I want to know that there are people in this world who are the better for having known me. And when you're on your death bed, you can't ask much more of life than that.
Let me ask you this: as you contemplate the rest of your life, the time between now and when you breathe your last breath here on planet Earth, how do you answer these basic and yet profound questions of life for yourself?
- Have I discovered who I was created to be - the blueprint of who I am?
- Am I living that out to the full in my life - by doing the things I was created to do?
- Am I singing the song of my dreams that God planted deep in my DNA even before time began?
When you ask yourself those questions how do you answer?
With a "yes" … or with a "no"?
If you're in that all too small group able to answer a resounding "yes" to each of those questions, then you'll be able to tell us of the deep and profound sense of joy and peace and contentment that you experience through all of life's ups and downs.
But if you're with the majority, those who are forced to answer "no", then you've probably been living much of your life with this nagging sense that you're missing out on something. That surely there must be something more to my life. Surely I must be destined for … well, for something! But that nagging feeling is something that we push down, deep down inside somewhere, to hide it. It hurts to think too much about it. Because it hurts to imagine that we might be missing out on the life we were destined to live.
But try as we may to ignore that nagging sense of an opportunity missed … it just won't go away.
Where to Begin?
So if we're going to resolve this once and for all, if we're going to turn the three no's into three yes's - where do we begin? What's the starting point for each one of us finally to begin living out the lives that we're meant to be living?
Well, we haven't talked too much about God to this point, but He is the starting point.
One of the things that we're going to spend some time doing together in the next chapter is looking with wonder and awe at the powerful story of how beautifully and wondrously God created each one of us (Psalm 139). I think it's going to rock us to the core and lift us to heights that we've rarely experienced. (God's Word invariably has a way of doing that.)
But for now, let's go to a single verse that provides us with an "executive summary" if you will, of the lengthier exposition in Psalm 139. It was in fact written many, many centuries later by the Apostle Paul, in the second Chapter of his letter to the Ephesians.
And this verse isn't just the executive summary of Psalm 139, but it's also the executive summary of this whole book - which is why (if you'll flick back to the first few pages) you'll notice that it's right up there at the front on its own. Here it is for you to drink in:
