As the New Year unfolds what it has for us, it is crucial to identify the specific purposes attached to the year. This will help us live and walk in alignment with what the Creator has designed for us. Then, it is extremely important that we create a consistent, regular time of study, prayer and meditation in God’s word. We want to focus attention intentionally on God and seek Him for clarity of purpose. We must come to a place of knowledge that we are all made for a specific purpose, and the Owner of our lives, who created us, Who created this purpose with us, is the only One who can help us identify us in relation to our purpose in life, in family, and in ministry.
We live in an extremely distracting world, full of vague knowledge about everything, believing that we can gain access to all that we need to know from social media. But this is a lie of Satan, because we get more confused as we spend a significant portion of our time focusing on what others are saying about us and believing the social media posts. Many people have taken wrong decisions that have impacted their lives so negatively, such that they cannot be reversed because they have yielded their mindset solely to what others have said about them.
When we channel so much energy into what others are saying about us, the narratives of our parents in the past about us, everything the doctors are saying about our health, what psychologists are saying about our mental health, and we channel little strength towards believing the promises of God for us, the situation is a disaster-waiting-to-happen. There is a need for us to go away for an inward search. While we are doing that, we give an absolute and undistracted attention to God, just like Paul did when he went away to Arabia.
15 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace, 16 to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach Him among the Gentiles, I did not immediately confer with flesh and blood, 17 nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went to Arabia, and returned again to Damascus. 18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and remained with him fifteen days. 19 But I saw none of the other apostles except James, the Lord’s brother. (Galatians 1:15-17)
Everyone does not have to travel like Paul, but there is a need for us to step away from the noise, the everyday routine. Our daily too-busy routine and the many activities that take our attention must be left behind so that we can give God an undistracted focus and attention.
Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:1-2).
Then we can develop the ability to see what God is showing us. We must respond to that word that says “looking unto Jesus the author and the finisher of our faith”, because He alone has the final say on who we are, what we are made for, which is our purpose, and who we are created to reach for Him. Gaining clarity in all of these provides a guarantee of our destination, even as we are intentional about this inward search, especially as the New Year rolls out the available opportunities to us.
