God’s Intent for You and Me

I know it’s not Music Monday, but since music is awesome any day, I wanted to share something music related with you all today. Tonight one of my favorite bands — Revive — is playing in Walla Walla, Washington, and tomorrow night they will be in Tacoma, Washington. Oh so close, but just a bit too far for me to be able to attend. I love concerts in general, and Christian concerts in particular, and so I am pretty bummed about the fact that they are so close but I won’t get to see them. On Friday, they will drive right on by Portland on their way to California for their April 2 concert in Paradise, California.

6:45 p.m. update: My sweetie said he’d take me to Tacoma for the concert and I just got my tickets! I will report on it probably on Saturday. I decided not to change the rest of the post, though.

Even though I won’t get to see them in concert this time, I’ve been listening to their music in the car and on my iPod all week. The song in the video below is called “We Were Meant to Be.” It is a wonderful reminder that God did not intend for us to live a life of drudgery without purpose. We were meant for so much more than that.

Revive is from Australia, having come to the United States in 2008. The title of this song reminds me of an old friend, the person who first took me to a Bible study many years ago. She was from Australia, too. She used to say things like, “I was meant to go to the grocery store today.” When I first heard this I thought it was odd because here in the States we would have said either “I intended to go to the grocery store today” or “I was going to go to the grocery store today” or maybe even “I was supposed to go to the grocery store today.” We don’t tend to use the word “meant” in quite the same way as the Australians.

This got me thinking about how that impacts my understanding of this song. As I listen to it, I have to ask myself, “Do I intend to be the person God wants me to be? Am I going to be the person God wants me to be today? Who is it that I am supposed to be today?” Let’s look at the lyrics of the song to help answer these questions:

We were meant to be
A city on a hill
Shine like the stars in the sky
We were meant to live
For more than this world

God’s intent when He created us was for us to be like a city on a hill shining forth His glory and His love to all the world around it. He wants us to live an abundant spiritual life full of love, mercy, and grace. We are supposed to be His children created in the image of our Father in Heaven, who act like the role model Jesus was for us. Do we fully grasp all that we were meant to be? I think I am getting closer, but there is still more change that needs to occur before I am fully all that He intends for me.

Thank you, Revive, for inspiring me to be who I am meant to be.