Purpose & The Big Picture

Next time anyone says, “God has a purpose for your life,” especially in the midst of difficulty or challenge or setback, it might be helpful to “go bigger” than one’s personal earthly plans and “dreams” and wish lists being either cancelled or fulfilled.

“… We may have to let go the particular occasion of our trouble, and first recognize, and then embrace with our heart, the fact that in the affliction there resides the immense eternal potentiality of an increase of the image of God’s Son, which is to be the one and the only character and nature of the eternal kingdom. We have too much visualized the ‘Heaven’ that is to be, as geographical and pleasurable, without giving sufficient weight to the fact of a nature to be inculcated and perfected.” (By T. Austin-Sparks from: One Universal Answer)

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” Romans 8:28,29 NKJV.

To be conformed to the image of His Son. Now that’s a tall order. It reminds me of some lines from a beautiful song from long ago that we used to sing at prayer meetings – “The dream I have today, My Lord, is only a shadow of Your dreams for me, only a shadow of all that will be, if I but follow you.”

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.’ But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.” James 4:13-16 NKJV.

Ouch.

When it feels like nowhere, we can be sure He’s now here. The omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent One.

Fear not. Surrender to redeeming grace.

I’d Rather Be…

The following Open Windows article really spoke to my heart this morning. All of us have to some degree worn the “I’d rather be…” bumper sticker as a mental outlook. Ever dreaming, ever thinking that the grass is greener, if I could just get across the fence. If only I’d made this choice or that. If I go here, or go there, I will be happier. And this approach can be really frustrating when there are circumstances that realistically cannot be escaped, or we have some long term commitment to fulfill, and it’s just not what we thought it would be at the outset. The cultural – pseudo spiritual milieu, with its false idea that “I can do or be whatever I want, and think things magically into being” also adds to the frustration, because it’s a lie and it doesn’t work. Sometimes, yes, we can change a situation, and we should for reasons of survival itself; at other times – realistically – it’s, as they say, not in the cards. So, it’s important to understand what the following TAS message offers about the hidden meaning and gifts God has in “all things.” God is sovereign, and has His reasons. And His reasons are beyond anything we could ever imagine. It’s about His purpose, not our “purpose driven” dreams and desires. Instead it’s about surrender to the reality into which God has placed us, and trusting in His infinite wisdom and mercy.

(Think Job.)

From Open Windows Email November 17, 2023
By T. Austin-Sparks from: Conformed to the Image of His Son

“We know that for those who love God, that is, for those who are called according to His purpose, all things are working together for good.” (Romans 8:28 ISV)

Go back to the place where, for the time being, the Lord has put you, where He has called you to live your life and do your work in all the trial and difficulty and suffering of it, and do not strain to get out of it. Do not lose the present value of it by always living mentally or hopefully in a time when you will be out of it, but go back there and recognize that if you are the Lord’s, if you love God and are called according to purpose (as you are if you are in Christ), God is seeking to do something with you and in you by means of the conditions of your present situation. You will only defeat God’s end if you try to get out, and will fail to recognize and accept what He is seeking to do. I can think of few things more regrettable and grievous than that we should look back upon any part of our life and have to say, “I might have realized some great purpose of God in that period of my life if only I had taken another attitude toward it than the one I did take; I was chafing, impatient, all the time looking for a way of escape; I was rebellious, living in another mental world of my own creating, in which I would do and be this and that; and I missed all that God intended at that time.” I say, there can be few things more grievous than that.

So we must go back to the sphere and conditions in which the Lord has placed us, with this attitude – God has a thought which relates to me as one of His Own; and that thought is, that through the conditions and sufferings of my life He should develop in me the features of His Son. On the one hand, the features of the old creation may be seen to be more and more terrible and horrible, as I recognize them in myself; but over against that God is doing something which is other than myself, not me at all. He is bringing into being Another, altogether other, and that is His Son. Slowly, all too slowly; nevertheless something is happening. That sonship is not very much manifested yet, but it is going to be manifested. What God has been doing will come out into the light eventually – conformity to the image of His Son; “that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.” So we look out upon the people of God on the earth amongst whom we are included, and we have to adjust our ideas as to why we are here. There may be things to do, but God is far more concerned with the being than with the doing, and we have to learn all over again what service is.

(Warning: Advertising presented here may not be in keeping with the values of this writer.)

[This email is from the Austin-Sparks.Net Daily Open Windows message list. Daily Open Windows messages have been selected and compiled by Austin-Sparks.Net from the works of T. Austin-Sparks. In some cases they appear in abridged form. The introductory verse and its associated Bible version have been selected by the editor and did not always appear within the original message. We encourage you to forward this message to others by clicking on the forwarding link below. In keeping with T. Austin-Sparks’ wishes that what was freely received should be freely given and not sold for profit, and that his messages be reproduced word for word, we ask if you choose to share these messages with others, to please respect his wishes and offer them freely – free of any changes, free of any charge (except necessary distribution costs) and with this statement included.]