One of the many broad subjects that the Lord continues to instruct me in is that of destiny, chosenness, election.  Though words such as this are often feared by most Christian people, often for the sake of political correctness, they are certainly biblical concepts, and more and more I believe central to the Kingdom of God.  God seems very concerned indeed throughout the scriptural account to ensure that his chosen know that they are indeed chosen.  Destiny is pounded over and over again into the heads of Israel as a people, and those who moved into greatness with God always possessed this call of destiny.  I heard once that Winston Churchill refused to go into bunkers when the German’s were bombing England during World War II.  He believed he had been placed in the time he was by God to prevent Germany’s advance, and that he could not die until he had done so.  His sense of destiny emboldened him to embolden a people!  Interestingly, the very man who was his opposition also had a great sense of destiny.  Time after time assignation attempts on Hitler proved to fall short, and like many of the Caesar’s of old, he began to see himself as something near immortal.  It is in these two men though that we can make a distinction.  God does not write destinies for individuals for their own advancement.  Satan indeed has and had a sense of destiny and entitlement, but it was not the destiny God had written for Him.  In the same way Hitler, leading what was perhaps the most demonic political movement in the history of the world, showed the same characteristics of destiny to personal glorification.  Churchill’s destiny, though I know not his position with the Lord, seems outwardly to be a divine call.  When God puts a call on your life, you can be sure he intends to see it through, if you will make yourself available.  Jesus walked in this sense of destiny.  How many times did he say, “My time has not come,” or did he walk through a crowd of angry people.  He had heard the call of God on his life, and he knew he could not be touched until the time was fulfilled!  What blessed assurance the call of destiny can be to the soul of the Christian.  Talk about feeling your worth, moving in boldness, and expecting greatness – such is the freedom from knowing in the depth of who you are that your God has purposes for your life.  Without this understanding it is impossible to move into the fullness of the inheritance purchased for us on Calvary!  Destiny is one of the keys Christ has given the saints to unlock the Kingdom of Heaven.

Paul opens up his letter to the Ephesians saying, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.  Just as He chose us in Him before the foundations of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.” (Ephesians 1:3-5)  Oh what glorious gospel news this is!  We have been chosen before God ever made the earth, before he ever made Adam and Eve, we were chosen to stand before Him holy and blameless in love.  If you have heard the ringing invitation from heaven and responded from the depths of who you are in hunger for the salvation of God then this is indeed your destiny, in fact, it is your present reality.  You now, in Jesus Christ, stand perfect before the God who loved you, and you were chosen to stand there before the foundations of the world.  The reality is that because God is eternal, the earth is temporal, you have in reality been standing there for eternity, and will continue to for eternity!  Wrap your head around that if you can, or if it makes you hurt, just praise the One who did it.  It gets better though, Paul not only informs us that we are chosen to stand holy before God, but that we are predestined to be adopted as his children!  You not only get to stand before the throne of God and see the joy of the Father with His Son, and the Son with His Father, but your adoption into that family has been settled in the courts of heaven before Jesus even shed his blood to pay the fees!  Later on in Ephesians Paul writes, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepare beforehand that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10)  I truly believe these three verses are the greatest litmus test to distinguish true sons of the king, from the pharisaic masqueraders.  Countless “Christians” use grace as an excuse to bend their knee to the fear that Satan has planted in their heart.  Grace then becomes a cheap mantra which services as an excuse for lukewarm living. And this is supposed to be glorifying to God.  We have heard Jesus’ reaction to such abuse of his grace: it makes him sick.  (See Revelation 3:14-22)  What Paul is truly saying here is that grace has so full laid a claim on your life that God has actually designed you to do His work on the earth.  Think about this for a second!  You are the workmanship of God, created specifically for good works (not mediocre, mundane, or religious ones), and those good works were set up beforehand by God that you should walk in them!  There are four parts to what he is saying there, and three of them have already been decided: 1 – You are the workmanship, that is the handiwork, the masterpiece, the “Very good” thing of God, 2 – You died, buried, and were risen with Christ to new life and good works, 3- God wrote his desired works, his destiny for you, who are his workmanship, before you were ever created.  Those are the facts, but he has left one thing available for the agreement of our will with His saying, “that you should walk in them!”  In other words God says, “I’ve got a destiny for you through my grace, but I won’t force you to walk in it.”  Think about the ridiculous nature of what many of us say in response to God’s declaration over us.  It goes something like this, “I believe God is super good, and loves me so much, He even sent His Son to die for me, that good, loving God has predestined works for me, but they sound kind of hard, so I think I won’t try too hard and say it’s because I’m living under grace.”

Alright, so I’ve torn that passage apart well enough, and managed to get slightly cynical at the end there in the process.  However, I have to make a few clarifiers before I go on, because there are many Christians who would miss the central point of what God is saying here.  When we don’t know the Lord as our Father, we inherently have an affinity for works which will hold us in bondage.  There are countless people in the American church who are stuck in neutral because they are desperately trying to figure out what God wants them to do with their life, and they aren’t hearing jack.  The problem these people are having is that they are trying to walk in the destiny that God has given them before they get the revelation that God has predestined them as Sons!  There is a reason Paul speaks these declarations of destiny over the Ephesians in the order he does.  They were destined to be blameless, their sin is no more, they are free from bondage.  They were then destined only not to be slaves, but so be sons.  Finally, as sons, and only as sons, they were destined for good works, that they should walk in them!  God always wants sons before good works, because only as sons do good works really come to fruition.  It is for this reason that the Father of the Prodigal Son gave his son such a big shocker.  The son thought for sure he would figure out what work the Father wanted him to do, and then maybe move into some position of favor with him.  Rather, the Father wanted his son first, and to talk about work after celebrating their relationship.  If you are not actively in joyful celebration for your adoption as son, and actively in intimacy with your Father, you will not hear a peep from God about your work list.  Thus, before you can move into your destiny, you have to have the revelation of God’s specific call to your heart as his child!

We see this so clearly throughout the lives of God’s great ones.  You will not be able to find someone who has done great things for God who did not operate in the freedom of destiny.  Paul, in writing to the Galatians says, “But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb and called me through his grace to reveal His Son in me, that I might preach among the Gentiles . . .” (Galatians 1:15-16)  Do you see Paul’s understanding of God’s hand upon him, choosing him, moving behind the scenes to take him from Saul, and make him Paul the Apostle.  Paul makes it clear that he knows that God was the one who separated Him from his mother’s womb.  Doesn’t that seem like a weird thing to include?  It’s not if you understand the importance of knowing your destiny.  David also got this as he shows in the 139^th Psalm.  The whole thing reflects David’s feelings of being chosen, but check out what he says in verse 13, “For you formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb.”  David too tracks God’s claim over his life back to before his birth.  This is not pride, it is God’s revelation.  We see in the book of Jeremiah, the fearful timid heart of the one who has become known as the reluctant prophet.  What does God speak over him to set him free from his fear?  He says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; Before you were born I sanctified you; I ordained you a prophet to the nations.”  (Jeremiah 1:5)  God knows the importance of our understanding how important we are to his design.  God could exist without us, and he could defeat Satan without us, but he does not want to.  It is his will to have us in friendship, and to co-labor with us to restore His Kingdom!  He cares about it so much, that he has preconfigured all the details to make you a part of it.  Talk about crazy love!

There is something that God revealed to me about a month ago as I was memorizing 1 Peter.  In the third chapter of this book, Peter discusses Noah and the ark and how Noah and his family were saved through the water in the ark.  He then says, “There is an antitype also which now saves us – baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 3:21)  Think with me back to Noah and his family on that ark.  I want to imagine yourself on that boat, one of only eight people that are left.  You’ve been in this boat for over a year, and step out of it to find a barren world.  You are indeed the only souls left on earth.  Everyone else is dead!  What are you feeling?  This question was posed in a group discussion I had a few months ago, and the common answers were guilty, horrible, ashamed.  These are the answers of people who do not know their destiny.  What you feel when God picks you, tells you to make a boat, you obey in faith, and step out to find that he actually killed everybody else is incredibly CHOSEN!  What you realize as you step out of that boat, from that water, is that God hand-separated you, he spared you.  You draw breath because he showed you mercy.  The only appropriate response at that moment is to do exactly what Noah did, he built an altar and he worshipped his God. (See Genesis 8:20)  When you realize the claim that God has on your life to bring you into life with him, you cannot help but live a lifestyle of worship.  It is from that position and that position only that we can step into the fullness of who we are to be, the image-bearers of God, the Christ-like ones in the world.  Just as Noah was brought through the waters of the flood, you have been brought through the waters of baptism, chosen before the foundations of the world to be holy and without blame before Him!  That is why Peter says that Baptism is the answer of a good conscience toward God.  Knowing we are destined is what clears our consciences, it is what frees us to walk as sons in the good works which have been predestined specifically for us!