April 20

Apr 20 - Today from Proverbs 20 we look at verse 5
"The purposes of a man's heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out." (NIV)
"Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out." (KJV)

"Live life with a purpose." It came to my mind one morning as I was doing my devotions. I scribbled it on a 3 by 5 card I had laying on my desk and stuck it in my Bible. I now use it as one of my markers. Every once in awhile my eye falls anew on the simple little statement, and once more it strikes my heart. It's a great little reminder that my life has a purpose, but there are times I might loose sight of that purpose. We all are susceptible to being distracted, discouraged and lulled from our real purpose in life.
"Deep waters." What a startling analogy. One can tell very little about a body of water just by viewing the surface. But deep water - it remains a mystery until some effort is made to get below the surface, down to the bottom. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, "(God) has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Little children often ponder the deep and profound questions of life: "How did I get here?" "Where do people go when they die?" "Who made God?" As children grow older, their attentions are drawn to the more temporal things in life. The unanswered mysteries, which God had placed in their hearts, are pushed deeper and deeper. The surface then becomes their reality. Then one day God's Spirit will use something to stir that water. The untimely death of a loved one. A near-death experience. Perhaps just hitting a big wall in life - one that stuns and causes one to fall flat on their face. Afterwards, one just kind of sits there, dazed, and tends to ask oneself, "What am I doing here? Why am I here at all? What is life about, anyway?" At such a point in life one can make the effort to go deeper in their search, or one can quench the Spirit and go back to 'surface living'. We always have a choice.
Have you ever encountered such a moment in your life? Certainly there was such an encounter when you came to realize your own faith. I honestly do not believe there are Christians without a testimony. I can't buy the story "I don't know. I just kind of grew up believing in God. I never had a salvation experience." At some point in life every believer came to a faith of their own. They came to know for themselves that their life has purpose, and that purpose is found in Christ Jesus. Every person may not know the moment it happened, but they should know it happened. Anyone who claims to know Christ and continues to live life without purpose can not really know Him at all. "In Him we live and move and have our being."
Discovery is just the beginning! Once we discover purpose in life, we enter into a process called discipleship. We seek to draw out the details of our own specific purpose from the deep waters of our hearts and we order our lives to fulfill that purpose. God placed it there when He knit us in our mother's womb. Our task is to draw it out. Our interests are to be in pursuit of our purpose. Our education is to be in pursuit of our purpose. Our occupation is to be used either to pursue or to support our purpose. This brings us back to the topic of passion. The Psalmist writes in Psalm 42, "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God." That is the passion of a disciple who finds no lasting satisfaction with the surface realities of life. The more one understands the truths of God's word, the deeper one seeks to draw from the mysteries of the heart. It takes effort to draw from the deep waters - but it is there that we find the true purpose of our lives. We will never truly experience fulfillment until we first discover true purpose. "We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us." -1 Corinthians 2:12
Live life with a purpose.