The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe
"Every Good Work"
This week's memory verse addresses an interesting question: when we find God's will challenging in our lives, what is the primary issue?
"And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (I Corinthians 9:8).
The first and primary issue concerns not our ability, but rather the matter of God's promise and His ability to keep it. "God is able." Is He? How we answer this question sets the course of our faith in Him, and faithfulness to Him. In one way or another, temptation to unbelief and disobedience always directs our focus away from our Lord and unto ourselves. Our spiritual enemies tempt us to forget the vital necessity that we are to "be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might" (Ephesians 6:10). By definition, the sense of our human weakness supplies opportunity for the faith by which we live (Romans 1:17). In and of ourselves, it may seem impossible to "abound to every good work." In and through Christ, conversely, we affirm and affix our hearts to the reality by which we live as believers - "God is able."
"Without Me, ye can do nothing… I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me" (John 15:5; Philippians 4:13).
The better we know our Lord, ourselves, and the relationship to which He has called us, the more we will know His power as the means by which we trust and obey. The sense of our own weakness, uncomfortable as it is, prepares us to "look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith" (Hebrews 12:2). Thereby, an enabling far above our own capability motivates, guides, and empowers a walk with God we could never begin to fulfill by our own ways and means. Indeed, the standard is too high for mere human capability: "Walk, even as He walked" (I John 2:6). Only through Christ can believers fulfill "every good work," or any good work. As the Lord told the Apostle Paul, "My strength is made perfect in weakness" (II Corinthians 12:9). Paul responded faithfully to the humbling, but glorious truth, as we must…
"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."
(I Corinthians 15:10)
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