“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” — Jeremiah 29:11

This verse from Jeremiah tells us that God has a plan for our lives, a hopeful future He treasures in His heart, holding it for us until we fulfill it. God is the original “dream maker,” and His Church should be the one place where dreams, His dreams, really do come true. God has plans for you and me, a destiny to grab hold of and run with.

Your life is not an unfinished novel. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that Jesus is both “… the Author and Finisher of our faith.” The very One who created you already knows how the story ends, and this is the future He holds for you. Jesus knew the end of your life and all that He put within you to accomplish before you were even born. He knew the ending before it began, for He is “… the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Revelation 22:13).

Preordained Works
Our destiny includes not only who God created us to be, but also those things He created for us to do. In the past many were so involved in doing things they forgot they were a “human being” not a “human doing.” But a human being who fails to do anything at all it is not a human being — they are a corpse! It is not that what you do defines who you are, but who you are should erupt forth producing works.

A chef who never cooks is not really a chef. He is just a person who likes to wear an apron and a funny, white hat. If you were created to be a teacher, then you will teach. If your destiny involves having the gift of evangelism, then you will share the good news. Who God created you to be will accomplish all the things that He has prepared for you to do.

God did not create you to do works. He created works for you to do. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). Before the foundation of this world was laid, God treasured you in His heart. With a smile upon His face He designed you in infinite detail, and then said, “What works shall I make for them to do.”

Yes, it brings pleasure to God when you do the works He created for you to do, but not because He needs you to do them. It is because in doing them you are becoming the man or woman of God He created you to be. Every good parent rejoices as their child develops to become more of the person they were meant to be. Whether it’s their very first step, going off to school, graduating from college, or getting married, the proud parent joyfully rejoices that their child’s promised potential is being fulfilled!

Our heavenly Father is no different. He rejoices with each baby step we take along the path of becoming the men and women of God He created us to be. Our God delights when we do the works He has called us to, not so much because we are “doing the stuff,” but because we are becoming the people He created us to be.

Not only did God create works for us, He expects us to be excited and enthusiastic about them. “Jesus Christ gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). That God’s special people zealously do good works only make sense, for we are the seed of Abraham, children of faith, and faith without works is dead.

There is an incredible joy in realizing your destiny, in discovering and embracing the person the Lord created you to be, and beginning to do those things He created for you to do. Oswald Chambers once said that “the joy of anything, from a blade of grass upward, is to fulfill its created purpose.” When we begin to see our true reason for being, our purpose, and begin fulfilling our destiny, we will have both the peace and joy of the Lord.

Yes, you have a destiny. And nothing can steal the destiny God has for you — no demon from hell, no person with an agenda against you, no depraved and decaying world system — no one and nothing can stop you from becoming what God created you to be … except you! The facts are clear. God is for you. Satan is against you. But you are the one who decides if you will lay hold of all God has for you, if you will grab the cup of life and drink from it all the Lord will bountifully pour in.

Blinding Our Eyes Of Destiny
What causes us to shrink back from becoming all God has called us to be? What hinders us from seeing through eyes of destiny as the Lord does? There are primarily two things the enemy uses to blind our vision to our destiny: how we see ourselves because of our circumstances, and how others see us through our past.

We tend to see ourselves through our current circumstances, and allow our situation to prophesy our future. This is only natural, but we are called to be supernatural! God has not called us to be “circumstantial Christians” who judge our future by our present. It is not that we are to deny the current circumstances. It is that we must not let them dictate our destiny and prevent God's promises from coming to completion.

When God called Gideon to be His chosen instrument to bring freedom to Israel, what was Gideon doing … training for battle … recruiting soldiers … acquiring weapons … planning battle strategies? No, “Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites” (Judges 6:11). Here was Israel’s new heroic leader hiding in a hole in the ground so as not to be discovered. Most of us would see him as a disqualified coward, and that is exactly how Gideon saw himself.

But how did God see Gideon? “When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, ‘The Lord is with you, mighty warrior’” (Judges 6:12). God saw Gideon through his destiny — a mighty warrior! God saw him in the light of already winning the victory that lay before him. We must begin seeing beyond our circumstances. As spiritual children of God, we must learn to see things as He sees things and not in the light of our limited understanding or current circumstances.

We must also not allow others to determine our future by our past. God sees you through your destiny, but man sees you through your history. Most people will look at you through your faults, your falls, and your failure, instead of your future. Man’s nature is to detect, inspect, dissect, and label. People examine our lives and quickly judge who we are and what we are capable of doing based primarily on our past. If we have already done it, then it is in our box and we can do it. Otherwise, it is “out of bounds.” Our lives are inspected, boxed, and labeled, and this package becomes their prophecy of our future.

These labels can be very limiting to our spiritual walk. If we listen to their labels and stay in their boxes, we will be unable to move into what God has for us. Though these labels seem to be riveted on — fixed and unchangeable, they can easily be peeled off when we begin to see things through our destiny. No box of what has been can contain us, and no label can limit us when we start to see our future the way the Lord sees it.

Let us remove the blinders of our past and our present so we can apprehend the future God has for us! As we do begin to be the men and women God has created us to be, we will not only change this world, we will put a smile on the face of our heavenly Father.