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“It is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Philippians 2:12-13).
God is at work in you, giving you the desire to do the things he loves (“to will”) and the power to carry them out (“to act”). You can know for sure that God is working in you because you want to love God, to walk with him and to know him better. You would never in a million years have those desires unless God had placed them inside you. You could not have even wanted to follow God in the first place unless he drew you (see John 6:65).
God’s grace covers absolutely everything in the Christian life, including working for God. Nothing depends on us gritting our teeth and “trying really hard” – the power to do what he has called us to do, and even the desire to do it, is just another gift from him.
Paul came to this conclusion in 1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am. And his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them – yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
We really are doing the work – at the end, God will say, “Well done, good and faithful servant”, and not, “Well done, good and faithful master” (Matthew 25:21)! But Paul was so conscious that it was God working through him that he had to say, “I worked ... yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
It is not that we are passive and don’t do anything (“his grace to me was not without effect”), and it is not that we are independent from God and can just do everything on our own (“apart from me you can do nothing” – John 15:5). But we work together. This is the way God has set things up so that we can have the joy of participating with him, and he can have the joy of a Father doing everything with his sons and daughters.
For reflection:
There is a huge difference between “working for God” and working because you know that God is already at work in and through you. This kind of work is so different it is actually called “rest”: “Anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:10). We rest from the heavy labour of trying to earn God’s favour by our works, and we also rest from depending on our own strength and energy to do what he has called us to do.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon
you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30)
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The Grace of God --
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