Tag: purpose

Finding Purpose in Simplicity

by Nicky Wood

Genesis 2:15: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to take care of it.”

When God created Adam, He had a specific plan and purpose in mind for him. Adam wasn’t just placed in the Garden of Eden to enjoy it. God wanted him to be the gardener of Eden and take care of it.

We read in verse 8 of Chapter 2 that God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden, and there he put the man that He had formed.

God was the original Gardener, planting the most beautiful garden we could ever imagine. And then placing man there for a specific purpose…to work it and to look after it. He set the scene and prepared the environment and then He placed Adam there to do the work.

As with Adam, God has a purpose and a plan for each one of us. A work that He has called each one of us to do. Maybe you feel like your work isn’t good enough or important or glamorous enough. But if God has placed you in the environment that you are currently, He has a specific plan and purpose for you there and He will reveal it to you if that is within His will.

God doesn’t measure you by your success or your title or your position. Don’t think that if you are not the CEO or  leading a team or building your own business, that your work isn’t important or significant. All that God originally wanted and expected from Adam was to tend and care for a garden and to be obedient to His instructions not to eat of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It was simple. It was supposed to be easy.

Then the lies of the devil made everything complicated. Suddenly, Adam and Eve were questioning God’s original instructions. Since those days in the Garden of Eden thousands of years ago, the lies have never stopped. The devil hasn’t stopped trying to deceive us when it comes to our purpose and our identity in Christ.

As the Great Gardener, God has the ability to plant seeds in our lives and to water them, to cut off the dead branches and to prune the branches bearing fruit so they can bear even more fruit. If you submit to Him and are obedient to Him, He will make everything bloom in your life, even the parts that may seem small or insignificant to you.

And so my prayer is that wherever God plants you and me, we will “bloom with grace”.

Great Expectations

by Nicky Wood

Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

What is your vision for the rest of your life? And how has it been influenced by unmet expectations?

We’ve all been hurt by unmet expectations. Every day when we wake up, whether we admit it or not, we have expectations of the people we love the most. Yet people will always disappoint you in some way or another… our humanity makes us fallible.

We can perhaps still comprehend it to a degree when other people fail us even though we might be heartbroken.

But what of the expectations we have of God?

How does it influence our prayer life, our vision and our purpose when some of our earnest prayers have not been answered and it feels like God is not listening to us, or some unexpected tragedy strikes? Will we admit to ourselves (and to God) that we are disappointed and discouraged?

God knows all about you. He knows what your next prayer will be. He knows what your next sin will be. He knows you completely and still He loves you infinitely. Even though you might be angry and disillusioned, He is not angry or disillusioned by you.

The worst thing you can do is to withdraw from Him because that which you have expected from Him has not materialized. I want to elaborate on this concept in my next few posts because I want you to find out more about who He is and what He wants to do in your life through His faithfulness.

I truly believe that when we have a revelation of His faithfulness and when we pray knowing who He is and what He is capable of doing, when we have faith the size of a mustard seed, we will see mountains being moved. When we pray within the will of God, for the glory of God and not ourselves, and in a trusting manner, we will start to see the manifestation of our prayers. When we keep record of all He has done in the past for us and meditate on this, our future prayers can become even more powerful.

Jeremiah 29:11-13: ““I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me.””

You can count on His promises for your future. He never changes and He never fails…Numbers 23:19: “God is not a human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?”

I pray that you won’t fall into the trap of letting your vision die because of past disappointments and unmet expectations.

Paradise lost

by Nicky Wood

If God is faithful, why does He allow all the pain and suffering that is consuming this world?

A valid question – to find a glimpse of the answer, will take you back to the beginning of Creation.

In the beginning, man was literally made for paradise. A perfect world. A perfect plan and a perfect creation. No hate, no pain, no disaster or famine or hunger or war. This was God’s plan for you and me.

God made us from love, because He is love, and love was made alive when Adam and Eve walked the earth, so God could manifest His love to them personally. The earth was created for us, out of His eternal love. But love is not just one dimensional, and in God’s omnipotent plan, he desired a relational love – he desired Adam’s love in return.

Yet love can never be forced or required or expected, so the only way to complete the picture was for God to give man a free will. A choice to love or not. If I didn’t have a choice, if I was forced to love you, it would and could never be called love at all.

Eve made the wrong choice. Chose the wrong tree. In an instant Satan received power over this world because of her choice. And forever man would have to choose between good and evil. Whether you choose to believe in God or not does not take away from this Truth. The reality that Adam and Eve were banished from paradise and paradise turned into the hard reality of life on earth as it is now. Our enemy was given control of this world. And the choices people make are not all godly.

So God gave us an opportunity to choose again. We can have paradise again. God decided that it’s not the end. After life on earth man can spend an eternity in Heaven with Him and no man will ever be able to change that because of the one thing that the One man, Jesus, did on the cross.

My intentions are not to oversimplify all the problems of this world, and I know that not everything is a matter of choices. As I mentioned in my first post – time and chance happens to all.

Yet the key here is this:

Romans 8:28: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

Whatever happens to you in this world, if you love Him, God will work everything out for the good.

That includes all things that might seem wrong or a mess to you or the things in your life that are there because of your own mistakes or weaknesses. God is able to work all of it out for your good. That is how much He loves you.

God’s heart is for you to know the extent of His love for you, the extent of a love and faithfulness that knows no end. That has no boundaries and that can never be extinguished or diminished. A love that is more than likely impossible for a human mind to comprehend in its life time.

He is a God that is faithful, even if we are faithless. (2 Timothy 2:13)