I spent a couple of fruitful hours coaching two world-class leaders yesterday afternoon. What a privilege to know them and to listen in on how God is using them to extend his Kingdom rule and reign here and around the world. 

Earlier this week, I enjoyed similar experiences coaching leaders from across America online. Our devotional thought as we began our training was Acts 13:36. This text contains important insights. It is also bookended by what David says about himself in Psalm 138:8. We have in these two texts a) God’s plan, and b) God’s fulfillment of his plan.

David sang two important truths in Psalm 138:

1. The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me.
2. The LORD’s faithful love endures forever. 

The Message paraphrase of this text enlarges our understanding. “Finish what you started in me, GOD.” You and I are not accidents. No matter if anyone tries to tell you differently, you are here on purpose. 

There is a reason for your life. God knew you before time began. When Jesus was on the cross, you were on his mind. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for you so that you may be with him forever (John 14:1-6). It is, as one old preacher put it, “The most beautiful place the mind of God can imagine and the hand of God can create.”

What God started so long ago, he will bring to completion, he will bring to fulfillment. Trust me when I tell you that his Fulfillment Center is better than Amazon’s.

The second truth David sang for us is about God’s faithful love. Flip back two psalms to 136 and listen to one of the most enduring truths of all eternity: His faithful love endures forever.

Everything God does in bringing our lives to fulfillment day by day, evening and morning, now and forever, is motivated and animated by his most defining characteristic, his limitless love. 

Our Father in heaven imagined you in love. When you were born, he lovingly laughed and smiled. When you turned your heart toward him, it was because he had been winning you over without your conscious awareness until that moment. He has taken the initiative to create you, to grow you, to equip you, to use you to bless the whole world. 

He woos you still. He loves you forever. He longs to maximize your life, to give you an ever-better story to live. He wants you to agree with David, the youngest, the smallest, the least significant of his brothers, who became a Bear Bouncer, a Lion Tamer, and a Giant Killer. 

Our Father wants to enlarge your life. He wants you to live so big and so beautiful that no headstone saying could capture his accomplishments through you except for what he said about David: He served God’s purpose in his own generation. 

The world is a much better place because David the Shepherd Boy lived. The world will be a much better place beginning the moment when you learn to live, really live, in step with God’s purpose for your life. 

Whether you are on the right path, off the right path, or don’t know the first thing about God’s path for your life, God can take you where you are and lead you forward with purpose in every step. Pray with David: “Finish what you started in me, GOD. Your love is eternal—don’t quit on me now.”

Praying that kind of prayer and living that kind of life leads to epitaphs narrow enough to fit on a tombstone and expansive enough to bring to memory stories of adventure, success, setbacks, fresh starts, and fulfillment. People will still sing your song generations into the future. 

God finishes what he starts. He started you. How will you and God maximize your story in the time you have left?

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I will live in fulfillment of God’s dreams for me.

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