As a born-again Christian, everything in your life will always bring you back to your level of growth in faith, in God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. This is God’s number one goal for your existence. You can walk to the ends of the earth and back. You can read a million and one self-help books, and listen to every motivational program out there. You can have all the talent, skill, and ability in the world, and try your best to please as many people as possible. Whatever it is that we set ourselves to do in life, God has predetermined our destinies. He has set the goals for us. The measuring stick for how close you are to God’s expectation, and for the quality of the life you live, is always going to be the degree to which you walk by faith in God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.
God tells us through the Apostle Paul in 2Cointhians 5:7 (NKJV), “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” The figurative translation of the verb ‘walk’ in this verse means to live, progress, follow, and be occupied with. To walk in faith is to make use of life’s opportunities by regulating ourselves through the practice, exercise, and operation of faith. There’s only one faith for the believer, and that is the same faith that our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, utilized as he walked upon this earth. He exercised faith by the power of the Holy Spirit to produce many miracles, signs, and wonders.
What Christ did, we must seek to duplicate. This is a critical truth. A critical truth is a truth from God’s Word that is so profound and enlightening to our human understanding that it provides for us a foundation upon which other Godly truths can be established. It gives us a catalog upon which we can compartmentalize truth in our minds and hearts, so that harmony and balance can be achieved in the many facets of our existences. A critical truth from the Word of God expands us, because it breaks down the barriers we perceived in our way; it eradicates blockers and allows us the full run of the track field of life. This is what truth does. It makes us free. Jesus Christ is the truth.
When it comes to the operation of faith, another critical truth is that God created everything in the earth to progress, grow, and expand within the boundaries of likeness. You may not at this point understand how incredibly important this truth is to your operation of faith, but trust me, it’s critical. Everything we see today is a derivative of its original form. Everything goes back to the origin of which God created. Nothing that exists does so without first having been created in some form or another by Heavenly Father. This is true of species of plants and animals, and it is also true of us.
God created us with the likeness of Christ in mind. He tells us in Genesis 1:26 that we are created in His image. He first created our spirits, and gave them destiny. Ephesians 1:4 (KJV) tells us, “According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” We cannot pinpoint a timespan that existed before the foundation of the world. We can only know that, within the context of human measurement, it was a really, really, really long time ago. Fast forward to Genesis 2:7, and we have record that God made the human body by forming it with the dust of the ground. He then breathed life into the body, and man became a living soul.
Man was created as a three-part being; spirit, soul, and body. The life that God breathed into man is the spirit. God breathed into man the destiny that He had predetermined even before the foundation of the world. Adam’s spirit was perfect in every way; therefore, Adam’s destiny was perfect in every way. Adam’s spirit was so perfect in fact, that he could have holy communion and fellowship with God’s Spirit, but as we all know, ultimately Adam and Eve sinned. The Holy Spirit will not dwell and commune where the Word of God is not honored and obeyed.
When Adam sinned, his spirit died, and he lost the state of perfection and holiness. He and Eve could no longer enjoy the splendid and perfect fellowship they once had with the Holy Spirit. Romans 5:12-14 The Message (MSG), tells us, “12-14 You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in—first sin, then death, and no one exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.”
Every living soul after the sin of Adam and Eve was born into existence with a dead human spirit—disconnected from God. The only thing that can bring life back from a state of being that we all know as death is life itself. This is why Jesus Christ came. This is why he tells us in John 14:6 (KJV), “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” He is God in the flesh. His blood was beyond what we define as perfect because he was conceived by the Holy Spirit, with seed that came from Heavenly Father. Jesus Christ purchased our freedom from death with his perfect blood. He made it possible for our spirits to be reborn in the way that God had intended them to be all along. Jesus Christ made a way for us to come alive to our destinies.
Our destinies are shaped, made, and molded in the image of Christ. He made the way for us to be born again, not of flesh, but of spirit. The holy communion between us and God was restored through Christ. Because of the Holy Spirit that indwells us, it is impossible for us to kill our human spirit the way that Adam and Eve killed theirs. There is no worry of this because Ephesians 1:13(NKJV) tells us, “In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,” Because of Christ, we can be sealed with the Holy Spirit. Our destinies will be restored and we will come alive spiritually.
But here’s the thing we must know, God will not make our minds and hearts follow the destiny roadmap that His Word has declared. He will not force His Will upon us, just as He did not slap that apple out of Eve’s hand and tell her, “Girl, what are you doing?! You know better than that!!!” He will allow our transformation to occur within the context of our free will choice, with the time schedule that we choose. If we choose to move at a snail’s pace to deliverance, it is totally our prerogative.
Romans 5:1 The Message (MSG) says, “By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us—set us right with him, make us fit for him—we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus.” Most of us have made a lot of mistakes because we haven’t understood our destinies; we haven’t fully grasped the supernatural, extraordinary treasures that God has planned for us, so we miss out. There’s a better way—a much better way, and it is to enter into God’s Kingdom treasures through faith in Jesus Christ, so that we walk in destiny and fulfill that which God has created and called us to do. It’s the only way. ■
Scripture taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Reclaiming Your Destiny!” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2017. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.