The 12 Days of Purpose-From Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power
The Twelve Days of Purpose
For a Purposeful Christmas
Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power…
Happy Holidays! Are you rejoicing in the birth of our Christ? Oh, I’m so grateful for His birth, His life here on earth, His death, His resurrection and His ascension into the heavenly realms as He sits on His throne by our God waiting for the green light to come and get us! Grab your coffee and let’s get back to our discussion on purpose. We’ve finally moved on to the verb tense of the word!
Purpose as a verb is: to plot/plan or contrive, whether bad or good, which is to make ready, to prepare, to bear, to acquire, to provide a thing for one’s self, to make a thing out of something, to perform to a promise. Whew, when I read that last part, to perform to a promise, I can’t help but think of marriage. Our purpose in marriage should be to keep the covenant/promise! I won’t take that major detour right now because that’s not the “purpose” of this series.
Let me just share this truth with you: All of God’s purposes have eternal value. He will do what He has to do to make you ready, to prepare, even having you bear through things. He will make something from nothing to perform His promise of purpose in our life!
Now I want to share what the Greek concordance says about purpose. The word translates to “prosthesis” which means “a setting forth, exposed before, and is almost always used in reference to the showbread,” which was part of the Tabernacle and the Temple in the O.T. The showbread signifies the bread of the presence. Oh, that gives me goose bumps.
I know you have to be wondering, what in the world does bread have to do with purpose? Hint: “All ‘Purpose’” . . .!
I can’t wait to share the spiritual significance and there’s certainly no time to explain the correlation of the Tabernacle/Temple in detail, but in order to grasp your purpose, the term showbread needs to be explained. I am super excited to share what I’ve discovered, and the least complicated explanation I found was written by a John Stanko, which definitely lines up with scripture and what I’ve studied:
Facts about the showbread:
• Showbread was made of fine flour and fine flour is made by beating and grinding wheat. The higher the quality of the flour, the more beating the flour has endured. So it is with us and our purpose. There is a process of preparation, and often it is a sort of grinding, beating, a refining that may at times feel traumatic but it has to take place to get us there. Oh, friend, can you relate to this process of preparation, the times where you feel beaten down and wonder if you will ever get there?
Christmas joy!
• Finer flour is made of the finest ingredients which take time to prepare; there is no other way. The “flour” of the O.T. is always a type of Jesus, meaning a characteristic, and if you have been in relationship with Him for any amount of time, I just know that you are able to make a list of His characteristics, and probably one of the most significant is His sacrificial/selfless action of going to the Cross. The Bible explains the tremendous tribulations He endured to see His purpose fulfilled.
Let’s give you another fun fact about flour of the Old Testament:
• After wheat is beaten into flour, it is exposed to fire – refiner’s fire – baked, and because it was without leaven, there was nothing in it to puff it up, make it something it wasn’t or make it look bigger than it was. There was a specific measurement to bake each loaf, two-tenths of an ephah, which is a dry measure.
This reminds me of when I make pumpkin bread, I have to put the first batch of flour in and then more ingredients and last, the last part of the flour. So this particular measurement is symbolic to purpose in this way: The essence of purpose is in all of us in equal measure. Our effect may be different but our importance is equal!
• There were always 12 loaves laid out on the Tabernacle: 12 loaves are/were representative of the 12 tribes, and the 12 tribes are symbolic to the Bride of Christ.
In other words, the bread of presence was/is for everyone, for each of us!
I could spend hours with you, literally, over the Tabernacle and the showbread, but I’m hoping that you got some of that symbolism and spiritual significance, if not all of it!
Do you believe that His presence is available for you today? Do you know that you know that YOU are His purpose?
Purposefully,
Evinda
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