Daily Encouragement: Year 1, Day 47
Adapted from Handbook to Leadership
Personal Development: Purpose/Passion
While Scripture provides us only glimpses of God’s ultimate purposes in creating the cosmos, the Word does reveal God’s universal purpose for believers. In short, this purpose is to know Christ and to make Him known. God does not want anyone to perish, but desires that everyone come to repentance and enter into a relationship with Him through the new birth in Christ (2 Peter 3:9). Once a person is born again as a child of God, God wants that person to grow in Christ and be conformed to His likeness (Romans 8:29). Thus, God’s purpose for each of us is edification (spiritual growth) and evangelism (spiritual reproduction).
God also has a unique purpose for each of us, and this relates to our distinctive temperaments, abilities, experiences, spiritual gifts, education, and spheres of influence. Second Corinthians 4:16–18 provides the context for God’s unique purposes for our lives and reminds us to develop an eternal perspective so that we will have a passion to give our lives in exchange for the things that God tells us will endure.