood, He came to Noah.
Genesis 18:16–21 — When God prepared to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, He told Abraham.
Exodus 3 — When He planned to deliver Israel from Egypt, He appeared to Moses.
Judges 6:11–16 — When Israel needed deliverance from Midianite oppression, He came to Gideon.
Acts 9:1–16 — When the gospel was to be carried to the Gentiles, He stopped Saul (Paul) on the road to Damascus.
Without a doubt, the most important function in each situation was not what the individual wanted to do for God, but what God Himself was about to do.
Let me ask the question: Who delivered the children of Israel from Egypt—God or Moses?
God did, but He chose to bring Moses into a relationship with Himself so that He, God, could use Moses to deliver Israel.
God knows His people. He created us. He understands our world, and He knows the past, present, and future. His ways are always right and always best.
In Psalm 81, God warns His people that if they refuse to listen and submit to His ways, He will allow them to follow their own desires. At first, that may look like freedom, but experience teaches us that it’s a recipe for disaster, with untold pain and loss.
Now note Ephesians 2:10:
“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
God has a plan, a purpose, and a future for you and me.
Let us also be aware that it is through faith and patience that we inherit what has been promised to us: vision, plans, and purpose.
The source of patience is having God’s vision, because only vision from God gives us God’s inspiration.
Moses endured not because of his devotion to his principles of what was right, nor even because of his sense of duty to God, but because he had a vision of God:
“…He persevered because he saw Him who is invisible.” — Hebrews 11:27
A person who has the vision and purposes of God in his heart is not devoted to a particular cause or issue. He is devoted to God Himself.
You always know when the vision and purposes are of God because of the inspiration that comes with it.
So, we come full circle.
For it is God who is all the while effectively at work in you, energizing and creating in you the power and desire.
God is waiting and wanting to fulfill His purpose in us and through us, not only for our benefit, but for the sake of others and for His glory, power, and splendor.
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