Everything’s On Purpose

Do you ever feel like life is just HAPPENING to you? It’s like you’ve stopped actually living, and you’re just trying to survive it.

Things seem to happen at once. At times, it can feel like your head has just broken through the surface of the water, but you’re thrust back underneath before you have a chance to breathe. Whether it’s the giant, enormous, heavy things of life, or the miniscule, pestering, little annoyances of life, when things build up, it can be hard to see any purpose behind things.

It can be a life changing event or a bad week, but sometimes we’re just left with our heads spinning, looking heavenward and asking, “Why me? Why this?” Thankfully, we’re not left to just endure and be confused. We have answers.

When we start to realize that everything is on purpose, that God knows each thing that will happen, we can start to establish purpose and thrive through everything.

In Romans 8, God talks about how he all things work for the purpose of those who love him. Later on, in Romans 9, Paul is discussing the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart when he writes, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’”

However, my favorite verse about the purpose of the things we go through can be found in Jeremiah 29. This verse gets taken so very out of context (one example being its use toward college graduates), but it’s the context that makes it so powerful. The people of God were in exile; they were wandering and waiting for God to bring them home. Of any of us, they truly had a right to look up to the sky and yell, “Why God??”

Yet, in their suffering and struggling, God promised them something. In verse 11, it says,

“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

If we miss the lesson for the suffering, it’s like we’re missing the forest for the trees. If we simply endure whatever we go through, big and little alike, it’s pointless. Yet, when we start to realize everything is on purpose, the things we go through not only teach and guide us, but gain eternal purpose and significance.

Everything’s on purpose. God has a reason, a plan, and a story for your life. Look for what he’s revealing in the midst of the chaos, and you’ll see how great our God truly is.