His Workmanship
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10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
It is not my work for God that has any value, but God's work for me.
1. You are His workmanship.
1. You are His workmanship.
The Greek word translated workmanship is poiema, from which we get our English word poem.
You are His work. You are His poem. A poem is a thing of grace, a thing of beauty.
God wants your life to be a thing of grace and a thing of beauty. And as God works in your life, it will become a thing of grace and of beauty; you are His poem.
The poet seeks to express Himself in beautiful terms. He seeks to express beauty in attractive terms. God is seeking to express Himself, and your life becomes that expression as God works in you.
You are His work, as God works in your life conforming you into the image of Jesus Christ, you then become the revelation of God to the world around you--the expression of God.
“created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand that we should walk in them”
2. God is working in and through our lives.
2. God is working in and through our lives.
God has already determined, foreordained, that work that you are to accomplish for His glory. God has a plan and a purpose for your life.
The work that God is doing in our lives today is preparing us for the good works that He has before ordained that we should accomplish for Him.
It is a comfort for me to know that God has my life all planned out.
From the beginning, He knew just what He wanted me to accomplish for the kingdom of Christ.
He has before ordained the work that I should do for Him.
Paul writing to the Philippian church declared that he had not yet apprehended that for which he was apprehended by Jesus Christ.
When Jesus apprehended Paul on the Damascus road, He had a special work in mind for Paul to accomplish. Paul was years in special preparation for that work.
It is interesting that when the Lord apprehended Paul he revealed to him the things he would suffer for the name of Jesus. I do not know if the Lord also told him of the glorious work he wanted Paul to accomplish for the kingdom.
Paul spoke of being separated by God from his mother's womb for the work of the gospel.
We are often puzzled by the events that are happening in our lives. Sometimes we even feel that God has forsaken us. Like the Psalmist we cry, "Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, and hearing my cry?"
Have you ever taken just one piece of a puzzle and tried to figure how it fits into the whole picture? It is next to impossible, if you have just started to work the puzzle and you do not have the picture on the box before you. But if the whole puzzle has been put together and this is the next to last piece, there is no problem in seeing where it fits. God is putting together the pieces of the puzzle in your life it may be that you can't understand the present piece that He has put in.
You may have even been complaining about your present circumstances because you can't see how the pieces fit.
You wonder why God hasn't listened to your prayers to remove the piece.
It is hard to see how all things are working together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose.
In your mind you may have even challenged God by asking, "What good can possibly come from this?"
There are many advantages to coming to the stage in life that you have arrived at where most of the pieces of the puzzle have been put together and the picture is becoming quite clear.
I frankly confess that there were many of the pieces of the puzzle that I complained loudly about as God was preparing me for the work that He had before ordained that He wanted me to accomplish for Him.
There were many a time when I thought God had forsaken me.
Things that at the time I looked on as a curse, but have now discovered that they were great blessings. They were necessary preparation.
Through all of my experiences God was teaching me of His faithfulness to provide for my every need just as He promised.
It is not easy to discover you are nothing when you thought you were something. To realize that you were not doing God a favor when you offered to Him your services.
Not easy to give it your best fleshly efforts and see them fail.
Not easy to give the best 22 years of your life to something that seems to produce so little fruit.
(PERSONAL TESTIMONY)
As I see it, it was all a part of the necessary preparation for the work that God had in mind for me to accomplish for His glory.
Through all of the difficult experiences he was teaching me important lessons of who He is, and how He wanted His work done.
Lessons that I would one day be able to teach others so they could perhaps escape some of the pitfalls I had to struggle through.
So God has been preparing you. How do you know but this isn't what God has been preparing you for?
As God works in your life, you can know that God has a purpose and a plan. He doesn't just work happenstance in you. It isn't just some kind of a unpredictable act of God that you have been through these severe testings or trials. It is a part of God's plan in preparing you to do the work that God has already decided that you should do for the glory of His kingdom.