Fulfilling Our Destiny in Christ!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:3-6).
Our greatest destiny is through the adoption of our Heavenly Father through His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ. God, in His wisdom, sent us Jesus, the Only Begotten Son of the Most High God, to adopt us through Him. Once we receive Jesus, God transforms us to become more like His Firstborn son, Jesus which will require our complete submission and obedience to His perfect will.
Our ultimate destiny is the SAME for all believers, and that is to BE LIKE JESUS!
The Family of Triune Godhead!
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!”
God of the Universe is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. His will created the universe by His words and everything in the universe revolves around His will.
Jesus is the only Begotten Son of the Father while there are so many heavenly beings in the universe. He has the expressed will of the Father, expression of the Father, image of the Father, and came to reveal the Father to us in the world.
The Holy Spirit who is the third member of the Triune Godhead was brooding over the waters of the earth at the time of creation and He brought forth everything that we see according to the will of the Father.
Our Destiny Begins with Our Adoption by Our Father!
“He predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ!”
“According to the purpose of His will,” the Father has adopted us!
All who are adopted into the family of God have the same destiny, while our works and callings may be different. We may function in different offices with multiple talents but none of them define us with our destiny as adoption does. The destiny of being God’s children separates us from the rest of the world. If our destinies were to be defined by wealth, the wealthier would take that place and we will have no chance. If our destinies were to be defined by the position of power, then again, we stand no chance. Our sole destiny is defined by the Spirit of Adoption that has brought us into the family of God to live with God the Father, Jesus the Son, and God the Holy Spirit daily in the household of God!
Within the believing family, some may have built big ministries, some may have won thousands of souls, and some may have operated with special giftings, but our destinies are the SAME and solely defined by the adoption by our Heavenly Father through our Lord Jesus Christ according to His will!
Our Destiny Continues with the Guarantee of Our Inheritance!
“In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee (down payment) of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it (until God redeems His possession), to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:11-14).
Here is the earnest (down payment) of our inheritance:
· Salvation by hearing the Word of Truth!
· Sealed with the Promised Holy Spirit!
The gifts of salvation and the Holy Spirit are the children’s inheritance in the family of God, and as Apostle Paul declares by the Holy Spirit, they are but a small down payment of our inheritance until we acquire possession of ALL OF IT! We acquire possession of ALL our inheritance when WE ARE LIKE JESUS!
In the Family of God, Our Ultimate destiny is to Be Like Jesus!
We are now in the household of God growing with the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our ultimate destiny is to be like Jesus as we read in Romans: “For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29).
Notice this powerful statement: “He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son!”
Please do not stop at the above statement with just “He also predestined (me),” but go on to read the full statement, “to be conformed to the image of His Son!”
God predestined us to be conformed to be like Jesus! The result of our predestination is conformity to Jesus, our Lord. When we read the above sentence, the focus must not be on predestination as much as the result of conformity. This statement does not lead to a special denomination in the Body of Christ or point to an exclusive group of people. Rather, it is those who conform to the image of Jesus (who are like Jesus) that remind us of God’s destiny upon them. The proof that God has chosen and separated someone lies in the fact that they have shown Jesus to us, whereas not all of those who are preaching predestination have shown proof of their conformity to the image of Christ in them.
God does not predestine people to exclusivity but to conformity to the image of Christ!
When we are given the privilege of living with God in God’s family, we have the blessed guarantee of conformity TO BE LIKE GOD’S FAMILY! It is no secret that a husband and wife who love each other and spend years walking in love with each other will resemble each other. Likewise, a family that lives in unity and harmony will tend to emulate each other without much separation among themselves in thoughts and actions. It may be rare, but we can see them in a few families.
As a husband, I am to show Jesus to my loved ones, not my preaching or my works. Imagine a wife, mother, and children doing the same thing, competing to show Jesus, and only Jesus to each other in the family! We will, as a whole family unit, fulfill our destiny in Jesus! Imagine a church operating with such a passion to grow in Jesus and submit to the Holy Spirit, and it too will fulfill its destiny in Christ!
We who are adopted by God into His family and given the earnest of inheritance to emulate Jesus our Lord and led by the Holy Spirit to do the Father’s will daily will carry the image of our Lord and bear His resemblance. Jesus came declaring this: “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves” (John 14:9-11).
Jesus offers the same privilege He is enjoying by taking us to the Father and to grow in the family of God by heeding His Word: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23).
The more we yield to the will of the Father, heed the Word of truth, hear the voice of correction, admonition, and the leading of the Holy Spirit, and obey and follow God fully and daily, the more we look like Jesus. And that is OUR ULTIMATE DESTINY!
Fulfilling Our Destiny!
“(God) predestined us for adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ!”
“(God has chosen us) according to the purpose of His will!”
“In (Christ) we have obtained an inheritance!”
“(We) heard the word of truth!”
“(We heard) the gospel of your salvation!”
“(We) believed in Him!”
“(We) were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit!”
“(He) is the (down payment) of our inheritance!”
“We (will) acquire (full) possession of it!”
We are joined in the Family of God!
We have the privilege of hearing the voice of our Lord!
We are being led by the Spirit of God!
The more we yield the more we are being transformed in the image of God’s Son, Jesus!
Our destiny began as God’s adopted children!
Our destiny was enhanced when God gave us the inheritance!
To fulfill our destiny, God placed us in God’s house to grow with and emulate Jesus with the guidance of the Holy Spirit!
Destiny Fulfilled – We are like Jesus!
Please understand that the fulfillment of our destiny does not involve competition with some high achievers or super performers. Instead, we must draw our competition and motivation from those who remind us of Jesus. I have traveled to a few places. Many hundreds have come to the Lord. Many have been set free from demons. Many have been healed. But my destiny is no different from any adopted child of God. My motivation does not come from anyone other than my Lord Jesus. After all these years, some of which by walking with God, I could not be motivated by anyone other than my old grandmother who died in 1968. She called me to her bedside on a Friday morning (I was a teenager) and told her that Jesus would come to take her home on the following Sunday at 2:00 AM. She never finished her elementary school learning, and she did not know how to read and write. In all her documents, she offered a thumbprint for a signature. God had indeed communicated to such an ordinary soul two days before her death that she would be home with Jesus at an exact time! All my life, I watched her never preaching but loving me and others around her. Whenever she knelt for prayer every day, she did not utter a word but cried through the entire prayer. Her overwhelming love for Jesus was very striking. SHE REMINDED OF JESUS ALL THE TIME!
For two days, I watched her describe heaven and the beautiful scenes of heaven. She numbered the angels surrounding her bed made up of a collection of rags. In the middle of Saturday, she exclaimed, saying: “Here is my Jesus! His face is very bright and beautiful. Can you see Him? O, how I love Jesus!” All that I could see was her cataract-filled eyes, but she saw Jesus and the angels! I kept looking at the clock. I did not move away from her bed for two days. I saw her preaching to her Hindu relatives where she was going and admonished them to give their hearts to Jesus. It was Sunday, 2:00 AM. Her eyes opened wide, and she loudly uttered the words: “My Jesus has come! I AM GOING HOME!” She was gone! All the neighbors who came to see her after her death saw the glow I saw and admitted, “Truly this was a saint of God!”
My grandmother FULFILLED HER DESTINY BY CONFORMING TO THE IMAGE OF CHRIST! She is my motivation for a fulfilled destiny in Christ! I want to finish the race fulfilling my destiny in Christ's image and His fullness.
Prayer
“Heavenly Father, I love You. I am grateful that You have included me in Your destiny to adopt me through Your Beloved Son Jesus. Thank You, Father, for placing me in Your household to teach me, feed me, train me, and conform me to the image of Your Son by the power of Your Holy Spirit. Help me, Lord, to listen, yield, obey, and walk in Your will every day. Thank You, Lord, for empowering me to finish all that You have assigned me by Your sovereign grace. Most importantly, I thank You for transforming me daily to be like Jesus. Take away all the dross and purify me with the power of the cross. Help me draw many into Your kingdom by the example of my life more than my words. I am grateful, forever grateful, my Lord. In the Most Precious and Wonderful Name of Jesus, I pray. Amen! Amen!!”
__________________________________________________________________________________________
John Jeyaseelan
Global Prayer Center | prayer | 701 Bill France Boulevard, Daytona Beach, FL, USA
Comments