Billy Joe Daugherty - Finding Your Purpose

Contents

Created for Good Works

The three main questions that most people ask about their life are:

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

Where am I going?

As believers in Jesus Christ, the answers to all three questions are found in God. We came from Him, we are here in the earth for Him, and we are going back to Him. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them."

1. We belong to Jesus Christ.

We are God's property because Jesus gave His blood for us. We weren't bought with silver and gold, but we were bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. When He died on the cross, Jesus purchased sinners for Himself so that whoever comes to God through faith in Jesus Christ becomes God's property. He is our owner, and when you own something, you tell it what to do.

For instance, if you own your car and you start driving it, the car doesn't say, "I think I'll turn left" when you are trying to turn right. You have power over it because it's your car. You can use it, loan it, and do with it as you desire because it's yours.

It is the same thing spiritually when we have an understanding that God owns us, He directs us, and our purpose is linked with Him.

2. We are His workmanship.

You and I were Master crafted! It is no accident that Jesus was a carpenter. Do you feel sandpaper on your life, with some of the chips being cut away? You were custom designed. When people have custom-made clothes or a custom-made home or even a customized hot rod, it is designed with that person in mindto fit their taste, their desires, the plan they have for that particular thing.

You and I have been custom designed with attitudes, personalities, and physical traits that are all related to the fact that we belong to God. He has a plan to use each of us in a way that He purposed long before the earth was ever created.

At one time Tim Harris was the First Assistant District Attorney. The District Attorney died suddenly and Tim was notified. Immediately he realized that he would assume that position because it was the state law that authorizes the First Assistant to assume the position if something happened to the D.A. But the governor's cabinet met and to Tim's surprise, they appointed someone else to fill the D.A. position. Political considerations became a reality to Tim, yet he decided to stay on and support the office.

The newly selected D.A. worked for a while. Then one day he went to the Tulsa World and announced that he was resigning. Tim thought, Now the time was right andcfer the original humbling experience, he would be selected for the position But again, politics reared up and someone else was appointed.

There was only a short time remaining in that particular term, and at the end of the term there would be an election. At that time Tim felt compelled to resign and run for the office of District Attorney after God spoke to Tim's heart and said, "Run for District Attorney." He met with a group of friends and told them what God had said. They said, "There is no way you can do that. You don't have the name recognition, and you don't have the money. It will take over $100,000 for the campaign, and you've never done anything like that." They tried to talk him out of it, attempting to convince him that the price would be too great for him and his family.

Tim prayed for a week and he felt God was urging him again, "This is what I have called you to do." Tim was unsettled about his decision and the consequences to his family and his legal career, but Tim announced to his friends the next week, "I am going to run." They said, 'You are crazy, but we'll support you." That group of friends helped him raise the money and campaign countywide, and to everyone's surprise, Tim Harris, a born-again, Spirit-filled man, became the District Attorney of Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Tim attended the University of Wisconsin, but God spoke to him in his early years of training to be a lawyer. He later attended Oral Roberts University. Tim graduated from the O. W. Coburn School of Law. He knew both ends of the spectrum, from the liberal end to the conservative end. He realized that God had a destiny for his life. He said, "I know that my purpose at this time is to be in prosecution." In God's time and way he stepped into his destiny.

If you have struggled with your purpose, I want to encourage you. Not everybody is going to stand up and wave the flag, saying, "We are voting for you!"

People do not decide your calling. It is God who decides your purpose, and He can lift you up and set you in that place where no one ever thought you would be.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope."

3. You were created in Christ Jesus for good works.

God has some good things for you to do. The great thing about being faithful is more responsibility. God has already preplanned and ordained in advance the good works that you are to walk in. Why? So that when you do it, you don't take the credit. You can't even glory in the good things that you do because you realize God already planned for them ahead of time, and He literally set you up. He gave you the ability, He gave you the place, and then He anointed you to do what you were called to do.

The people who don't understand that God ordained their purpose in life take all the credit for everything they do, whether it's in the Spirit, in education, in finance, or in the corporate world. They point to their own ability and greatness, and they are singing how great they are instead of how great God is! Give God the glory, realizing He prepared the good works for you to do.

4. You must choose to walk in that purpose.

Scripture says that you should walk in the good works God has prepared beforehand. This doesn't mean you will automatically walk in these good works. It is a choice you make to walk in them or to reject them and go another direction.

Saul was chosen by God to be king when the Israelites demanded that they have a king. In Saul's reign, there came a time when God spoke to him to do a particular thing and Saul chose not to do it. There was a good work for him to do that would have brought honor and glory to God, but instead he went another way. It was Samuel the prophet who confronted Saul:

So when Samuel rose early in the morning to meet Saul, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul went to Carmel, and indeed, he set up a monument for himself; and he has gone on around, passed by, and gone down to Gilgal .

Then Samuel went to Saul, and Saul said to him, "Blessed are you of the Lord! I have performed the commandment of the Lord.

But Samuel said, "What then is this bleating of the sheep in my ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?

And Saul said, "They have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best of the sheep and the oxen, to sacrifice to the Lord your God; and the rest we have utterly destroyed."

Then Samuel said to Saul, "Be quiet! And I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night." And he said to him, "Speak on."

So Samuel said, "When you were little in your own eyes, were you not head of the tribes of Israel? And did not the Lord anoint you king over Israel?

"Now the Lord sent you on a mission, and said, Go, and utterly destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they are consumed.

"Why then did you not obey the voice of the Lord? Why did you swoop down on the spoil, and do evil in the sight of the Lord?"

And Saul said to Samuel, "But I have obeyed the voice of the Lord, and gone on the mission on which the Lord sent me, and brought back Agag king of Amalek ; I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites.