Created for a Purpose
by Drenda Keesee
There was a time many years ago, when my oldest daughter, Amy, needed a dress to wear for a church production. But she didn’t need just any dress; no, it had to be a red, black, and white dress. And, of course, I had plenty of trouble finding that specific type of dress, so there we were trying to shop for it the day before she needed to wear it.
After a day of shopping with the three children I had at the time, I was worn out, and I didn’t know where I was going to find this dress for the next morning. We had been to every store in our area.
It was 11:00 pm, and I was desperate.
I drove to the open-24-hours, “buy-everything-here” store. Once inside, we headed for the girls’ department when I remembered that our dog needed food, so we veered off to the grocery section, where I threw a 50-pound bag of dog food on the bottom rack of my now full cart, with the kids in tow noisily playing around and on the cart.
That’s when it happened…
The bag of dog food somehow caught the edge of one of the cart’s wheels and burst open, shooting nearly all 50 pounds of dog food onto the floor. I instructed Amy to wait with the two boys while I found help to clean up the mess.
When I returned quickly with the late-night department manager, I was completely shocked and embarrassed to find my lively three-year-old son running down the aisle and sliding in the dog food. There were little balls of dog food everywhere.
People were standing around watching him have the time of his life, but they weren’t laughing! I just know they were thinking the same thing I had thought many times before: “What is a mother and her three children doing out after midnight?”
We finally found “the dress,” and were leaving the store. That’s when my son Tim accidentally hit me with the second cart he was pushing behind me. It knocked me flat on my back. I lay there on the floor seeing stars, and everything in the store seemed to go silent. I pulled it together and ran out of the store as quickly as I could.
Looking back at this now, I can easily laugh, and you probably are too.
I’m sure you can probably relate to this story on some level.
Because we all have crazy, chaotic days—or nights—when we’re in the trenches and barely coping with the day-to-day pressures with our children, our jobs, our marriages, our finances, or anything else that’s going on.
But I want to remind you that God created you for something special; He created you to make a difference.
As you look at God, at His word, and at what He says about you, you’ll discover your identity in Him instead of in your performance or in your lack of performance; you’ll discover that you are loved, accepted, and forgiven.
Then, you’ll be empowered to do things not through your own strength, but through Him and His strength.
Because your life isn’t about what you can accomplish on your own, or what you don’t believe you can accomplish at all, but about what you can accomplish with God.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
