Ephasians 1:

18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you…

To many believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, God has called them to fulfil destiny.  They teach that it’s a tragic loss if the destiny is not discovered and lived. This is an anxiety creating doctrine. This has made me traverse history and the New Testament. The latter is the fulfilment of all the Old, the place where all grey areas of the former come into flooding light; parables, symbols, enacted rituals…come into sharp focus here. The New Testament is the maturation of the hinting life of the Old Testament.

 

I once watched, spellbound, my then crawling kid, Jesutobiloba Olayode – a few weeks to his first year on earth – suddenly standing erect and taking steps which turned to running back and forth. He was so excited – never went to crawling again. I learnt a lesson from this. He must have been watching the adults walking about effortlessly. He must have been amazed at this impossible feat. Something must have told him that this ability was his call, his destiny to be fulfilled. So, he couldn’t take any other thought of concept of existence apart from walking uprightly unaided!

This is the kind of thought we presently are engaged in. We’ll soon discover that destiny to be fulfilled is more than able to walk and run. There are other things that Jesutobiloba has grown to discover and learn over the years. The New Testament sums up all of divine purpose to be fulfilled. We walk in clearer light of the mind of God in the New Testament.

In our text from the amplified bible, the hope to which God called the believers is not solely ministerial, though this is part of it. Many preachers teach that we are solely here to be great ministers. And by this indistinct teaching in the church, many of us are frustrated and dispirited when we fail to reach the dizzying heights of outstanding hero ministers of the gospel of Christ. Some of us have been known to exit the world for not being puissantly influencing ministries like the fathers. For ministry is a destiny to be fulfilled, according to the teaching, and life is worthless if undiscovered and fulfilled.

This view is only religiously a little above the world out there. The truth be told, the concept entered the church from there. For out there, to fulfil destiny is to be a big shot, an achiever, a renowned, an influencer, a distinguished individual, outstanding professional… These and more are good in their places. We are not knocking them down. However, it’s good to note that there’s nothing one can achieve in life that hasn’t been achieved by somebody already; there is no record laid that hasn’t been broken. Fulfilling life is more than being the greatest renowned on earth. It should be recognised too that the efforts most looked down upon by the world and the church may also amount to fulfilling destiny if one is appointed to it by God.

Right off the bat, Christ is the reason for being; He’s the destiny to be fulfilled. To begin with, God created all things by His will. “…for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their beings” (Revelation 4:11). The was a reason for this: creation. The reason for creation has a greater purpose other than for man to come to the earth and run through the gamut of human civilisations which defy all the wisdom and nature of God.

It’s hard for a natural man to know that God has a need which He has been working to achieve over the aeon of human existence: He needs a place of rest, an habitation which expresses His person as One Who has a desire, One Who thinks and One Who wills. ….or what is the place of my rest? (Acts 7:49). It’s easy to see that fulfilling destiny is to be the REST of God! God has been seeking Man as His rest. Man is suppose to be the place of God’s rest. This is clearly seen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Fulfilling Destiny is being part of the CORPORATE Christ; such a being that answers to the habitation of God is Christ and His corporate self. We shall use Christ as the template in this meditation.

Christ is the instrument of God to bring Man into the desirable place of habitation. Just as the Lord Jesus was the full habitation of the Godhead, so must be His corporate self, the church. For God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him (bodily) (Colossians 1:19). When this is accomplished, the creation too will have fulfilled its Destiny. For in Christ, all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2:9). Fulfilling Destiny, therefore, is to be the rest of God, just as Christ.

Fulfilling Destiny is to be called out to be what the primordial thought and desire of God: to be partakers of the divine nature. .….so that through them (God’s promises) you may participate in divine nature (2 Peter 1:4).

The Holy Spirit’s activities in these last two millennia and more are that of the home run to finally settle this question of Man coming to His destiny and fulfilment. The Lord came to the earth to raise sons for God, Men who are the expression of His divinity. He didn’t come majorly to perform miracles but to bring up divine life by which He could speak. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word (Hebrews 1:4).

The creation is awaiting the crop of the people who might have fulfilled this call, this destiny. The destiny of the creation is tied to this. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to the will of the one that subjected it, in hope, that the creation will be liberated from the bondage of decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:19-21).

Fulfilling destiny is being raised to this stature, the five fold ministers raised mainly as the agents to nurture to this true stature of fulfilled destiny. His intention was the perfecting and the full equipping of the saints… That it might develop, until we all attain oneness in the faith and the comprehension (full and accurate) knowledge of the Son of God, that (we might arrive really mature manhood, the completeness of personality, which is nothing less than the standard height of Christ’s own perfection) the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ and the completeness found in Him (Ephesians 4:12-13). Fulfilling destiny is Manhood, the standard nothing less than that of Christ, well structured to be indwelt by God.