TO BE

Whether you know it or not “Someone”, i.e. God, thought you up, and there is a reason why you are alive in the universe.

That’s so important that the Bible has a word for it: “Calling.” A calling is not something that is reserved for special people like a Mother Teresa or a Billy Graham. You have a calling.  You have a life purpose.

The first part of your life purpose has to do with who you are.  Before God calls you to do, He “calls you to become”.  You are “called to become somebody”.  God’s calling doesn’t start with a task to accomplish; it starts with a person God wants you and me to be—a Jesus kind of person. Your calling is to be joyful and loving and honest, to put aside sin, and to grow in the character that God is forming in you.  And He wants you to do that in a way that reflects the absolute uniqueness of you.

Paul writes to the church at Corinth:  To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be holy (1 Cor. 1:2).  Then he writes to the church in Rome:  To all of you in Rome whom God loves and has called to be his holy people (Rom. 1:7 NCV).   Notice they are not called to do anything, but to be something.

To the church in Thessalonica he wrote:  For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life (1 Thes. 4:7).  And then to the church at Galatia he wrote:  For you have been called to live in freedom (Gal. 5:13 NLT).  That’s good news!  Your calling starts with the person God had in mind when He thought you up.

·         You cannot succeed in what you do if you fail in who you are.

So get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to—the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires.  Your hearts and minds must be made completely new, and you must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy (Eph. 4:22-24 GNT).