Esther: Becoming a Girl of Purposeনমুনা

Read the Bible passage above. Use your Youversion App to highlight every location you read about. Include cities, countries, and empires.

These verses introduce King Xerxes who was the ruler of a HUGE kingdom! If you haven’t already, underline “127 provinces,” do it now! That’s a lot of territory to rule. Yep, King Xerxes ruled a lot of land and apparently, it was totally going to his head. He believed it was all “his.”

Look at Esther 1:1–4 again and highlight every time the possessive pronoun “his” is used. Each time the word “his” shows up in those verses, it indicates King Xerxes possessed or owned something. In the Bible passage, highlight the things that he believed were his.

Do you see the same problem that I see? Our purpose is to make God famous. Well, I think our friend King Xerxes had some things a little bit confused. He thinks he is supposed to be the famous one! How famous? Well, he threw a party that lasted 180 days! That’s SIX MONTHS of partying! What was the purpose of his party? To display all the things that were, in his mind, HIS. I don’t need a dictionary to know those words are pretty fancy schmancy! These are words that make King Xerxes famous. Not God. I think there was a big problem in Susa, don’t you? Well, you’d think King Xerxes would have been pretty tired after six whole months of partying, but he was not done yet! Read on to find out what happens next. You’ll soon see a total of three big problems in Susa. You’ve already discovered the first one:

PROBLEM #1:

King Xerxes thought life was all about him. So, the wrong person was being made famous!

When we attempt to make ourselves famous rather than God, we are working outside of our purpose. King Xerxes could have thrown a party to celebrate all the ways God had blessed him. But instead, he made it all about HIM—his possessions, his position, and his power.

And . . . now . . . at the end of that looooong celebration, he decided he needed one more party! Well, it was called a banquet.