September 28

God prepares our work

“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained (prepared) that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

When the Lord says to us, “Prepare thy work,” we have the comfort of recollecting that He has prepared our works for us (Eph. 2:10, marg.). Why not take the comfort of this as to any untried work which we may be “called unto”? That sphere did not make itself, neither did man form it into just what it is at his own will. It was God Who prepared it for the worker whom He intended for it, and if there is sufficient evidence that you are called to it, then you may rest assured that He “prepared” it and “ordained” it for you. Do not let us dwell only on our side of the preparation. Let us recollect that He Who prepares the workers prepares the works too, and prepares them for us to walk in, i.e., just to go on step by step; for that is “walking.”


Then, for our own side, let us recollect, “Thou also hast wrought all our works in us,” or, as the very striking margin has it, “for us.” So we see that He has wrought in us, and for us, every bit of work we have ever succeeded in doing as yet; therefore to Him be all the glory! And no less evidently, it will be He Himself Who will work in us and for us every single bit that we shall yet do; therefore in Him be all our trust! And yet (oh, wonderful condescension!), though it is all His own doing from beginning to end, “your work shall be rewarded.” “Every man” (just think, every one of us poor workers!) “shall receive his own reward,” not a general premium all round. And this, too, by the hand of our Mediator, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance, for ye serve the “Lord Christ.”
May we, all through the year, be so many individual illustrations of St. Paul’s sevenfold desire for his converts as to “every good work.”
May we—
1. Be “prepared unto every good work.”
2. “Be ready to every good work.”
3. Be “throughly furnished unto all good works.”
4. “Abound in every good work.”
5. “Being fruitful in every good work.”
6. Be stablished “in every good word and work.”
7. Be made “perfect in every good work.”
—Frances Ridley Havergal.

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