“The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out” (Proverbs 20:5)

The ESV and NASB bible versions replaced the word “plan” with “purpose” in this text. When you are writing a personal or business plan in accord with your life’s primary mission, or if you want to know this deepest part of your calling, it is important to draw it out. The text indicates that to distill the essence of a good plan, to articulate the driving motive — name the purpose of the first creation coming into realization in your mind that you can concur with, with great clarity and revelation — it must derive from your inmost rational being. 

If this is the case it follows that this understanding must reside within your mind at some deep level in alignment with reality. To perceive it intellectually, I must allow my mind to find calm, without noise, without fleeting imagery, without a single drawing away from the search, no distraction.

Proverbs 20:24 shines light on the search, presenting a figure/ground relation in the mind that marks such soul-searching determination as needing the quietude of holy ground. “A man’s steps are from the Lord; how then can man understand his way?” If the procedural laws of a reasoning mind, prior to the mechanics of action, are of the Lord, as He moves us in our stage play providentially, it follows that a man who is to understand his life purpose is to listen, to perceive at a much deeper level in this rational process of seeking his purpose and his concomitant plans. He must articulate his plan as a unified coordinate derivative with the Lord’s mind, to co-create. 

This follows that man’s mind, submitted to the Lord, will be infused with the Spirit as articulator to his spirit, animated by the gift of discernment to see and hear and know distinct differences between distracting noise, erroneous information, versus the Lord’s will. It follows that a man is left with the prime naked need to seek and to know the Lord’s will in his life, as a compass so that he uses the right map and ends up in and stays in the right jungle (to use a metaphor).

Is it any wonder that man has difficulty sorting out his life purpose if he or she has not learned to listen to the Lord and use his reasoning faculties with integrity to obey relative to a true need as presented among his fellow man? 

Without integrity and the virtue of truth, men operate from irrational minds and erroneous concomitant actions. When we look out into the world, many seem to have it all together: a man becomes a doctor yet prescribes medicine but not exercise, a lawyer who advocates divorce but not marital reconciliation as being one in Christ, a pastor who preaches the law of attraction but discounts the Spirit of the Lord as the truest Guide — yet many may feel that they have found their one niche purpose, followed “the right plan”.

And bear in mind there are many false prophets even within the church. They may speak in tongues, dance on the stage, utter words over your life, advise you to leave your spouse, etc. — yet stand in opposition to the Spirit of Christ. Isaiah 8:20 states: “To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to [God’s word], it is because there is no light in them.”

When Isaiah sought the Lord, he heard a still, small voice speaking to him: “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8) The directive of the Lord to His wayward people, who were not following His word or His plans and purposes, was to be heralded by Isaiah — yet knowing that many would remain unfaithful, following their own counsel: “He said, “Go and tell this people:

“‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding;  be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears,understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” (vss 9-10)

To find understanding, one must enter the narrow way of the conduit of Mind-to-mind transference of divine command to discern the Spirit’s will articulated in our own individual spirit. The Israelites had become distracted by all the ways of the world, to the degree that they could not perceive God’s will, plans and purposes for their lives. The many voices of our information-based world—the media and entertainment pipelines that curry favour through a potpourri of compromised truths—distract us, and we are “ever hearing, but never understanding” and “ever seeing, but never perceiving”. Similarly, we can see moral compromise at the highest levels of civil law. 

We must work out our understanding of God’s will as our will within our purposes, plans, and philosophy of life.

View God’s will as a function of your identity in Him

“And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit, whom he promised long ago. The Spirit is God’s guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised and that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so we would praise and glorify him” (Ephesians 1:13b-14 NLT)

This viewpoint fits well with Jeremiah, who was also called to tell the Israelites of their apostasy from the narrow way of the Lord: “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11-14 NLT) 

What can we learn about understanding life purpose from the prophets we looked at in this lesson? The first two questions posed below are about them. The third question is about others they serve as our life purpose is about service.

1. Who were they? Chosen and identified as select, called Israelite prophets willing to speak and do God’s entire will.
2. What were they supremely qualified to do? Both Isaiah and Jeremiah were supremely qualified to hear God’s will through their ability to listen and discern His directives for themselves and for his irrational people, Israel.
3. Who did they do it for? God and His other chosen people, to guide them rationally back to His way, through His Spirit and His Word.
4. What do others want or need that they would come to you for? God wanted a warning message to go to His people. They needed healing and restoration from apostasy and dull perception.
5. How do others change/transform as a result of what they gave them? Some listened and reformed to the Lord; some referred to their writing as Daniel did; whereas most continued in rebellion and were killed or sent off to Babylon. God responded by telling Jeremiah that He alone had a plan and a purpose for Him, as was evident to Isaiah, his contemporary prophet, as well.