What is destiny?
I am sure that you have heard people saying things like ‘I want to fulfill my destiny’ or ‘nothing must hinder my destiny’ or when something happens to someone they may say ‘It’s his or her destiny’, we all have said these things at one point in time or other.
When we speak like this we are often referring to fulfilling some material or physical objective that we have established in our hearts or being successful in one way or the other. However, our destiny is more than that.
Let me define destiny as what God has allotted or purposed for everyone, it is God’s picture for your future, in other words, it is what He has purposed that you will be or should be. This makes it clear that we don’t create destiny we discover it.
Closely tied to destiny is the matter of calling, usually, we also use our destiny as a synonym for our calling, and in a sense, it can be because they are related, what I mean is that we cannot fulfill our calling without finding destiny, so we can say that your calling is hidden in your destiny and that’s why I think people often mix up the two.
What is a calling?
A calling is a divine allotment, an assignment or responsibility, specific and unique to you, another way of saying calling is purpose. Callings always end up in one form of service-related activity or the other.
Finding destiny
Destiny is what God had in mind for you and really for every man, I believe every human being on earth shares a common destiny but not every human being will find that destiny, more people will fail to find that destiny than will find it.
Satan’s greatest warfare is to hinder humanity from discovering the unique and beautiful destiny prepared for her in God.
This warfare is being waged at all levels and even in the Church where you would suppose that this revelation of destiny should be established.
Our God-revealed destiny is to be the sons of God, simple isn’t it? Yet many have failed at the comprehension of this, everything God has for humanity is hidden in this truth, everything we are seeking for or could ever desire is hidden in this truth- sonship!
This was God’s plan in the beginning when he declared
“Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
And God said, “See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food”; and it was so.
Gen 1:26-31
This man God made was rich, he was possessor of all that was given to him, he had dominion over the world that was revealed to him and he was empowered to prosper above all he had a unique relationship with his Father-God.
None of all that he had was the result of anything he had done; it was bequeathed to him because he was a son.
Luke in his genealogy of Jesus traced his roots back to Adam and declared quite emphatically
…the son of Adam, the son of God.
Luke 3:38
Our God-revealed destiny is to be the sons of God
Tonye oliver
Sonship was God’s plan for humanity, sonship was our common destiny until sin came in and disrupted the plan and brought humanity under a different parentage, that of the devil.
It was this destiny in God that Jesus came to restore, in this sense he was called the last Adam (I Cor. 15:45), this is why John was inspired to say
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
John 1:12-13
Just as satan was able to deceive Eve & through her Adam by offering to them what God had already given so today in the Church world many are seeking through alternate means what God has given freely in Christ.
Jesus is the pathway into our development as sons, what I mean is this, when we came to Christ, we were birthed into God’s family, and we received in our spirits the restored image and likeness of God, however, we were like babies in understanding and ability to express that restored image and likeness.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
Rom 8:29-30
It was God’s plan (and still is) that by following Jesus and learning of him, we would be able to develop the capacity to function in the destiny of sonship, this is what would have happened if Adam had birthed children before the fall, he would have taught them how to live as sons of God as he was.
Instead, he birthed children after the broken image of sin that was in him and transmitted to them the sense knowledge of death.
You know the story of how Adam landed us in the dilemma we’re in — first sin, then death, and no one is exempt from either sin or death. That sin disturbed relations with God in everything and everyone, but the extent of the disturbance was not clear until God spelled it out in detail to Moses. So death, this huge abyss separating us from God, dominated the landscape from Adam to Moses. Even those who didn’t sin precisely as Adam did by disobeying a specific command of God still had to experience this termination of life, this separation from God. But Adam, who got us into this, also points ahead to the One who will get us out of it.
Rom 5:12-14
(from THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language © 2002 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved.)
What has happened in the Church generally is that we have substituted this path into destiny with a spirit of religion, mere church attendance, observance of laws and rules, church traditions, manmade rules and principles of living, not regarding Jesus from whom God designed every member of the body to be nourished.
The Lord Jesus was very careful about the development of children into sons, he took a company of disciples and transformed them so much so that in a few short years people began to call them ‘Christians’ or little Christs.
People sometimes ask me, how can I know what Jesus would have me to do or be?, my standard answer is ‘follow Jesus’, He is the revealer of purpose and calling, even if you knew by revelation what the Lord has for you in your future, the pathway to fulfillment is sonship and that is by following Jesus first.
The mistake some people make is to set the ministry or calling ahead of this pursuit of sonship. It is a big mistake, even the Apostle Paul told us ‘Follow me AS I follow Christ.
Today the Lord is calling His Children back to their destiny and this is to become sons of God after the image of Jesus Christ our last Adam. This is the heart of the apostolic restoration- it is a call to sonship.
The Lord Jesus said
As my Father has sent me so send I you
It was a son that was sent into the world and it is sons that Jesus also sent into the world.
Through the gospel, God is repopulating the earth with sons but we must wean ourselves from the deception of religion that has entangled the Church and blinded her to her true destiny. Even though this destiny is indeed for all men, only through Jesus can anyone find it.