HIS WORKMANSHIP.

DAILY DEVOTION

DAY THIRTY ONE.

EPHESIANS 2:10.   For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
My question today is this; What are we here for, what is our purpose? This verse shows us that God has done a work in us, we are now His workmanship in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5:17 tells us that we are now new creations in Christ, There is now a new man living on the inside, God has removed the old dead spirit and given us a new heart, and He has put His Spirit within us. So what is the purpose of that? Yes it is to bring us back into relationship with God as our heavenly Father, but it is for more. The rest of Ephesians 2:10 says that we are in Christ for good works, the works that God has prepared for us, even before we were saved and born again. In Christ we now have a new destiny, a new hope, Jeremiah 29:11 says that Gods thoughts are towards us, thoughts of peace and not for evil but to give us a hope and a future. God is continually thinking about you and the plans He has for your life, David said in Psalm 139:17-18 "How precious are you thoughts to me O God! how great is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would be more in number than the sand; When I awake, I am still with You" This such a powerful concept, that you and I are never out of the mind of God. He is continually wanting to reveal to us on a daily basis His plans and purpose for us. Jesus said in John 15:5 that He is the vine and that we are the branches, that apart from Him we can do nothing. He is our very life source, what happens if you separate a branch from the vine? it will surely die. We must continue to abide in Christ, in His word, in His love, in His Spirit because if we don't we will die and not achieve what He has created us for. As Christians, as ones who have been purchased at an amazing cost, through the blood of Jesus through His death and resurrection, we now have a huge responsibility to serve God, to fulfill what He has called us into. In Ephesians 4:1 Paul says that we are to walk worthy of the calling with which we were called, He goes as far as to say that he beseeches us to do this, there is a real urgency in what Paul is saying here. To walk worthy here comes out of the knowledge and the understanding of what Christ has done in us, it does not come out of our sense of self worth, but the realization that it is Christ in us, His life in us, as Paul said in Galatians 2:20, That it is no longer him who lives, he has been crucified with Christ, and the life that he now lives he lives by faith in Christ, Paul's faith was in the fact that his life was now in Christ because Christ had been prepared to give His life for him. This is such an important point to realize, that we can only have the life of Christ in us because of the fact that Jesus was prepared to lay His life down for us and go to the cross. You might say at this point; "But you don't know my past, you don't know what I have done, how could God want to use me?" Well again Paul's life gives us an answer to this. We are all aware of the life of Paul, as Saul he was a Pharisee, a teacher of the law and a staunch opponent to the Gospel, to the point he went out and persecuted Christians and was present at the stoning of Stephen, yet in Philippians 3:12-14 he is able to write that he was aware that he had not yet attained perfection but that he must press on, that he would take a hold of what Christ had called him to do, he would not look back, he would forget the self effort and mistakes of the past and continue to press forward to the high calling that was on his life in Christ, realizing that the prize was in that calling, in his fulfillment of what God had called him to do. If we doubt that God has a purpose or a calling on our lives let us come back to the original verse, We are His workmanship in Christ Jesus, it is not about us, but it is all about Christ in us and what he wants to do in us and through us. AMEN