His Work of Art
7-9-04

Ever wake up and wonder if you're where God wants you? Ever wonder if you're really following God's plan for your life? If so, don't worry: this ought to be a normal question for every believer in Jesus Christ. We should want to follow His plan and the only way to know is to ask.

Most important, it's God's desire that we trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of sin; "He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). God wants us all to repent, turn to Jesus and receive His gift of Salvation - stepping from eternal death to eternal life!

But many people receive His gift (or think they receive His gift) and then continue life with no real change, no new direction. This should not be! When we receive God's gift of Salvation, something wonderful occurs; "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17). When we place our life in His hands, He wipes away the ugliness of our sin and begins to grow and mature us into the likeness of His Son (Romans 8:29). This is His plan!

Ephesians 2:10
"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

We are God's workmanship. When we become a new creation in Christ, we become God's... the Greek word for workmanship is "poiema" - it's where we get the word poem... we become God's poem. And though it might be difficult to think of our life as a poem, the idea is that God is creating something beautiful.

It might be easier to think of God as the Master Painter. When we give Him our life, we hand Him our old canvas - and it looks really bad! But by grace He wipes the canvas clean and begins to paint, with Jesus as His model. Every stroke of His brush is to make our canvas look more and more like Christ.

Are we following God's plan? Ask this: Is the likeness of Christ beginning to form or is my canvas still filled with ugliness and confusion? Am I allowing Him to paint or am I trying to take the brush at every opportunity? He really is the Master Painter and He really does know what He's doing. If we will allow Him to finish His work, I'm certain we will like the end result!! Let's give Him our canvas and allow Him to paint. Let's follow His plan and allow our life to become His work of art.

Have A Great Day!