We Are God's Work

Dear Weekly Readers! I am traveling throughout the United States visiting different churches here and sharing about how God is working around the world. I will also be attending our annual Foreign Mission Board meeting at the end of this week. Therefore, I’m still away from the office and may not be able to reply to your emails. Please enjoy this week's article by Jay Weidner! May God Bless your week!  John "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Ephesians 2:8-10)   We are God's work. It can't be us who works to gain our salvation because it is He as the sole worker. He is the One who has worked it in us. It is not works, because we are His workmanship. That's one of the most comforting things in all of the Scripture. We can't yet see it or understand it. We look at ourselves in the mirror, and we see so often that we have not done everything that we should. We see so many things we've done that we wish we hadn't. We look at ourselves and examine ourselves, and we grow more frail and weak. We seek and hope and long for improvement, and we don't see any. But we don't realize we aren't our own workmanship. Paul offers this comfort: "It isn't of our works. It's entirely by God's grace." He has wrought us. He has made us anew. If we could see right, and we looked in a mirror, and we had a mirror that could reveal the work of God, when we looked in that mirror all we would see is what God sees—the finished work of His Son. Then we would really understand, "By grace are ye saved." By grace.   Pastor Jay Weidner