Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.

Proverbs 19:21, ESV

The LORD will fulfil His purpose for me.

Psalms 138:8, ESV

Are you doing what God put you here to do? Are you achieving the things that you know you could if you just put your heart into it? Are you living the life that God expects you to live? These are the types of questions that each man or woman will eventually ask themselves, and answer, if they are ever to become what God wants them to be. In short, there must come a point in the life of each person when they honestly begin to look at whether they are living up to their potential,

In real estate it is called "highest and best use". I appraised over 2,000 houses before I changed the direction of my life, and in each one of those appraisals I had to determine and state the highest and best use of the property I was appraising. Since I was a residential appraiser and was usually working for a residential lender, their particular interest was if the highest and best use of the property was in fact residential. If not, they did not even want to consider making a loan on it. So, if the property had a highest and best use as say a commercial or industrial use, then the property could not be considered for their investment portfolio. It wasn't that the property couldn't be used as a home, but since it was being underutilized, they didn't want to be involved with it.

After about a dozen years of this career, I began to question my own highest and best use. I enjoyed appraising and was able to make a comfortable living at it, but it dawned on me that I might not be living up to the potential that God may have given me, and that made me uncomfortable. The reason for this discomfort was likely due to the things I had been reading from the Bible. Things like the two verses above that talk about purpose. It was true that I had been going after my own plans in life - plans that seemed perfectly fine - but were my life's pursuits the ones that God desired for me? I began to wonder if He might have a different purpose for my life.

Anyway, the more I read the Bible, the more I realized that there were a lot of practical truths contained in it that could genuinely help people if they would only live by these truths - myself included! I had already been working with the teens in the church I attended and has even filled in preaching from time to time. My wife and I already had a number of people in our home for Bible studies and we really enjoyed these studies. There is a great deal of satisfaction in knowing that the Word of God really can change people's lives, and we were delighted to have a part of that process.

The quick end to a long story was that I eventually came to the conclusion that I might not be living the best life I could, so I began to explore the possibility of changing direction and becoming a preacher. I did not know if I would be a good preacher or not, but I did want to find out if this was a direction that God would be pleased with for my life - so I went in that direction. And I have never regretted that decision.

The passage that David wrote in the 138th Psalm should give us all confidence whenever we are genuinely seeking God's will for the direction of our lives. In that Psalm, David pointed out that God would fulfil His purpose for us. In David's situation, God selected him as the next king of Israel. The fact that at the time David was an unknown shepherd boy who had been tending his father's flock of sheep made no difference to God. Since God chose David to be king, David would be king someday as long as he remained faithful to God. And David did become king!

So, how does a shepherd boy become a king? The answer in David's case is clearly given in Scripture: If it is God's will and His purpose for you, it will be done... if you will do your part.

How about you? Are you living up to God's purpose in your own life? I suppose none of us can ever really know until the Day of Judgment, but we can at least try to do our best to honestly find out what God wants us to be doing, and then to do it to the best of our ability. And, though we might be wrong, at least we are trying to be right. And if we are trying to do the right thing - all the time praying for God's will in doing so, I believe we will have the best shot at living up to the potential that God has for us as we live the best life we know how for God and Jesus.

Are you living your best life? It's a question that is worth considering, don't you think?