A devotional is an in-depth Bible study. A typical devotional should take you anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes to complete. Download and print a PDF version of this devotional for yourself, or use it with a friend to create an engaging discussion.

Opening Questions

  • How do you define the purpose of your life?
  • Do you believe God’s plan for your life is good, even when you go through troubles?
  • How do you think your God-given talents and abilities could impact your job, neighborhood, or community for the better?

Bible Study

Understand God’s intimate involvement

You saw my bones being formed as I took shape in my mother’s body.
When I was put together there, you saw my body as it was formed.
All the days planned for me were written in your book before I was one day old.

Psalm 139:15-16 NCV
  • There is not a day that goes by in our lives in which God isn’t aware of and intimately involved in bringing his good purpose for us to completion.
  • Do you believe God has good plans for your life? Why or why not?

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is the Father who is full of mercy and all comfort. He comforts us every time we have trouble, so when others have trouble, we can comfort them with the same comfort God gives us.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 NCV
  • Spirituality is living life with a faith that is deeply convinced God chose us to change the lives of others.
  • Do you turn to God to find comfort in your troubles? Do you have enough comfort and mercy to share with those others who may be going through similar troubles?

Deepen your love

This is how we’ve come to understand and experience love: Christ sacrificed his life for us. This is why we ought to live sacrificially for our fellow believers, and not just be out for ourselves. If you see some brother or sister in need and have the means to do something about it but turn a cold shoulder and do nothing, what happens to God’s love? It disappears. And you made it disappear.

1 John 3:16–17 MSG
  • The key to living an inspired life is to live an unselfish one.
  • Do you understand and experience God’s love in your daily life? What sins keep you from seeing God’s love actively present in your life? How have you seen these sins make your love for others grow cold? (Matthew 5:8, 24:12)
  • What can you do to deepen and increase your experience of God’s love, so you can help others experience it as well?

Share your story

Take a good look, friends, at who you were when you got called into this life. I don’t see many of “the brightest and the best” among you, not many influential, not many from high-society families. Isn’t it obvious that God deliberately chose men and women that the culture overlooks and exploits and abuses, chose these “nobodies” to expose the hollow pretensions of the “somebodies”? That makes it quite clear that none of you can get by with blowing your own horn before God. Everything that we have—right thinking and right living, a clean slate and a fresh start—comes from God by way of Jesus Christ. That’s why we have the saying, “If you’re going to blow a horn, blow a trumpet for God.”

1 Corinthians 1:26-30 MSG
  • Too often, the parts of our stories that we consider insignificant or wish we could erase are the very chapters God wants to use to help us fulfill our purpose.
  • Do you believe God wants to move through your weaknesses to relate to and make a difference in the lives of others?
  • Who can you share your story with to illustrate how God moves powerfully in the areas we feel most powerless in?

Choose God’s plan

We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept His invitation to live according to His plan. From the distant past, His eternal love reached into the future. You see, He knew those who would be His one day, and He chose them beforehand to be conformed to the image of His Son so that Jesus would be the firstborn of a new family of believers, all brothers and sisters. As for those He chose beforehand, He called them to a different destiny so that they would experience what it means to be made right with God and share in His glory.

Romans 8:28-30 VOICE
  • Every day, we have a choice to live our lives influenced by the darkness in the world around us or by God’s destiny.
  • God’s destiny for our lives is characterized by a deep confidence that he is always working towards “something good and beautiful,” leading us to an inspiring future.
  • When experience this kind of faith and confidence ourselves, we will want to help other people around us experience it as well. Who has God placed in your life to help discover his destiny for them?

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This article was created by a member of the Deep Spirituality editorial team.

Deep Spirituality logo

This article was created by a member of the Deep Spirituality editorial team.

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