Explore 3 foundational ways to let Christ live through you as you fulfill your unique purpose.
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What’s your unique purpose in God’s big story?
Your purpose in God’s story is to let Jesus live His life in you and through you.
3 ways to build a foundation for allowing Christ to live His life through you.
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I would be hard-pressed to find a believer who hasn’t wrestled with his or her search for their unique purpose. Some wonder if they’re being called to a particular vocation or family structure or full-time ministry; others are searching for insight to help them make next-step decisions. Sometimes they’ve hit multiple roadblocks and need to examine their direction. Can you relate?
While these questions should be prayerfully considered, the concept of purpose within the Kingdom is actually simple and, surprisingly, the same for every single believer.
Your purpose in God’s story is to let Jesus live His life in you and through you.
How do you feel reading that? Does it leave you excited? Relieved? Disappointed? I suspect some of us would prefer a fortune cookie delivering the news of our purpose, tying up the loose ends and answering those vocational and directional questions.
Be encouraged. The work of fulfilling your purpose as a mini-expression of the reality of Jesus on earth — not getting more of God, but allowing God to get more of you — will be more beautiful and exhausting and thrilling than any easy target highlighting your exact destination.
How do we embark upon the journey of letting Jesus live through us?
Let’s explore 3 ways to build a foundation for allowing Christ to live His life through you as you fulfill your unique purpose.
1. Live a Jesus Lifestyle.
God calls us to live out our faith in Christ with such consistency and integrity that it impacts our relationships, money, time, speech, and even our secret motives and thoughts. We’re called to a lifestyle.
This standard of bringing our behavior in line with our new nature (like Jesus) tends to trip up many Christians who are learning to walk. Instead of a lifestyle of faith and knowing our worth, we slip back into old ways of self-improvement, trying to look good for God.
As a believer, I have lived seasons when I was more concerned with the to-do list than the to-be list.
My first few years as a new believer, I confess that I was caught in that vicious cycle. My faith was secure, but my misunderstanding about my worth in God’s eyes hindered my transformation and my understanding of my purpose. I was very concerned with doing for God and not becoming more like Jesus.
Living out our purpose with a Jesus lifestyle is not a checklist, but begins with an understanding of our worth in Him.
2. Live In Community.
The cocoon God has provided for us is the perfect environment for supernatural growth and transformation: His Church. Just as a caterpillar experiences transformation in a cocoon, a Christian experiences transformation within community.
In the body, where you’re in relationship with other believers, you can experience love while you live out your purpose and learn to walk with confidence. Even when life throws you a trip hazard and you stumble, brothers and sisters are encouraging you along the way, cheering for you with every step forward.
Through the community of believers, you can learn to appropriate grace and understand how to go about the business of letting Christ live through you.
Have you left your destructive lifestyle behind? Are you ready to live a life on the edge? Check out this article and learn about getting fully prepared.
3. Adopt a Cosmic Awareness.
Our personal transformation is bigger than any of us could possibly imagine, bigger than our families and spheres of influence.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:4–6
We are part of something infinitely bigger than our own lives.
In the first three chapters of Ephesians, Paul tells us who we are in Christ, urging us to live as transformed people according to our new identity. Now in chapter 4, he is pulling back the curtain to explain the enormity of what’s at stake.
What is at stake is the reality of the Godhead’s unity expressed in and through this miraculous creation He calls the church.
God’s plan includes us expressing the Godhead’s unity through our life on earth.
As you’re discovering your purpose to let Jesus live through you and grasping your place in God’s bigger story, your transformation is both taking you back to your original, unique purpose and forward into eternity with Him.
THE BIG PICTURE
But when our lives aren’t transformed, when our attitudes, relationships and behaviors don’t reflect what we have confessed and believe, it’s a clear indication that we’re missing out on this bigger picture.
So what’s the antidote?
Adopting a cosmic awareness of God’s plan requires the beautiful, soul-wrenching work of reading, thinking, praying and discussing what we’re learning about God and what He’s doing in our lives. We need to return to the fundamental questions about why we are here, what really matters, and what our destiny is.
While God is excited about you fulfilling your design as an image-bearer, our infinite Creator is working far beyond our understanding and experiences to unify His people and fulfill His plan.
That’s the bigger picture.
As we live out our unique purpose by letting Jesus live through us, we have the privilege of experiencing Him through our personal transformation and also through unity with His people.
After all, His body is a vast, unified mosaic that better reflects his image than one human being could ever do.
To be a part of that mosaic is to explore, experience and learn God‘s purpose for your unique life.
Learn practical methods for building your transformation muscles when you watch my Daily Discipleship Course on YouTube. Find other helpful resources on our website, including my book, Yes! You Really Can Change.
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RELATED RESOURCES
Yes! You Really Can Change book
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Written By
Chip Ingram
Founder & Teaching Pastor, Living on the Edge
Chip Ingram is the CEO and teaching pastor of Living on the Edge, an international teaching and discipleship ministry. A pastor for over thirty years, Chip has a unique ability to communicate truth and challenge people to live out their faith. He is the author of many books, including The Real God, Culture Shock and The Real Heaven. Chip and his wife, Theresa, have four grown children and twelve grandchildren and live in California.
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