Resources/Articles
What Is Your Destiny For 2013?
One man said, “Wouldn’t you love to look back on your life and know you had done what you were called to do?”
A question like this makes us think of our childhood and all those things we wanted to be when we “grow up.” When we were born, we were never assigned anything to do or be by the government. We never signed a document declaring our occupation or our moral status. God gave us one responsibility: “This is the end of the matter: all hath been heard; fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13). Are you going to do in 2013 what you were called to do?
Jesus knew His mission once He arrived: “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to accomplish His work” (John 4:34). This work was to “seek and save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). The heart of our Lord was genuinely focused on one task. The day He left the carpentry shop of His father in Nazareth He had one aim - the cross of Calvary. That is where He would save the lost. He made it there by cruel and unjust means, and He was so focused on that cross His final words were, “It is finished” (John 19:30).
Most people would think a person who dies a criminal’s death is a failure. Such a person does not fulfill anything except his own lusts. Peter said just a few weeks later, “This Jesus did God raise up...being therefore by the right hand of God exalted...Till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet” (Acts 2:32-35). Paul wrote that Jesus took away the law and nailed it to the cross, “having despoiled the principalities and the powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15). A Roman soldier proclaimed, “Surely, this man was the Son of God.” There was no question He had fulfilled His mission through a cross.
Wait a minute. There were hungry people left which needed feeding, sick needed healing, untaught needed instruction, and the unloved needed love. How could Jesus have finished? The answer is simple. The task God assigned to Him was done. He had completed it. He made the last stroke as an artist with a brush or a sculptor makes the last cut with a chisel or the writer printing his last word. The job was done. Now we are left to be clay in the Potter’s hand. We are each given a gift “according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith” (Romans 12:3). Do not think of how gifted others are. Consider your own gift and accomplish your work for God. The ambitions you have of 2013 are possible by the grace and providence of God. Will you use your gift in a way to show your fear of God and respect toward His commandments? Is this your destiny?
As the life of Paul came to an end, he knew he had “fought a good fight...and kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:6-8). This was the destiny of Paul. We need the same focus in 2013, so when our bodies are laid to rest in the heart of the earth, like Abel, although dead, our lives will speak further of the righteousness which is in God.
