The DNA of Purpose

Romans 8:28 (NLT), “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

By Alexandra Copeland

Our inclination is to flip-out emotionally when conditions and circumstances are far from optimum. Heavenly Father knows that we’re going to sometimes over-react, but there will come a time when this is no longer acceptable. After we’ve been on this Christian journey for a while, God’s expectation is that our faith will become developed to the point where we don’t freak-out under pressure. After a few rounds in the rodeo of life, our confidence that God will never leave us or forsake us, and that His faithfulness is everlasting should be firmly in place; but we don’t see this happening with a lot of us in the Christian community. 

Instead of being surefooted on the solid foundation of Christ, many are falling away from the faith. For whatever reasons, they have felt disillusioned, abandoned, and unfulfilled with the institutions that they have sought out for comfort and spiritual growth. We get into trouble any time that we begin to focus too much on a particular person in a teaching role rather than focusing squarely on Jesus Christ through the leadership and direction of the Holy Spirit. When we expect a person to fill our cups, we’re going to be disappointed, because only Jesus Christ can do this for us. 

Our desire should be to recognize Christian teachers, preachers, and leaders as those that God has appointed to help equip us so that we are then able to do what they are doing, which is to fulfill a function within the Body of Christ. People are not to be worshipped. They are to be respected and loved, just as we are to be respected and loved. They should also constantly remind us that we’ve got some place to be in terms of God’s plan. There should always be in the back of our minds an underlying goal. This goal should be directly linked to the purpose and call that we specifically, uniquely, and individually must fulfill according to God’s divine agenda. Whether we realize it or not, everything in our lives is preparing us to accomplish this. 

There are many details about our purpose that we don’t know. We don’t know all the players or people involved, and we don’t know the situations or conditions that will exist in the future. We cannot pinpoint with any degree of specificity the exact moment when we are destined to spring into action in a way that no other can. The only thing that we can know is that we are to be groomed to such a degree that we are prepared at that appointed time and space to snugly fit into the universe’s puzzle, so that God’s agenda is moved forward. 

This is not to say that there will only be one time or one unique opportunity in which we fulfill our purpose, and then it’s all over. That’s not the case, but it is almost certain that many of the things we face day to day will position, condition, and prepare us for something greater. A crescendo effect exists in the realm of Godliness, whereby the more we expand and excel spiritually, the greater our impact is upon the body of Christ, and the more rewards we receive as our relationship with God deepens. 

The problem that we encounter with those who become disillusioned in the faith is that it is not stressed to them how incredibly important it is that we do and accomplish what we have been purposed to do. Most consider it a very trivial thing. They don’t realize that details like the family they were born into, the environment they’re in, even their jobs or the place where they attended school; all of this has been strategically positioned by our Heavenly Father so that we would be born again, and able to partner with Him to get some things done in the earth. 

To abandon the faith is to turn our backs on our own identity. Purpose is in our DNA. In the human body, DNA stores information in a sequence that is readable by those with the skills to decipher it. Spiritually this is also true. God’s Will is our divine sequence, and as we honor His Word and follow Him through the indwelling Holy Spirit, our purpose is unfolded beautifully. The enemy seeks to disrupt this sequence, so that we will not know our purpose and be unsure of our identity in Christ. By orchestrating obstacles and bombarding us with distractions, the devil tries to steer us away from our purpose and sabotage our relationship with God.

You could be experiencing one of the most challenging times of your life. It may seem as though you take one step forward and two steps backwards. You may feel as though you’re losing ground or that you’re being punished. God’s Word tells us that there is a reason for everything. When we’re encountering manifold disruptions and agitations, we should be spiritually astute enough to seek it out. 

1John 1:5 (NLT) tells us, “This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.”  God is light. God is love. God is liberty. God is life. There is absolutely no darkness in Him at all. He’s everything positive that we could ever want. We should want to drink in every drop of His deliciousness, because He is good to the last drop. The Apostle Paul told us in Romans 8:28 (NLT), “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” God is so good that even when things look like the biggest mess, He will cause them to work together for our good if we’ll just trust Him and hold to His unchanging hand.  

1Corinthians 14:33 (NLT) tells us affirmatively, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.” The devil is the author of confusion. Although he orchestrates obstacles in such a way that they seem to punch us left and right, we are not without defense. Jesus Christ has won the victory over the devil for us, and he did it through the love of God. Christ did not use weapons of darkness to defeat the enemy; he used love. This is our example. So, we shouldn’t acquiesce to the level of the enemy’s games in our mental or emotional states.

The enemy is well aware that our destinies are awesome, and this gives us all we need to know as to why he seeks to stop us from walking therein. We need to be as adamant to fulfill our purpose as he is to keep us from doing so. When the enemy goes low, as he always does, we need to be committed to go higher. This requires that we kick it up several notches to read and study God’s Word, and learn more about walking in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit that indwells us. We need to go higher in the Spirit, and grow tighter with God through communing and communicating with Spirit more, so that we can follow his promptings. This is what we’re called and purposed to do. ■

---

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.