Defining Our Purpose

Those of us who know and follow God's direction for our lives will experience spiritual peace, joy, and contentment. To discover our life's purpose, the first step (which makes all the other steps possible) is accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and establishing a personal relationship with Him. In other words, we must be saved.

Our responsibility in salvation is solely to acknowledge we are sinners, to admit to God that we've wanted to live life our own way and have lived in rebellion against Him (Rom 3:23). Professing our belief that Jesus' death on the cross at Golgotha fully paid our sin debt, we seek God's forgiveness.

Recognizing Jesus as personal Savior and Lord, we commit our lives to Him (1John 1:9; Rom 10:9, Gal 2:20) By doing this we put Christ at the helm and with Him now in charge, order and direction for our lives come only from Him. Having now become members of God's family, we from salvation on have His Holy Spirit to help us carry out our heavenly Father's plan for our lives.

God's purpose for our lives will always include sanctification, stewardship, and service. "Sanctification" describes our progressive growth in spiritual matters or holiness. The Holy Spirit, with our cooperation, will transform our character to be more like that of Christ. Stewardship, simply put, means managing (according to God's priorities) the time, talent and treasures (our finances) He has given abundantly to us. And service for the kingdom is to mark our lives, as it did Jesus' (Matt 20:28). We serve our heavenly Father when we obediently minister to the needs of others.

As we seek the Lord's specific plan for our lives, we can know with extreme confidence that it will include character transformation, investment of our resources for His, and ministry to others.

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Well there is a dusting of snow on Hogback this morning. Michael is still asleep and I'm afraid he's going to miss seeing it as it is melting up there. The ground isn't cold enough to support the snow for long. They said on the news last night that the snow line would be down to the 2000 ft. elevation. It's not like Michael to sleep this long but I don't want to go in and check on him because he's been so short on sleep lately what with his neck and all that I don't want to risk waking him if he's finally gotten to sleep. He could have been up all night as far as I know. But it is something to look up there and see the snow on the trees.

I hate to say this but I'm not enjoying my blog much anymore. I don't know what happened. Nothing's changed; it's just that I don't enjoy it like I used to. I'm considering taking a sabbatical for a month or so between the end of the blogs I already have written and my new change I've been talking about. I'm just thinking about it. If I decide something I'll let you know. It's just that I may simply need a rest from blogging. It used to be so much fun for me to finally have an "out" for my writing. But lately every day is a challenge just to write the blog. And I don't want it to be a chore.

I'm late with this blog so I think I'll just send it on out and get busy with some of the housework I need to do. I've really slacked off on this responsibility. Between blogging and preparing for a Bible Study, I don't have an awful lot of time for housework. I really need to do some. I keep putting it off and putting it off. Meanwhile, my house looks terrible. Take care and keep me in your prayers as I try to decide what I'm going to do with this blog.