Why Did God Make You?

I still remember word for word the first question and answer in the Roman Catholic catechism which I learned as a child: “Why did God make you?”
Answer: “God made me to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.”
And this answer is certainly true. But there is much more to why God made me than is stated here. The above answer is true alright, but it is truly incomplete.
If I were to answer today the question:
“Why did God make me?”, I would say:
GOD MADE ME TO BE A MEMBER OF HIS FAMILY AND TO CONTAIN HIS DIVINE NATURE.
This Family membership is the KEY to the Christian life. The answer I learned as a child is the proverbial “putting the cart before the horse”. Certainly God wants each human being to come to know Him, to love Him and to carry out his wishes both as a human being until death and as a spirit being eternally. But until I see God’s purpose in the proper light of understanding, it is difficult if not virtually impossible to really know God, to really love God, and to really serve God.
The Bible says that human beings are without excuse when they say they don’t believe in God because God is obvious to them at every level of creation. Deep down inside their conscience, everyone knows there is a God.
But the problem is: how do they view God? What do they make of this Powerful Creator, this All-knowing, All-seeing Somebody? They may hear the term - God the Father. But most often, this is just understood to mean that God is our Father because He created us. They see the whole human race as children of their “Father God”. This actually makes God a “generic” Father rather than a personally, specific Father,
Let’s review what actually happens when I repent of my sins and call out to God accepting Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord of my life. Do you know what instantly happens? I DIE! I instantly am taken back in time and die in union with Christ right there on the cross. I DIE! Oh, I don’t feel the pain and agony of death because Christ is feeling it for me. BUT I DO DIE!
It is what happens next that makes all the difference in my future human life and for all eternity. I INSTANTLY COME BACK TO LIFE! I AM RESURRECTED! And just as I died in union with Christ, I am resurrected in union with Christ.
Three things have happened to make me (and you) instantly a Child in God’s Family:
1. I now contain the divine nature of God the Father giving me a full-fledged Family status.
2. Jesus Christ now comes to live right within me in a living union of His Spirit to my human spirit.
3. The Holy Spirit of God comes to dwell within my soul-mind as a Teacher to bring me into a day by day knowledge of Christ within and my Family status.
But you may say, “Aw, I can’t believe all that happened. Converts to Christianity don’t seem to show that much difference after their conversion!”
Well I’m here to tell you that IT DID HAPPEN!
Now my concept of that “Great Creator Somebody Out There” is gone. The idea of a “Great Hanging Judge” looking to zap me when I mess up is gone. God is no longer my “generic” Father — He is my PERSONAL Father. I can have a personal relationship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I can get to know these fellow Family members because they live within me. And that, dear friends, is WHY GOD MADE ME.
Since it is difficult for me to picture in my mind the Father or the Holy Spirit, my basic personal relationship is with Jesus Christ who I can very easily picture as a fellow human being. I can sit quietly with Him. I can walk slowly with Him. I can get to KNOW and recognize His voice and guidance in my life. This is the “knowing” part of why God made me. And it really isn’t that hard.
As I grow daily in my knowing of Christ, I see on a personal level His care and concern for all the details of my life — His LOVE for me, for those around me, and, in fact, for everyone in the world. This awesome realization of His love is such that I cannot help but return His love with my own. This is the “loving” part of why God made me. It also is not really that hard.
Now comes the really hard part – the “serving” part. It is definitely the world’s approach to life to do things with an eye toward profit and loss, thinking of how any expenditure of energy will effect our “bottom line” either materially or emotionally or psychologically. This is far from God’s view of service.
As Christians, we usually go to one extreme or another in this issue of the life of service. We either do nothing, waiting for God to write our instructions across the sky in fire, or we strive until we drop trying to do everything we can think of to please God. Neither situation is the case of the normal Christian life.
God can and does replace our concepts of service with His revelational understandings.
God does not want service so much to please Him but rather to please us and make us happy. Just as the natural man operates in his carnality, not from any preplanned or prepared way, but just out of that nature which is operating in him, so we should act out of our new nature. God does not call us to strive to be good but just to let His goodness shine through us.
SERVICE to God is humanly impossible! We must have the confidence that we can operate in simple surrender to Christ within from Christ’s sufficiency and ability. God has promised time and time again to be provision for our service to Him. The problem arises when we have an idea different from God’s idea of what that provision should look like either in type or quantity. When we think in the world’s terms, we see God’s provision as lacking greatly – not enough money, not enough time, not enough help, not enough power, not enough of ANYTHING! How can I serve God properly?
God usually has us serve in a way that looks totally unlikely, if not impossible, by the world’s standards and ideas. This is such a common theme in the Bible that it may tend to be overlooked almost like a backdrop. We must come away from all we learned from the world and let God replace our concepts of service with His own. We must give up our own service agenda and trust in the leading of Christ within.
So let’s get the horse in front of the cart.
FIRST – God made me to be a son in His Family.
SECOND – with this understanding, I can now come to KNOW God as “Dad”, to LOVE God as “Dad”, and to SERVE “Dad” as a Family member – NOW and FOREVER!

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