Into the Fire

Real purpose often eludes us. We’re captured by the inane, the petty, the simple, the complex, the beautiful, and the ugly. We are simultaneously underwhelmed and overwhelmed. We feel like we’re engaged in the trivial and like we’ve failed to embrace the critical. We struggle between pride and condemnation, laughter at the hideous and pity at the comical. The world is at the same time too big and so small.

So what is our purpose here on planet earth? Fused with all the concerns of our choices in this allotted time we have here—which few of us know the number of our days—what is the bottom line? We Christians will answer in several ways but prominently featured among those answers (and rightfully so) will be “worship” as in the worship of the One True God through His Son Jesus Christ and completed by the indwelling Holy Spirit.

I contend the real purpose for us here on earth is one we can’t accomplish by ourselves. In fact, we can’t do it at all. Yet we are incremental in the process. That purpose climaxes in the salvation of souls.

If you expect me to launch into preferred methodology for evangelism, the true way to send out or to become missionaries, the how-tos of discipleship for winning people to Christ: don’t. Programs don’t even come close to what I’m attempting to say here.

God gives each person a multi-faceted plan for earth inhabitation. He covers the gamut of occupations, skills, personalities, shapes, sizes . . . you get it. In each individual He implants a uniqueness designed for His pleasure and His use. More and more over the years I’ve lived, I see how His desire is to employ each person’s special qualities to impress upon another or many others the value of His Son.

Although His Spirit draws each individual to take a look at who Jesus is, inevitably that person will also see who His people are, what they stand for, how they conduct themselves, what they say to that individual during the course of their acquaintance. We will either help or hinder the process of salvation. I’m convinced of it. Salvation of a soul does not depend on us—thank God—because we can’t be trusted with something so precious. We are flawed and will ultimately disappoint, disregard, or disrupt the admiration of another who relies on us. But . . . we contribute because it is our purpose. And God has ordained our steps . . . not for us, but for Him. Time and time again we must force ourselves to remember it isn’t about us. It’s about the lost, about reconciling them to the One who gave them Life, to the One who made the reconciliation possible.

When you measure all things, not the immediate or the far flung plans of man, but all things in this lifetime, what could be more valuable than being used in the process of introducing a soul to the Author of Life? What greater purpose?

Thank you, Lord God. Without you I am and have nothing. Apart from you I can do nothing. You’re all I’m livin’ for. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.