The purpose for my life and for your life is to be loved by our Abba.
In response, we are called to be ministers of that Love. But first and foremost, our ministry is to God. We are called to minister to our Creator, the One who Loves and IS LOVE. We are to worship Him and praise Him above all else. Everything God does to us and for us is for our own good. Our “ministry” to God, therefore is for our benefit and the good of us, not Him. He does not need our worship and praise; He does not just sit up in heaven getting His ego stroked by every word of worship and praise from us; He is not egoistic. His love is so great, and His goodness so incomprehensible, that our ministry to God is actually for us because He loves us so much. Bill Johnson wrote, “You become what you worship.” God knows that. And He knows He is the most powerful and that nothing can offer more than Him. When we worship Him, we are transformed by and into the best possible thing in the world, because it does not get any better than God. As we worship the Creator of Heaven and Earth, we encounter His love, His goodness, His compassion, His kindness, His gentleness, His majesty, His power, and nothing is better. In experiencing Him through worship, we are never the same again. Instead, with every encounter with the Creator, we are transformed into more of His likeness, because we have felt, tasted, and seen more of who He is. That is when we grow, we change, we become transformed into people who are more like Christ, and in that become more like who we are meant to be, ourselves.
God is so good. Trust that. Trust that EVERYTHING that God does, everything He allows to happen or doesn’t allow to happen will turn out for our good. Because He is a LOVE that is so great, that goes beyond anything we will ever understand, anything we could ever imagine, His reasons are always out of His Love for us.
Abraham and Isaac is an example. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son, whom he loved so much, Isaac. In obedience, Abraham took Isaac and left for a place God would reveal to him to be the place to make the sacrifice. In our human thinking this makes no sense. Why would God ask Abraham to kill his own son? Once God revealed the spot to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham built an altar, tied up his son, and raised the knife in the air. But God, never having the intent to actually let Isaac die, called out to Abraham and told him not to touch Isaac. I do not think God was testing Abraham’s obedience. God already knew Abraham would have done it; God knows everything before it even happens. Since God does everything for our good, this request was for the good of Abraham. God asked Abraham to do this so he could see that he can trust God with everything, even the thing that was the most precious to him in all of his life, his dearly loved son. God was able to show Abraham that He was good, that He could be trusted.
When God is jealous for our hearts, it is not because He needs us. It is because He loves us enough to know that when we give Him all that we have, all that we desire, all that we are holding on to, that is when We are most able to be filled with Him and His goodness and that is when we are able to become most like Him. When we are emptied of ourselves and our own desires there is more room for Him. When we are filled with Him, our lives are rich in abundant love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, hope, and passion that we could never get from anything other than God Himself.
God thank you for your unfathomable love and goodness. Thank you for wanting to fill us up with more of you, all because you love us enough to want us to experience life to the fullest.
