Before time came into being, you were on God’s heart, not as an afterthought, but as a primary thought.
The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit had a purpose for you that would lavish you with joy.
God’s glorious purpose for you flies in the face of our culture’s incessant desire for self-exaltation and of its perversion of what true success is.
Thousands of years ago, the prophet Isaiah said these life-enlarging words about the nation of Israel:
“…everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43:7 (ESV)
Israel as a nation was God’s strategic marketing plan.
Israel existed to display what life with the Great Lover was like. They existed to be the APPLE OF HIS EYE. His unending love was to fuel their hearts to such a degree that people who didn’t know the one true God would want to enter their community because of the way they lived, and thus become the apple of His eye too.
The people of Israel were missionaries.
There was nothing special about them, but their mission from God was very special because, through them, others could know and be in community with God.
JESUS
Jesus came to fulfill and accomplish what Israel could not. And through Jesus, a new people of God would be birthed out of His precious blood and death-destroying resurrection, called the Church.
Paul said it this way:
Church, we exist “to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.” Ephesians 1:6 (ESV)
CHURCH
Church, each of you has been given passions and abilities, and you have been placed in the time you are in, in order that you may be God’s marketing strategy to the world.
Our life is about Him, not us, and when it really is about Him, we truly experience life with ridiculous joy that attracts others to Him.
