Perfect Works

We are God’s children and often see our relationship with Him as a Father to His small children.  God is so much greater than we are that it would be difficult to see ourselves as anyone more than a toddler in comparison.  But God does not compare our lives to His; He enables us to live as He does.

Though we want to have the child-like trust to receive God’s kingdom (Mk 10:15), He does not want us to remain as a child.  One area this becomes evident in is our works.  When we offer God and our fellow believer works that are incomplete, often the little that we have done is expected to cancel out the lot that is left to do.  This is what a child would expect.  Many parents will nod their heads in acceptance at the intentions of a small child’s heart and not expect perfection.  However, with adulthood our works are to take on the polish of being finished and done well.

God accepts our attempts, as imperfect as they are, for a while.  But He also expects maturity eventually to cloak us. If our imperfect and incomplete works were satisfactory, he would not have told the Sardinians to “Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of My God.” (Rev 3:2b).

It is because God has put great potential in us that He sends challenges into our lives to help us grow beyond mediocre.  He has given us great power in the Holy Spirit, and we are invited to ask Him for His wisdom.  For that reason, we misuse the Holy Spirit if we settle for a relationship that does not outgrow childhood expectations.

There are many reasons that a Christian will not perfect His works, but the most common is having an unwillingness to lay down one’s will.  This unwillingness will often find its justification in a person who is weak, or infirmed. However, infirmity and weakness are brought into our lives in order that God might manifest His great strength in us (2 Cor 12:9).

I used to admire Paul for saying “when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:10b).  Then one day I had a flu that I just didn’t seem to recover from.  For months I grew weaker and could barely eat.  When I was at the very bottom of my strength the Lord asked Dave and I to host a family with 9 children in our home.  The mother had just born her youngest child and they were temporarily without a place to live.  In my mind I never considered that I would be doing things for their family because our home was a fully functioning house upstairs where Dave and I lived, and fully functioning downstairs where the family lived.  However, this is not how God saw the situation.

Soon I took over cooking dinner, and shopping.  Every day the Lord would ask me to serve the family, and He was faithful to supply the grace to do so.  The week that they packed to move I found the Lord asking me each day to take some of their children to the beach.  He supplied the strength, and we would stop off for an ice cream cone on the way home.  Through their six week stay I got very acquainted with the greatness of God’s grace, and found that being stretched beyond my physical limits was a great opportunity to grow into an adult child of God.  He had brought the opportunity to serve Him into one of His weakest servants, and yet His grace brought the strength because I was willing.

I don’t always lay my will down so perfectly to the Lord.  At times I feel the burden of what He asks is too heavy.  Then I hear “You can be angry, or you can ask for grace.”  The anger comes when I keep my own will.  The grace comes, and brings strengthen and power with it, when I lay down my will for God’s. Then the work I do becomes perfected under God’s watchful gaze.  Those same eyes that did not find the Sardinians’ work perfect can watch over our works until they are.

On this earth we will work for the Lord until that day we die.  Even in our prayers we labor.  Let us pass the time on this earth as ones becoming mature, passing from childhood to the sons and daughters of God who will rule and reign with Him.  Though the works He calls us to may not be our choice, nor come at a convenient time, His plan is to enable us to do them well.  And for those who want to do works of healing, and raise the dead, become acquainted with His power in every work appointed.  Amen.