On Purpose, I have this to say.
God created man with a purpose in His mind.
There’s somethiny Bible theologians like to call the principle of first mention. Thag is, that whenever God first mentions a thing, He mentions His reason for making or for approving that thing.
We find it all over the Bible.
God’s first mention of a covemant with Abram, He spelt out His reason for calling Abram (to make him a great nation, to bless him, and to bless the entire earth through him, which people have taken to mean that God was talking about the saviour coming through him and blessing the entire world).
First time God explicitly talked about a partner for Adam, He called her a ‘help suitable’ for him.
First time God called the sun and the moon, He said it was to give light to the day and then to the night.
And so on, and so on.
I have searched my Bible for it, and although it is not everything God calls that He mentions His purpose for, He does mention them for a lot of things, at the first time He calls them.
I said all these to say this:
The first time God made man, He said.
Let us make man, in our image and likeness.
And let them have dominion.
Over the birds of the air… and so on and so forth.
Now. God created man. To have dominion. That is man’s purpose.
But this man that must have dominion has to have God’s image. And be in God’s likeness.
I like to study the word with this Hebrew Bible I have that uses the exact words like it was in the original text, (plus the hebrew pronunciation) before translating to English.
I’ll forget the hebrew word and just use the pronunciations.
And that verse in my Study Bible says :
“Let us make ‘aw-dawm’ in our ‘tseh’-lem’, after our ‘dem-ooth”.
The word pronounced Tseh-lem (stress on the first syllable) means mirror reflection. A look alike. A clone. A model.
The word pronounced dem-ooth (stress on the second syllable) means resemblance in words, thoughts and action.
It’s the word used to say ‘this guy behaves like his father.’
Okay. So God’s plan is that we should look like Him (image) and function like Him (likeness), so that we can have dominion.
That is God’s purpose for mankind as a whole.
But mankind lost the image in the garden.
So Gpd has been on a rescue mission ever since, trying to bring man back to that image of spiritual life. Eternal life, if you prefer that phrase better.
The life of God.
And I think tjat became like a new purpose for mankind.
That is, turning every other mankind back to the image, and the likeness.
This is why, I believe, the Bible says He has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
So what is your purpose?
Live in the image of God, and function in His likeness.
And then lead those who are lost back to that image and likeness.
God’s image is being born again.
I think God’s likeness is learning to do things the way He would do them.
So we go to be taught the authority of the believer. Jesus came to teach us how it is possible to raise the dead. The fallen man cannot do it.
Only a God can, or a man who has found his God-image.
I think it is part of what Jesus came to model for us.
All these ‘my purpose is music’ and all that, is just ignorance.
The church has one purpose.
Go ye into all nations… as Jesus says.
But we do not all have to be Pastors.
We have the same purpose, but we do it on different platforms.
I am a writer. But that is my pulpit. And that is why it us beautiful.
Tyler Perry writes black comedy. Janette..iks writes spoken word Gospel pieces. Karen Kingsbury attacks broken families. Ted Dekker writes Thrillers. Frank Peretti plies his trade in the speculative fantasy genre of fiction.
And I have seen each of these people I have mentioned blowing tongues and worshipping. On recorded video sha.
I am a Thriller writer.
In music, same thing. We don’t all have to do the same thing.
I know rappers who are hardcore Christians.
And we don’t all have to be singing Jesus Jesus Jesus in all our love songs.
Darlene Zeche (forgive the spelling) has a full album of love songs, and God was not mentioned once.
All I’m saying is.
We do different things.
We don’t have to do the same thing.
No one said you must be a musician. No one said you must be a writer.
But if you have found Christ, your purpose is leading others to Him.
Doesn’t have to be any particular platform.
Some people say they were born to write. I believe I was born to write, simply because I cannot imagine my life doing something else, but that is just a platform.
You decide,
But whatever you do, whatever we all do, the Bible says we have
Ephesians 4:5
“One Lord. One faith. One baptism.”
I will stop it here.
Hope this helped.
[9/14, 12:57 AM] Nonsi Writer: Lemme just add this.
I believe the likeness of God is all them things ranging from God’s chaaracter, His behaviour, and so on.
He’s a God of faith. So we learn faith.
God of love. So we learn to love.
We learn to fight battles like He would – by weilding the authority He has bequeathed onto us.
I believe that this whole spiritual growth thing just refers to likeness:
How close you are to being like Jesus (since He is the human part of God that we can relate with).
Becasue really, you cannot begin to talk about spiritual growth if you do not even have the image of God first of all (as in being born again).
I think the whole concept behind spiritual growth is as it relates to the likeness of God.
No wonder the Bible says (2 Corinthians 3:18) “as we behold as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into that same image…”
Note that the word ‘image’ here is different from the previous word translated as image in Genesis.
Here, the word is pronounced “i-kone'” (stress on second syllable), meaning ‘a likeness, a profile, representation, resemblance.
Some of these words are related, but they don’t exactly mean the same.
Ok. Bye.
Christ a poet 