Lamentations 1:9 Her uncleanness is in her skirts; She did not consider her destiny; Therefore her collapse was awesome; She had no comforter. "O Lord, behold my affliction, For the enemy is exalted!" NKJV
A Consideration of Destiny or Saving & Shaping
The current commercials on television tell me that with the cost of one cup of coffee per month, I can help save the lives of ten million children each year. That’s pretty dramatic? That’s pretty wonderful. It got me thinking though, I mean what would those countries do with ten million more children per year?There is no question that life should be saved, especially if it is saved so cheaply. However, it is just not enough to stop there, for the challenges that saved lives present are enormous. I helped my wife set up and run a crisis pregnancy centre and was involved in counselling some of the exceptionally young fathers, so I know that lives saved from an abortionists knife, though being precious and wonderful in themselves, never the less, present the parents, the wider family and the State, with some remarkable challenges of support, mentoring, training and releasing!
Yes, of course we should save lives of all people created in the image of God, but it doesn’t stop there, it can’t stop there! It is easy to string a straight line from a starting point to an end point, but if all you have is a starting point, then all you have is a string that goes nowhere. We need to have an end game.
We have the same problem in the church. We sometimes are privileged to be involved in seeing people saved among us, but we don’t really have an end game for them. Yes I tell you, if having Christ formed in us is simply a matter of getting folks to read their Bible a few minutes in a morning, then turn up at all our meetings, sit up and listen, shut up and pay up, then we do not have an end game, we do not have a destination to pin our line on. This happens in the church, mostly because we as individuals do not have a destination, a personal destiny if you will, We are not travelling along a straight line from good beginnings to achieved destiny. If that is the case for most of us, then just how can we assist others in finding and pursuing their own manifest destiny in Jesus?
It seems to me that if you save a life, you also have the duty to shape a life. I think so and in light of that, I shall leave you with these challenging thoughts tonight: Where are you going? How are you going to get there? How is your shaping of your own life, as well as the lives of other people you are somewhat responsible for, well, how is it going? Consider your destiny and the destiny of those you give help bring into life, for if you do not, the dizzy and meandering collapse of you and those individuals will be awful and only the enemy shall be exalted when that happens. So, just what is your manifest destiny in life? Find it, then pursue it.
Listen: - "See, O Lord, and consider! To whom have You done this? Should the women eat their offspring, The children they have cuddled? Lamentations 2:20a NKJV
Pray:- Lord, help us to have such a seen destiny for ourselves and for those we give life to, that we would pray and plan, sow and reap, step and keep on Your chosen, directed path of growth for us. Help us to be wise in this, that we might never have to end up consuming ourselves in irrelevance and eating our own offspring with directionless and unfruitful living, in Jesus name I pray, amen.
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