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This time finds many making new resolutions as to how they’ll live a different way.  It may have to do with how they plan to use their time, how they are going to eat or exercise differently, or a host of other things.  But most resolutions never happen because they are ours and not God’s.  Only if we line up with His plan can our true purpose be realized.

Perhaps you’re wondering:  What is God’s plan for me?  The Bible reveals this in Genesis 1:26.  Here, God tells why He made man.  He states,

“…let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion…over all the earth.”

In other words, God made us to look like Him, live like Him, and rule like Him—in this world.

And God uniquely put us together (in one 24-hour day) to be able to fulfill that plan.  1 Thessalonians 5:23 describes what it means to be made in His image.  It reveals that He made us “…spirit, soul, and body,” so He could come to live inside us and express His life through us.  His original plan for us was that we would allow Him to come to live inside our spirit, from which He would release His life into our soul, and thus express Himself through the actions of our body.  This is how He intended us to look like Him, live like Him, and rule like Him in this present world, as well as in eternity.  Our soul, being made up of the mind, the will, and the emotions, is a channel through which God can flow out of us to the world—so others can see what He’s like.  Here’s how it works:  God releases His thoughts into our mind.  Those thoughts call for a decision about some proposed action.  As we agree with God, His will is released through our will.  That decision affects our emotions.  Out of His thoughts, will, and feelings flowing through us, come the actions of our body.  This is how God lives His life through us— and that is our purpose:  For God to get to live His life through us.

To try to live any other way on this earth means we’re going to miss our purpose.  And that means two things:  God is not going to get the glory from that life He entrusted to us— and that means we’re going to be miserable!  If we refuse His life, the only alternative we have is to live for pleasure, prestige or possessions– and any or all of those things are terribly poor substitutes for His life.

But there is a better way!  Acts 17:28 records it when the Apostle Paul said to a group of worldly philosophers:

“For in Him we live and move and have our being…”

Americas Founders likewise understood that God created us for His purpose.  This is why they earnestly wanted their children to learn to think with God from the Bible.  As Sam Adams, the Father of our American Revolution, stated:

“Let [ministers] and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, of inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country; of instructing them in the art of self-government without which they never can act a wise part in the government of societies, great or small; in short, of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system.”

(Adams, Samuel. October 4, 1790, in a letter to his cousin, Vice-President John Adams. Four Letters: Being an Interesting Correspondence Between…John Adams…and Samuel Adams (Boston: Adams & Rhoades, 1802). William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865), Vol. III, p. 301. Verna M. Hall, comp., Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976), p. XIV.)

Are you teaching your children the “exalted virtues of the Christian system”?

Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children!  And you won’t like what that brings to you.  I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.