The Blueprint of Your Life

A blueprint is an architectural drawing on paper, a guide for making something—it’s a design or pattern that can be followed in the process of building, for example, a house. A blueprint can also refer to a strategic plan for your life. Every person born on this earth has a blueprint designed for their life.

There are several passages in the Bible that speak to the fact that we were designed and planned for before the world was made. It says in Ephesians 1:3–4: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him’.

God in his omnipotence foreknew us and had specific plans for us individually. Furthermore, not only did he create a blueprint for each life, but he took a personal interest in your individual creation. It says in Psalms 139:15–16: ‘My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.’

Adam was created in ‘the depths of the earth’. In Genesis 2:7 it says, ‘Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being’. The genetic code (DNA) for all of us resided in Adam at the time of his creation and passed down to us through the generations.

DNA is an inherited record of instructions telling each cell in our body what its job is going to be. It’s a whole set of blueprints for the cell. DNA is like our fingerprint and unique to us. No two people have the same DNA. God uses DNA as building blocks, each individually designed from the blueprint he first envisioned for you. This blueprint or plan is hardwired into your life.

In Luke 3:23, 38 it says, ‘Jesus was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph… the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God’. Your lineage traces back to Adam, which connects you to the DNA of Almighty God. Not only spiritually, but in every dimension of reality, your DNA is God’s DNA!

Spiritual DNA

But we also have a spiritual DNA. This spiritual DNA is given to us when we are ‘born again’, just as the breath of life was breathed into Adam by God at his creation, the breath of the Holy Spirit was breathed into us—the church—first at Pentecost and then inherited or imparted to each person who becomes a follower of Jesus Christ.

Once we come to Christ and experience this new birth, we too are cleansed by Christ’s blood, but the sin nature, or tainted DNA, still resides in our being. This is the ongoing battle we have within our nature, but God’s plans for us take precedence once we experience the new birth. The Bible is our manual for life and gives us clear guidelines on how to live our optimum life. If we choose to live the life we are called to live, we can make positive changes in our very DNA.

The study of epigenetics is now catching up with the Bible. It tells us that the genes in our DNA can be turned on and off as we make the right choices for our lives. The satanic realm has studied our family lines for years and is well acquainted with our weaknesses and biases, but we do not have to build to its specifications, we each can follow God’s blueprint for our lives and build something beautiful.

Gideon

When we allow God to lead in our lives, he accesses the original blueprint and calls out his original design. In Judges 6, the Israelites were being oppressed by the Midianites and they were hiding away. An angel of the Lord appears to a young man named Gideon. In verse 12 it says: ‘When the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon, he said, “The Lord is with you, mighty warrior”.’ Gideon didn’t see himself as a ‘mighty warrior’, more like a ‘mighty worrier’, but God did. He saw his original plan for Gideon and spoke it to him.

This gave Gideon courage, hope and a vision. It is the same with us, God does not see who we were, he sees who he designed us to be. When he speaks to you, he is calling to the DNA contained in your body and revealing who he called you to be. He gave each of us strengths, talents, gifts and we need to access God’s original intention for our lives.

We do not need to look like every other church. We can be who we were called to be.

The DNA of the Salvation Army

Not only do individuals have spiritual DNA, but churches do too. The Salvation Army’s blueprint was first envisioned by William and Catherine Booth. The Booths saw the problem and became the solution. They worked and formed the DNA of the Army. William had a vision, not only for the work of the Army in the 1800s, but his vision of the ‘lost’ and the Army’s involvement in saving those ‘lost on the perilous sea’ was what motivated and drove the formation of an Army. This has and will have implications eternally.

The Salvation Army today inherited this DNA. We are called to carry out an original plan and vision. We can do this because a spiritual vision such as Booth’s is not confined in the here and now, it is seeded in the past, but harvested in the present and in the future. We are still reaping the harvest planted by the Booths.

The danger is if we move so far away from the original design we can then develop mutations that bring disease, discord and sickness into the body. We need to access Booth’s purposeful design, remove the mutations and sickness and strengthen the work for future generations.

The DNA of the Church

The Salvation Army brings to the body of believers our special DNA, our blueprint. We do not need to look like every other church. We can be who we were called to be. In fact, when we return to the original plan, the original vision, we will fulfil our mandate and enhance the body of Christ internationally.

No matter what, you can rest in the truth that God has holy plans for The Salvation Army and for us individually. God requires each of us to play our part, to find our place within the body and express ourselves in all our differences, giftings and vision. He has joined us in unity with each other and with the larger church globally that spans time and place. When we build from the master plan we will build with eternal outcomes.