On one of our lists, this verse featured! I did not share the words just the location. Did we take the time to look it up?

Just asking. More importantly it is a verse that says so much…

“For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
Psalm 139:13

A learning point.
We are known, have been known from before birth. We were born with purpose!

Have you had your purpose revealed yet?
The primary way God speaks to us is through the Bible. This means that one of the first things you should do in your search for God’s purpose is to start digging into scripture. … In the Bible you learn how to live wisely in God’s world, which is the first step toward finding your purpose.

The Bible is very clear as to what our purpose in life should be. Men in both the Old and New Testaments sought for and discovered life’s purpose. Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, discovered the futility of life when it is lived only for this world. He gives these concluding remarks in the book of Ecclesiastes: “Here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of Man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

Solomon says that life is all about honoring God with our thoughts and lives and thus keeping His commandments, for one day we will stand before Him in judgment. Part of our purpose in life is to fear God and obey Him.

Another part of our purpose is to see life on this Earth in perspective! Unlike those whose focus is on this life, king David looked for His satisfaction in the time to come. He said, “And I—in righteousness I will see Your Face; when I awake, I will be satisfied with seeing Your Likeness” (Psalm 17:15).
To king David, full satisfaction would come on the day when he awoke (in the next life) both beholding God’s Face (fellowship with Him) and being like Him (1 John 3:2), Amen.

In Psalm 73, Asaph talks about how he was tempted to envy the wicked who seemed to have no cares and built their fortunes upon the backs of those they took advantage of, but then he considered their ultimate end. In contrast to what they sought after, he states in verse 25 what mattered to him: “Whom have I in Heaven but You? And Earth has nothing I desire besides You” (verse 25).
To Asaph, a relationship with God mattered above all else in life. Without that relationship, life has no real purpose.

We started off discussing purpose. It ALL comes together now, no?

The apostle Paul talked about all he had achieved religiously before being confronted by the risen Christ, and he concluded that all of it was like a pile of manure compared to the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus. In Philippians 3:9-10, Paul says that he wants nothing more than to know Christ and “be found in Him,” to have His righteousness and to live by faith in Him, even if it meant suffering and dying.
Paul’s purpose was knowing Christ, having a righteousness obtained through faith in Him, and living in fellowship with Him, even when that brought on suffering (2 Timothy 3:12).

Ultimately, he looked for the time when he would be a part of the “resurrection from the dead.”

Our purpose in life, as God originally created man, is
1) glorify God and enjoy fellowship with Him, 2) have good relationships with others,
3) work, and
4) have dominion over the earth. But with man’s fall into sin, fellowship with God is broken, relationships with others are strained, work seems to always be frustrating, and man struggles to maintain any semblance of dominion over nature. Only by restoring fellowship with God, through faith in Jesus Christ, can purpose in life be rediscovered.

The purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him for EVER.

We glorify God by fearing and obeying Him, keeping our eyes on our future home in Heaven, and knowing Him intimately.

We enjoy God by following His purpose for our lives, which enables us to experience true and lasting joy—the abundant life that He desires for us.

invitation to you to enjoy intimate fellowship with him is that thing that is putting your faith to the test more than anything else (James 1:2–4).

The Heart of Intimacy

Intimacy is what we call the experience of really knowing and being known by another person. We frequently use spatial language when describing this experience. An intimate friend is someone we feel very close to; they know us at a deep level. If something happens that damages the intimacy with our friend, they feel distant from us. Or a person who doesn’t know us intimately knows us at a superficial level.

But of course intimacy is not spatial but relational. We all know what it’s like to be sitting right next to a person with whom we feel distant and we can feel close to a person who is four thousand miles away.

“Biblical knowledge is far better than gold when it fuels our trust in God. Otherwise, it only fuels our pride.”

What makes us feel intimate with another person? While there are many ingredients to intimacy and each intimate relationship we have has a different recipe, common to all of them is trust. We cannot be intimate with a person we don’t trust.

Trust is at the heart of intimacy. The more we trust someone, the closer we let them get to us. The degree to which trust is compromised in a relationship is the degree to which intimacy evaporates.

The Heart of Intimacy with God

This is as true in our relationship with God as it is in our relationships with other human beings. Our experience of God’s nearness or distance is not a description of his actual proximity to us, but of our experience of intimacy with him. Scripture shows us that God is intimate with those who trust him. The more we trust God, the more intimately we come to know him. A felt distance from God is often due to a disruption in trust, such as a sin or disappointment.

This reality is vitally important to understand. As Christians, we want to experience intimacy with God. With the psalmist we say, “for me it is good to be near God” (Psalm 73:28). And we want to heed James’s exhortation and realize its promise: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8). But we can seek that nearness in ways that don’t produce it.

Intimacy Is More Than Knowledge

One common mistake is thinking that nearness to God can be achieved through knowledge accumulation. Now, of course, to intimately know God, we must know crucial things about God. Jesus said, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32) and he pointed out that many worship what they do not know (John 4:22).

But never in the history of the Christian church has so much theological knowledge been available to so many people as it is today. The American church enjoys perhaps the greatest amount of this abundance. We are awash in Bible translations, good books, insightful articles, recorded sermons, interviews, movies, documentaries, music, and more. And much of it very good. It is right for us to be very thankful.

But America is not abounding in Enochs (or finding them frequently disappearing), saints who walk with God in a profoundly intimate way (Genesis 5:24; Hebrews 11:5). Why? Because knowledge is not synonymous with trust. That’s why Jesus said to the religious leaders of his day, some who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Scripture,

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39–40)

Biblical knowledge is far better than gold when it fuels our trust in God, because it fuels our intimacy with God (Psalm 19:10). But when biblical knowledge replaces our trust in God, it only fuels our pride (1 Corinthians 8:1).

Why Aesthetic Experiences Fail

Another common mistake is trying to achieve intimacy with God through subjective aesthetic experiences. We might call it a “Field of Dreams” approach: If we build the right environment, God will “come.”

Some pursue this in high liturgical environments designed to inspire an experience of transcendence and mystery. Others pursue it in contemporary worship events designed to inspire an experience of immanence. Others chase revivals, thinking that proximity to God’s power will result in proximity to God. If we truly trust God, such environments can encourage our intimacy with God. But none of them inherently possesses the power to conjure God’s nearness to us.

“God is impressed with our faith, not our feats.”

Think of it like this: A candlelit dinner with romantic music may encourage a sweet moment of relational intimacy between a husband and wife, but only to the degree that the environment encourages and deepens their mutual trust and love. If there’s relational distance between them due to a lack of trust, the aesthetics themselves have no power to bridge the distance. Only restoring the trust will do that.

How We Draw Near to God

The secret to drawing near to God and having Him draw near to us is revealed clearly in The Bible: we draw near to God through faith in Christ Who alone gives us access to Him (Hebrews 4:14–16; 7:25; Philippians 3:9), and we put our trust in all of “His precious and very great promises” which find their ‘Yes’ to us in Christ (2 Peter 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20).

God is impressed with our faith, not our feats. Where faith is lacking, He is not pleased with the quantity of our knowledge or the quality of our aesthetic events.

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. Hebrews 11:6

When God sees someone whose heart fully trusts His promises and lives by them, God comes to strongly support that saint (2 Chronicles 16:9) and manifests Himself to him:

“Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who Loves me will be Loved by My Father, and I will Love him and manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:21)

God’s Invitation to Intimacy

“What you must trust God most for right now is where he means for you to draw closer to him.”

God wants intimacy with you. Christ has done all the hard work in the cross to make it possible. All He requires is that you believe in Him (John 14:1). He wants you to trust Him with all your heart (Proverbs 3:5).

Which means His invitation to you to enjoy intimacy with Him is the providences in your life that are testing your faith more than anything else. What you must trust God most for right now is where He means for you to draw closer to Him.

It is likely an invitation that your flesh wants to decline. But as you read your Bible, do not the great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1) all agree with James and Peter that the greatest testing of faith is the path to the greatest joy (James 1:2–4; 1 Peter 1:8–9)? And do they not agree with Paul that it is not worth comparing to the joy of knowing Christ and the coming glory (Philippians 3:8; Romans 8:18)?

Intimacy with God often occurs in the places where we must trust Him most. Heaven on Earth is the inexpressible joy and the peace that surpasses understanding that comes from trusting God wholly (Philippians 4:6–7). For, as the old hymn writer said, “they who trust Him wholly find Him Wholly true.”