From Dream to Destiny: The Ten Tests You Must Go Through to Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life (24 page)

John 1:12 sets us straight on this point: “But as many as
received
Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name” (emphasis added).

I want to just say it again: God will never hit you—because He already hit Jesus. Jesus bore our sins, completely and totally. Jesus paid the price for every sin you have ever committed so that you would not have to pay the price of forgiveness.
But you are going to have to receive it.

And if you have a problem
giving
forgiveness, you probably have a
problem
receiving
forgiveness. You must forgive others in the same way God has forgiven you. But until you receive the forgiveness God has freely given, you won’t be able to give it to others.

If you have a problem
receiving
God’s forgiveness, it could be because you have a problem
believing
it.

Believe

Perhaps you have a hard time believing God could really forgive you completely, totally releasing you from the penalty of sin. After all, how could a God who is pure and just and holy be able to accept us, when we have fallen so far short of His perfection?

The Bible does tell us that God is holy and pure. It says He is so pure that He cannot even look upon evil. Habakkuk 1:13 says, “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.” So God cannot even look at evil! He cannot look at wickedness and sin. That is how pure His eyes are. And yet every one of us has missed it. Every one of us has sinned and done things God could not even put His eyes upon.

Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way.” All of us have gone astray. All of us have transgressed God’s commands. And God is so pure that He cannot look at our transgressions.

But Psalm 103:12 tells us, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” God cannot look at our transgressions
—so He removed them
! He removed them so far away that He cannot see them anymore!

Job 36:7 says, “He does not withdraw His eyes from the righteous.” And 1 Peter 3:12 says, “For the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their prayers; but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil.”

God is so pure that His eyes cannot even look on sin—but His eyes are on the righteous every day. You might be thinking,
I sure wish I was righteous. I sure wish God’s eyes were upon me every day.

This what you must believe: You
are
righteous! His eyes
are
upon you!

Second Corinthians 5:21 tells us: “For He made Him who knew no
sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” God made Jesus, who knew no sin, to be
made sin
for us—who were filled with sin. And He did that so that we could be
made righteous
, just as He is righteous. So
we
could be made the
righteousness of God Himself!
And all of this is done “in Him”—in Christ Jesus! When we receive the forgiveness Jesus paid for on the Cross, we are
made righteous.
We are made the righteousness of God!

It is true that God cannot look on sin. God had to do something about our sin just so He could look at us. And God did do something with our sin. He laid all of our sin on the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Jesus Christ, He has removed our transgression from us, as far as the east is from the west (see Ps. 103:12). All of my sin has been laid on Jesus, and all of my sin has been removed from me. Now God can look at me. Now He can talk with me, and He can walk with me all day long.

Because of what Jesus did, I can have a relationship with God. It is not because I did something good, and not because I somehow earned it. The reason I can have a relationship with God is because God laid all of my iniquity on His Son Jesus Christ. Because of what Jesus did for me, I can stand before God without guilt or sin or shame.

I am perfect now in the eyes of God. When He looks at me, He sees me washed in the blood of Jesus—and that blood makes me pure and holy in His sight. So God is looking upon me. His eyes are upon me every day, because He has made me righteous in His sight—not because I do righteous things. The only way He could make me righteous in His sight was through the blood atonement of His Son Jesus Christ.

I am telling you that
God has removed your sin!
You can have a relationship with Him now. Every day He wants to walk with you. He wants to talk with you.

Why am I telling you this? Because I want you to understand that you are forgiven! You have been completely pardoned by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ! And
because you have been pardoned, you can now pardon others.
Because you’ve been forgiven, you can now forgive!

It doesn’t matter what anyone else has done to you. Is it worse than all the wrong you’ve ever done in your whole life? Think of all the wrong
you have ever done—God has forgiven all of it. You have been forgiven. Now you need to share that forgiveness!

I want to tell you a wonderful story of forgiveness. This is the true story of a young Jewish man named Yakov and a young Jewish girl named Rachel; they lived in Europe during the time of the Holocaust. Yakov was in his early 20s and Rachel was a teenager—but Rachel had already caught Yakov’s eye. He was falling in love with her.

But times were terrible for the Jews—and getting worse by the day. One night, Rachel’s parents gathered a group of young people around them and said, “We have come to believe that no one is going to make it out of here alive. We think the Nazis are planning to kill us all—so we want you to try to escape.” Then they took all the money they had and sewed it into Rachel’s coat. “Maybe this will help to keep you alive,” they told her. “It will be of no use here.”

So that night Rachel and her sister, along with Yakov and about 20 other young people, made an attempt to escape from the Nazis. In the escape attempt Rachel’s sister was shot, and Rachel ran back to help her. But it was no use—Rachel’s sister died in her arms. Then Rachel was shot in both legs, and it seemed she too was going to die. But two boys grabbed her by the arms and dragged her into the woods to safety.

What were they to do with Rachel? She needed medical care or she would die. They were desperate—so they took her to the house of a German family. “Please help her,” they said. “Look, she has money, and you can have all of it if you will take care of her.” So the German family took Rachel into their home. They treated her wounds and told everyone that she was one of their own children. So Rachel lived with that family, and in this way she survived the war.

Things were more difficult for Yakov and the other young men. Yakov and about 15 other young men lived in the forest for over a year. They dug a large pit in the ground and covered it up to conceal themselves. They would sneak into town at night and forage for food, then go back to the forest and hide during the day.

After about a year someone found out about their hiding place. Soon Nazi soldiers came to the pit in which they were hiding. The young men were apprehended and sent to a prison camp.

When they arrived at the prison camp, the German commandant came out of his office and looked at his young prisoners.

“Are any of you boys a tailor?” he asked.

“I am a tailor, sir,” said Yakov.

“You step over here, then,” the commandant ordered. And then he had the other young men stand in a line.

Immediately Yakov realized they were going to shoot all of his friends. So he shouted out, “I must have an assistant! I can’t sew clothes without an assistant!”

“All right,” the commandant said. “Then I will let you pick one—only one though. You choose one of them.”

Yakov had lived with all of those young men for over a year, as they struggled to survive in the forest. Among them were two brothers who were Yakov’s best friends. In a split second, Yakov had to choose which one lived and which one died. So he chose one of the two brothers. The boy came over to where Yakov was standing—and then the Nazis shot the rest of the boys, as Yakov and his friend watched.

Yakov’s ability to sew had saved his life—and he made it through the rest of the war by sewing uniforms for the German soldiers at the camp. Toward the end of the war, the Russian army was getting closer and closer to the camp, and the Nazi guards were afraid of being captured by the Russians. They made plans to escape on horses, and so they gave orders to Yakov and his friend to go and get their horses saddled for them. But as soon as those horses were saddled, the boys jumped on the horses and rode as fast as they could toward the Russian lines. Yakov and his friend safely escaped and ended up surviving the war.

Soon the years of unspeakable horror had passed, but Yakov had not forgotten about Rachel. He went looking for her after the war; and after he found her, they were married—and became Mr. and Mrs. Yakov Walden. They had a son and named him Marty, and he later became a rabbi. When Marty was growing up, it used to bother him that he didn’t have any relatives. People would ask, “Are you related to these Waldens or those Waldens?” Marty dreaded that question—because he always had to say, “No, I’m not related to anyone.” All of his grandparents,
uncles and aunts had been killed in the Holocaust. Only one sister of his parents had survived.

It is my privilege to know Rabbi Marty Walden as a friend. I pastor a church in Dallas, Texas, and Rabbi Walden also pastors a church in that area. Rabbi Walden leads one of the largest congregations of Messianic Jews in the world.

Several years ago, Marty went to the death camp at Auschwitz to see where his grandparents had died. And the man who accompanied him on the trip was the grandson of a Nazi prison guard. These two men stood in Auschwitz—the grandson of a Jewish Holocaust victim and the grandson of a Nazi prison guard—and they hugged there and they prayed. Together they asked God to forgive the sins that had taken place there.

How could that happen? How could those two men do that? Only through the forgiveness God extends. The only way these two men were able to do that is because they had first received God’s forgiveness—so they could give His forgiveness freely to others.

Like Marty and his friend, God has sorrow because of our sins—but He does not hold them against us. Through Jesus, He has provided forgiveness for every sin that we have ever—or will ever—commit. And when we receive His forgiveness, we are able to give it to others. We are able to forgive others as He has forgiven us.

Perhaps you are hurting—hurting over things that have happened to you, things that were unjust. Why allow that hurt to live on? God has made a way through Jesus for every wrong to be forgiven. He has already paid the price for every sin. And now, in His grace, He is asking, “Will you forgive the same way that I have forgiven you? Will you release that person fully and freely, and let it go?”

When you hold on to unforgiveness, you are the one being hurt. But when you forgive, you will be gloriously free. Free of torment, free of judgment—and free to move forward into the destiny that God has planned for your life.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

Twenty-two years had passed since Joseph was sold into Egypt. He had spent 13 years working as a slave—and part of that time had been served in a dungeon, punished for a crime that he did not commit. Now, at 39 years of age, Joseph had already been the administrator of Egypt for 9 years. He had seen that country through the years of plenty, and now he was helping the country thrive during the early years of the famine. And Joseph was about to receive a surprise.

Suddenly, after more than two decades, the brothers who had betrayed him and caused him so much suffering were right before his eyes. And they were
bowing down before him
, with their faces to the earth (see Gen. 42:6)—just as his dreams had depicted symbolically so many years before! The Bible tells us what Joseph was thinking in that moment: “Then Joseph remembered the dreams which he had dreamed about them” (Gen. 42:9).

In other words, Joseph had a sudden realization. He realized that what God had shown him in those dreams so many years before had
been a part of His plan all along. Joseph finally understood the
purpose
that lay behind those dreams. What could have been a moment of supreme triumph, grief or even revenge, instead became a moment of revelation.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph; does my father still live?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed in his presence. And Joseph said to his brothers, “Please come near to me.” So they came near. Then he said: “I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt” (Gen. 45:3-8).

The Purpose Test: Understanding Your Destiny

When you read these verses, you can see that Joseph finally understood what his purpose was. He understood not only the dreams God had given him but also the
purpose
those dreams had foreshadowed. In understanding that purpose, Joseph realized that he had stepped into the destiny for which God had created him.

Joseph, in essence, was telling his brothers, “You don’t seem to understand. It was God who sent me here. So I don’t want you to be angry with yourselves. I don’t want you to be upset or grieved or sad. I want you to forgive yourselves just as I have forgiven you. God had a
purpose
for my life. And it was in order to fulfill
His purpose
that He sent me here to Egypt!”

Joseph had been through many difficult experiences during those years—but he finally understood the purpose for everything he had gone through. At last he was able to clearly see the vision, the purpose and the destiny God had planned for his life.

Joseph had passed the Purpose Test.

Every one of us will take this test—because every one of us has a God-ordained purpose. Will you discover what your purpose is and step into the destiny God has for you? That is the Purpose Test.

Is it possible to understand your purpose and live it to the fullest? Absolutely—Joseph did! There are four keys that can help you to discover and fulfill the purpose that God has for you.

Believe That You Have a Purpose

It is the first of the famous Four Spiritual Laws—“God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.”

In order to discover the purpose that God has for your life, you must first
believe
that you have one! God created you for a unique purpose. And you simply must
accept
that by faith. We know that God has an eternal purpose for everything; and we know that the Body of Christ has an overall purpose in God’s eternal plan. But it is important to know that you, as an individual, have a
specific purpose
as well. God has a unique destiny for you—and you are the only one who can fulfill it.

God is a
“purpose-full”
God. He is not a “purpose-less” God! He didn’t create anything without a purpose. Every animal, every plant, every tree, every person—including you!—every single one of God’s creations has been created for a purpose. You must believe that! The Bible says God formed you in your mother’s womb—and when He formed you, He had a purpose in mind. The psalmist says of God:

For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought …. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written,
the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them (Ps. 139:13,15-16).

This verse tells us that God’s purpose for you had been written in His book before you were even born! Yes, before God created you, He had a plan and purpose for your life. He wants you to discover what that purpose is. And He wants you to fulfill it to its wonderful fullest.

Do you realize that you have the intellect, ability, talent and gifting to do something special for God? He designed you for a special role—and you will never be truly happy until you discover what that role is. But when you discover your purpose and begin fulfilling it, your life will take on new energy and excitement.

An example that comes to mind from my own life involves the gift of preaching. I have a purpose for my life, and part of that purpose involves preaching. So preaching is a gift that I have—and I like to preach! I get pumped up when I preach. I am more energized when I preach that I am when I do anything else!

Years ago when I worked in the nursery at the church my wife and I attended, I discovered just what a difference a sense of purpose can make. Our children were small at that time, and parents with children in the nursery were required to work in the nursery once a month. Now I might be gifted to preach—but I am definitely
not
gifted to work in the nursery! Every time I worked in the nursery, I had to have a nap when I got home. Working in the nursery didn’t energize me at all. On the contrary, I was totally and completely worn out by it! I remember dreading it every time my week to work in the nursery was coming around.

Oh, no
, I would think to myself.
In two more weeks it will be my week to work in the nursery again.
Then I prayed, “Oh, God, would You please help me to get through this somehow?”

The Lord finally said to me, “What are you gifted to do?”

“I’m gifted to preach!” I said.

“Then preach!” the Lord replied.

So I decided to take the Lord’s advice. The next week I went into that nursery ready to preach! I said to those little babies, “Open your Bibles
to Isaiah. I’m going to share with you some truths from God’s Word.” Then I preached to those little babies. They just took it all in, as babies do—but when I left the nursery that day, I was jazzed! Instead of being worn out, I was energized.

Here is my point: When God created you, He had a specific purpose in mind. And He has given you a specific gifting related to that purpose. You need to find out what that gifting is—because when you discover the gifting God created in you, it will bring energy and excitement to your life. And as you begin to move in that gifting, you will begin to understand your purpose.

If you’re not sure what your purpose is, just look at the way you have been created. If you look at the way something is made, it helps you to understand the purpose of that thing. Even examining the design of inanimate objects will give you clues to their purpose.

Let me use an extremely mundane example—a toilet plunger. If you had never seen a toilet plunger before, you could initially imagine all sorts of purposes for it. You might speculate that it could be used as a ring-toss game, a birdbath for hummingbirds—or maybe even a bizarre hat for bald people. But none of those ideas really makes much sense. When you look carefully at the way a plunger is made, it soon becomes obvious that it was created with a very specific purpose in mind. (I won’t elaborate further.)

In the same way, God created you with a very specific purpose in mind. You have a very unique design—and “in the spirit” you are actually shaped like something! If you could see what you are shaped like “in the spirit,” it would help you to understand your purpose. For example, if you were designed to have the ministry of deliverance, “in the spirit” you probably look a lot like that plunger I was just describing. (That gives you an idea of what I think of demons, doesn’t it?)

Seriously though, God has a unique purpose for your life—and it is vitally important for you to believe that.
Believe
that He created you with a specific purpose in mind, and discover what that purpose is. As you move toward discovering His purpose for your life, you will also be moving toward your destiny.

Understand That God Is in Control

God is in control. If you truly believe this, it will serve as an anchor for understanding your purpose. And if you don’t believe that God is in control, you will live in a very sad and bewildering world—a world without much purpose.

If you don’t believe that God is in control, you will probably become a pessimist sooner or later, because you will see no solution to some of the bad things that happen. When you can’t see the hand of God working, you will eventually reach a point where you see only the bad in everything. And that can cause you to lose sight of your purpose.

(If you don’t know whether you are an optimist or a pessimist, just ask your spouse or your best friend. He or she will know!)

But when you understand that God is in control, you begin to see the good in everything—because God is good! You know that God has a purpose; and you can rest in the knowledge that He is working for good in every situation, no matter what the circumstances are.

Joseph had this attitude about the things that had happened in his life. His brothers were dismayed in his presence because of all the evil they had done to him (see Gen. 45:3). But Joseph was not dismayed at all.
Joseph explained it to his brothers this way: “But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5).

Joseph understood that God was ultimately in charge. That’s why he was able to believe that God was working, even in circumstances that were terribly wrong and unjust. Although his brothers’ actions had caused him to suffer, Joseph believed that God was still in control. And because he believed that, Joseph could see the hand of God in his situation. He was able to see that God had a purpose for sending him to Egypt and that his Lord had been working out His purpose all along.

Joseph told his brothers:

And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt (Gen. 45:7-8).