Mat 16:13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?
Mat 16:14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.
Mat 16:15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
Mat 16:16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Mat 16:17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.
Mat 16:18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Mat 16:19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.
Purpose - the reason for which something exists or for which it has been done or made.
Destiny - the apparently predetermined and inevitable series of events that happen to somebody or something
Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
Fulfilling your true destiny starts with discovering your true identity. Most of us live our entire lives as strangers to ourselves. We know more about others than we know about ourselves. Our true identities get buried beneath the mistakes we’ve made, the insecurities we’ve acquired, and the lies we’ve believed. We’re held captive by others’ expectations.
We’re uncomfortable in our own skin. And we spend far too much emotional, relational, and spiritual energy trying to be who we’re not.
Why? Because it’s easier. And we think it’s safer. But trying to be who we’re not amounts to forfeiting our spiritual birthrights. 2Pe 1:3 According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:
2Pe 1:4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having
escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.
As long as you are breathing, God hasn’t given up on you yet. So don’t give up on yourself. Let this promise soak into your spirit it’s never too late to be who you might have been. Who are you and who are you supposed to be?
Self-discovery is a lot like an archaeological dig. It takes a long time to uncover the hidden treasures that lie buried beneath the surface. You can never be certain of what you will find or where you will find it. And it is a painstaking process. But the failure to dig deep will result in a superficial life.
It’s hard to truly get to know others if you don’t even know yourself. If you haven’t discovered your unique gifts and passions, how can you find fulfillment in what you do? You might make a living, but you won’t make a life. You’ll never experience the joy of doing what you love and loving what you do. And, finally, it’s the spiritual side effects of superficiality that are the most detrimental. Superficiality is a form of hypocrisy. If you fail to discover the truth, the whole truth, about yourself, aren’t you lying to yourself? Your life becomes a partial truth.
Instead of narrating our own lines in the first person, we live second-person lives by allowing others to narrate our lives for us. And that is hypocrisy at its worst. Our lives become lies. We not only cheat ourselves and others when we fail to discover our God-given identities and God-ordained destinies, but we also cheat God Himself. Greenfield wrote: Life inside the image … requires continuous care, feeding, and, above all, protection. That is the worst of it
We are, most of us, much of the time, in disguise. We present ourselves as we think we are meant to be.
And the primary reason we live as strangers to ourselves is because we’re afraid of what we’ll find if we start digging. We don’t really want to see ourselves for who we are. But if we can dig deeper than our fallen natures, we’ll find the truth that lies buried beneath our sin: the image of God. We’ll find our true identities. And our true destinies as well.
Time may be measured in minutes, but life is measured in moments. And some moments are larger than life. And it’s those defining moments that dictate the way we see life. Some of them are as predictable as a wedding day or the birth of a child. Others are as unpredictable as an accident. You never know which moment might become a defining moment, but identifying those moments is the key to identifying who you are.
Research suggests that one’s self-concept is defined by a very small number of experiences. Ninety-nine percent of life’s experiences vanish like vapor into the subconscious abyss. Only one percent make it into our conscious memories. And less than one percent of that one percent are not just memorable but truly unforgettable. Those are the moments that define us. And managing those memories is a form of stewardship. Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity. And one way God redeems the past is by helping us see it through His eyes, His providence. So the key to fulfilling your future destiny is hidden in your past memories. When we look in the mirror, what we see is a reflection of our accumulated experiences.
In a sense, we are an combination of where we’ve been, what we’ve done, and who we’ve known. But there are a few places, a few experiences, and a few people that leave their imprints in ways that become part of who we are. Your fingerprint uniquely identifies you and differentiates you from everyone else who has ever lived, but your fingerprint is only skin deep. You possess a uniqueness that is soul deep. It’s not just who you are, present tense. It’s who you are destined to become, future tense. It’s not just who others see when they look at you from the outside in. It’s who God has destined you to become from the inside out.
Not unlike your genetic code that programs your physical anatomy, your soulprint hardwires your true identity. So while you live your life forward, God works backward. The Omniscient One always starts with the end in mind. The best example of how God uses defining moments to reveal a person’s destiny is found in the life of David. Ps 139:16 (NIV) He wrote, All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. As with the psalmist, all your days are ordained by God. And it’s your holy responsibility to discover that God-ordained destiny, just like David did. His epitaph speaks for itself: Act 13:36 For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep…
Despite humble beginnings and huge mistakes, David fulfilled his destiny. The defining moments or scenes in his life double as destiny clues that will help you serve God’s unique purpose in your generation. On the most memorable day of his life, David bent down by a brook that didn’t just bisect a battlefield. It bisected his life. His life would never be the same after that day, and he knew it. His life was about to end or about to begin.
Giant footsteps got louder as Goliath drew nearer, but it didn’t disrupt David’s focus. Everybody who had ever known David, including his own father, saw David as nothing more than a shepherd boy. But as David stared at his reflection in the water, his true identity was revealed. David saw the person God had destined him to become: a giant killer. That was his true identity. That was his true destiny. Like the ripple effect created by David as he reached into the river, there are defining moments that reverberate down the years of our lives. In fact, they forever change the trajectory of our lives.
To the average eye, it was a mutilated piece of marble. The aborted sculpture had been abandoned half a century earlier by Agostino di Duccio, but a young artist named Michelangelo saw something in that stone others did not. Chiseling the eighteen-foot block of marble would consume nearly four years of his life, but that seemingly worthless stone was destined to become what many consider the greatest statue ever sculpted by human hands. Giorgio Vasari, a sixteenth-century artist and author, called it nothing less than a miracle. Michelangelo resurrected a dead stone and, breathing his artistry into it, brought David into existence. As he chiseled, Michelangelo envisioned what he called the immagine del cuore, or image of the heart. He believed the masterpiece was already inside the stone. All he had to do was remove the excess stone so David could escape. He didn’t see what was. He saw what could be, what already lay within his heart. He didn’t see the imperfections in the stone. He saw a masterpiece of unparalleled beauty. And that is precisely how the Artist sees you. We are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Every work of art originates in the imagination of the artist. And so you originated in the imagination of God. Awesome thought, isn’t it?
You were conceived by God long before you were conceived by your parents. You took shape in the imagination of the Almighty before you took shape in your mother’s womb. Eph 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. You are His “masterpiece,” from the Greek word poiema.
And it’s where we get our English word poem. But it refers to any work of art. You are His painting. You are His novel. You are His sculpture. “Christ is more of an artist than the artists,” observed Vincent van Gogh. “He works in the living spirit and the living flesh; he makes men instead of statues.” God is painting a picture of grace on the canvas of your life. God is writing His-story, history with a hyphen, through your life. God is crafting your character through the circumstances of your life.
To see yourself as anything other than God’s masterpiece is to devalue and distort your true identity. And it’s in discovering your true identity that your true destiny is revealed. A sense of destiny is your sacred birthright as a child of God. And it’s anchored to the truth found in Ephesians 2:10,. The word “planned” prepared is drawn from the Eastern custom of sending servants in advance of a king to prepare the road ahead. It was their responsibility to secure safe passage and make sure the king got to his destination. Paul took that ancient imagery and turned it upside down, or maybe I should say, right side up. The King of kings goes before His servants to prepare the road ahead. In other words, He strategically positions us in the right place at the right time. God is setting you up. And that ought to fill you with an unshakable sense of destiny.
Michelangelo’s masterpiece David is enshrined at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy. And thousands of tourists wait for hours every day to get a glimpse. But many of them fail to notice the series of unfinished sculptures that line the corridor on the way to David.
Like petrified prisoners, their forms are identifiable—a hand here, a torso there, a protruding leg or part of a head. The statues were intended to adorn the tomb of Pope Julius II, but they are non finiti. It’s almost as if those sculptures are trying to break free and become what they were intended to be, but they are stuck in stone. Michelangelo called them captives. Have you ever felt like a captive? You can’t seem to break free from habitual sins that have held you back and held you down? A dream God conceived in your spirit years ago hasn’t taken shape the way you wanted it to?
You know who you want to be, what you want to do, and where you want to go, but you can’t seem to get there. I have no idea where you’re stuck or for how long you’ve been stuck. But I do know that God wants to finish what He started. In His first sermon, Jesus stated His mission in no uncertain terms: to set the captives free. We tend to think of that statement in judicial terms. Salvation is our Get Out of Jail Free card. But it’s much more than that.
Maybe we should think of that statement in artistic terms. Jesus didn’t die just to get us off the hook. He also died to resurrect the person we were destined to be before sin distorted the image of God in us. And He doesn’t just set us free spiritually. He also sets us free emotionally and relationally and intellectually. We are held captive by so many things. We’re held captive by our imperfections and insecurities. We’re held captive by our guilt and anxiety. We’re held captive by expectations and
and mistakes. He doesn’t just set us free from who we were. He sets us free to become who we were meant to be. Salvation is not the end goal. Salvation is a new beginning. He begins using our circumstances, no matter what circumstances those may be, to chisel us into His image. When it comes to the will of God, we tend to focus on what and where. But what you are doing or where you are going are secondary issues. God’s primary concern is who you’re becoming. It has nothing to do with circumstances. It has everything to do with the character of Christ being formed within you until you look and act and feel and talk and dream and love just like Jesus.
The only way to discover who you are is to discover who God is, because you’re made in His image. You have a dual destiny. One destiny is universal: to be conformed to the image of Christ. To follow Christ is to become like Him. That is our chief objective in life: to be just like Jesus. But our other destiny is unique to each of us: to be unlike anyone who has ever lived. Those two destinies may seem to be at odds with each other, but they are anything but. To become like Christ is to become unlike anyone else. He sets us free from who we’re not, so we can become who we were destined to be.
As you may recall from a high school biology class, you have forty-six chromosomes. Twenty-three are from your father, and twenty-three are from your mother. And it’s that unique combination of chromosomes that
determines everything from the color of your eyes to the number of hairs on your head. Your identity is part heredity. And so it is with the image of God. The image of God is both your heredity and your destiny. The mathematical probability that you would get the exact twenty-three chromosomes you got from your mother is1 in 10 million. But the same is true for the twenty-three chromosomes you got from your father. So if you multiply those two together, the probability that you would be you is 1 in 100 trillion.
You are incalculably unique. All of us start out as one-of-a-kind originals, but too many of us end up as carbon copies of someone else. Instead of celebrating our uniqueness, and the uniqueness of others, we’re too often threatened by it. We forfeit our uniqueness because we want to fit in. Instead of daring to be different, we sacrifice our soulprints on the altar of conformity. In one of his best-known essays, “Self-Reliance,” Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that … imitation is suicide. He must take himself for better, for worse.” I think that is precisely what David did as he prepared to duel Goliath: Then Saul dressed David in his own tunic. He put a coat of armor on him and a bronze helmet on his head. David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. Arming a warrior for battle was a major ritual in David’s day. Armor was an extension of the warrior’s character.
David could have gone into battle dressed like a king. But David said, “I cannot go in these, because I am not used to them.” So he took them off. What if David had gone out to meet Goliath on Goliath’s terms—fully armored, fully armed? I think David would have lost because David wasn’t a swordsman. For better or for worse, David was a shepherd. The sword would have posed a greater threat to David, via self-inflicted wounds, than it did to Goliath. But David was deadly with a slingshot.
David came to a crossroads. He had a choice to make. And it was a choice that would determine his destiny. David decided not to don Saul’s armor or brandish Saul’s sword for one very good reason: he wasn’t Saul. David decided to be David. And we’re faced with the same decision. There comes a point in all of our lives where we need the courage to take off Saul’s armor. And it’s the rarest form of courage. It’s the courage to be yourself.
In 1948, Korczak Ziółkowski was commissioned by Lakota chief Henry Standing Bear to design a mountain carving that would honor the famous war leader Crazy Horse. The great irony, if you know your history, is that Crazy Horse never allowed himself to be photographed. I wonder what he would have thought about his 563-foot-high statue on the granite face of the Black Hills. Ziółkowski invested more than thirty years of his life carving the statue that intended to be eight feet higher than the Washington Monument and nine times larger than the faces on Mount Rushmore. Following his death in 1982, Ziółkowski’s family has carried on the vision their father started. Their projected completion date is 2050. That vision, carving what will be the largest sculpture in the world, begs this question: why spend a lifetime carving one larger-than-life statue? In the words of Ziółkowski, “When your life is over, the world will ask you only one question: Did you do what you were supposed to do?” Why do composers write music? Why do athletes compete? Why do politicians run for office? Why do entrepreneurs start businesses? Why do doctors practice medicine? Why do teachers teach? There are certainly lots of answers to those questions, but the right answer is this: they do it to give expression to something that is deep within their souls.
The deepest form of despair,” warned Søren Kierkegaard, “is to choose to be another than oneself.” At the end of the day, God isn’t going to ask, “Why weren’t you more like Apostle Paul or Esther?” He won’t even ask, “Why weren’t you more like David?” God is going to ask, “Why weren’t you more like you?
David was the youngest [brother]. The three oldest followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to tend his father’s sheep at Bethlehem. —1 SAMUEL 17:14–15
Around the turn of the twentieth century, a pioneering psychologist named Alfred Adler proposed the counterintuitive theory of compensation. Adler believed that perceived disadvantages often prove to be disguised advantages because they force us to develop attitudes and abilities that would have otherwise gone undiscovered.
Adler concluded that perceived disadvantages, such as birth defects, physical ailments, and poverty, can be springboards to success. And that success is achieved in spite of those perceived disadvantages. It’s achieved because of them. Subsequent studies have added credibility to Adler’s theory. In one study of small-business owners, for example, 35 percent of them were self-identified dyslexics. While none of us would wish dyslexia on our children, because of the academic handicap that comes with it, that disadvantage forced this group of entrepreneurs to cultivate different skill sets.
Some of them became more proficient at oral communication because reading was so difficult. Others learned to rely on well-developed social skills to compensate for the challenges they faced in the classroom. And all of them cultivated a work ethic that might have remained dormant if reading had come easy for them. Our greatest advantages may not be what we perceive as our greatest advantages. Our greatest advantages may actually be hidden in our greatest disadvantages, if we learn to leverage them. And one key to discovering your destiny is identifying those disadvantages via careful, and sometimes painful, self-inventory. Your destiny is hidden in your history, but it’s often hidden where you would least expect to find it. It isn’t just revealed in your natural gifts and abilities; it is also revealed in the compensatory skills you had to develop because of the disadvantages you had to overcome.
Our strengths are hidden within our weaknesses. Our advantages are hidden within our disadvantages. And no one is a better example of that than the king who came disguised as a shepherd. His greatest advantage was the direct result of a perceived disadvantage. And without that disadvantage, he would have never fulfilled his destiny.
Let me set the scene. The clock is ticking, and David’s mind is racing. Like a flash flood, memories from the past cascade into his consciousness. David is only a teenager, but his short life flashes before his eyes. That is what happens when you’re staring death in the face. In this instance, death is a nine-foot giant named Goliath. David is thinking past experiences in hopes of finding something, anything, that will help him in his present predicament. And that’s when it happens. Something triggers a memory. David has a flashback. A roaring lion pounces into his mind
looking just as ferocious as it did the day he was tending his father’s sheep on the outskirts of Bethlehem. A rush of adrenaline pumps through his veins as he recalls putting a smooth stone in his slingshot. David calms his nerves, steadies his hand, and takes aim at the lion’s forehead. The stone hits the target, stunning the lion just long enough to allow David to finish him off with his bare hands. In that moment, in this memory, fear evaporates and confidence condensates. It’s more than a realization. It’s a revelation. It’s more than self-confidence. It’s holy confidence. The uncircumcised Philistine that is staring him down is no different from the wild animals David faced and fought while tending sheep. David connects the dots between his past experiences and his present circumstances, and it inflates his soul with a sense of destiny. Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine. Every past experience is preparation for some future opportunity. God doesn’t just redeem our souls. He also redeems our experiences. And not just the good ones. He redeems the bad ones too—especially the bad ones. How? By cultivating character, developing teaching lessons that cannot be learned any other way. The most important lessons in life are rarely learned in a school classroom via secondhand knowledge. Relying on secondhand knowledge results in a vicarious life. You become an extra in your own story instead of taking the lead role. The expectations of others become your script. And you live off their experiences instead of creating your own. The most important lessons are learned in the classroom of life via firsthand experience. The tests are tough, but no curriculum is more effective. And the way you pass the test is by cultivating the character, developing the gift, or learning the lesson God is trying to teach you through that experience. One thing that has helped me endure the challenges I’ve faced is seeing each of them as learning opportunities. If you learn the lesson God is trying to teach you, no matter how things turn out, you have not failed. In fact, you cannot fail. Each wild animal that attacked David’s flock was a pop quiz. They tested his character and his skill. David could have sacrificed his sheep for the sake of personal safety, but he passed the test by risking his life for his flock. Why is that so significant? Because God was preparing David to shepherd His flock, the nation of Israel. He was also cultivating a compensatory skill that would change David’s destiny and Israel’s history. On paper, David was at an obvious disadvantage. He wasn’t even in the army! If anyone was going to face Goliath, it would be a trained soldier, right? His brothers seemed more qualified than David. David didn’t even know how to wield a sword or throw a spear. All he’d been doing was tending sheep. But that perceived disadvantage gave him the advantage he needed to defeat Goliath. Israelite soldiers were trained the same way the Philistines were. And no one was going to defeat Goliath in hand-to-hand combat. No one, especially not David, could match Goliath’Read more at location 329 • Delete this highlight
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strength or his skill. You cannot fight a giant on the giant’s terms. You have to change the rules of engagement. The best way to fight a giant is with a slingshot at twenty paces. And that is a skill shepherds cultivate out of necessity. So while it seems as if David was totally unprepared, he was actually perfectly prepared. And while it seems as if he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, David was perfectly positioned. SIDELINES When I was in high school, I played basketball for a coach who, like every coach, had his idiosyncrasies. During my junior year, I was coming off the bench as a sixth man, so I was always fighting for playing time, and I quickly learned that our coach would pull players out of the game when they made mistakes. Here’s how he would do it: he would just grab whoever was next to him on the bench, send him to the scorer’s table, and get him into the game as quickly as possible. If you were at the end of the bench, you were out of sight, out of mind. So, during huddles, when our team would get off the bench, I always tried to get the spot next to our coach when we sat back down. It was like athletic musical chairs. I got a lot of playing time that year by virtue of my strategic positioning. Like any athlete, I hated sitting on the sidelines. I wanted to get into the game. I wanted to contribute to our team. I wanted to help us win. But you can’t do that if you aren’t on the court. For anyone with a competitive streak, there is nothing worse than getting stuck on the bench. And I wonder if that is how David felt as he watched his brothers go off to war. He wanted to go with them. He wanted to be on the front lines, but he got stuck on the sidelines. He wanted to be on the battlefield, but he got stuck in the shepherd’
