Find the Purpose in Your Life
Apr 17, 2017 2997
Do you feel like a mouse on a treadmill, seemingly living without purpose? Like you’re getting nowhere fast? As if some key ingredient is missing from your life?
The Israelites in Egypt felt like that. All they did all day was make bricks. We know exactly how they did. Not only does the Bible tell us, but archaeologists have found pictures of the Egyptian brick-making process painted on the walls of tombs.
First, the Israelites would get dirt, then they would mix it with water to make mud, and then they would mix the mud with straw. Finally, they would put the wet brick into a mold and wait for it to dry. It was repetitive, meaningless, and back-breaking work under the hot Egyptian sun.
But then the Egyptian king (the Pharaoh) ordered that the Israelites not be straw any more for their bricks. That meant that they had to find their own, and although they had to do this extra work, they still had to make the same amount of bricks! (Exodus 5:6–8).
It mustn’t have made any sense to the Israelites. They were just on a treadmill to nowhere! Many of them must have thought that’s just the way life was; after all, they had been slaves for generations.
Life can often seem without purpose, as if we’re being asked to make bricks without straw. Everything seems harder than it should be, and ultimately pointless.
Like the Israelites, we can fall into the trap of thinking that what is today is all there is. But the bricks without straw was a clue that they were missing something in life: something that was their birthright, something that only God could provide.
God has made you for something better!
When the Israelites let God do his thing in their lives, they discovered what it was they had been missing all along: freedom! When those millions of Israelites left Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, it was the greatest act of liberation in secular history.
In the end, the bricks without straw was God’s way of reminding his people that he had made them for something better. The Exodus ultimately pointed to the great work of liberation at the Cross, when at God’s command, the waters parted and let Jesus through, so that through him, his people might go free.
So if you’re missing something in your life, if you feel like you’re just making bricks without straw, don’t just continue living the way you are! Accept the liberty that God offers you. Then you’ll experience God’s purpose for your life. Let God do his mighty work of liberation in your life through Jesus Christ, because:
if the Son sets you free, you are truly free (John 8:38).
– Eliezer Gonzalez
opio
Apr 3, 2018
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