Tag Archives: walk in the works prepared beforehand

Christian Life, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

Four rules for walking in the works God has prepared for us.

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Ephesians 2:10 says that we are “God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for Works prepared beforehand, we might walk in them.“ God’s word doesn’t say that we should do the works or complete them or carry them out, or any such similar term: he says that we should walk in them. So what does that mean? How do we walk in what God is prepared?

God has given us parameters for walking. We are to walk by faith and not by sight, we are to walk in Love, and we are to walk in the Spirit. There are other specifics too, like walking in newness of life,  walking circumspectly, and more; but these three enough to go on with. If we are to be walking in God‘s works – His works and not our own – we need to pay attention to them.

Rule One: “Walk by faith and not by sight.” ( 2 Cor:7)
To walk in God‘s works, we need to walk by faith. Among all the other things that can be said about what it is to walk by faith, one top level definitive is that it is contrary to walking by sight. We know this because scripture says so. A first requirement for any of God‘s works is that we cannot see everything that we need in order to carry it out, but that we trust God to provide it. If He has prepared the works beforehand, He has also prepared the resources. We cannot see them because we’re walking by faith, but we trust him to provide. We don’t wait to see his provision before we take a step: we start walking beforehand, knowing that He is El Shaddai, and will provide. Rule one stands alongside rule two:

Rule Two: “So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’ “ (Luke 17:10)

When the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith, he gave them the model of the unprofitable Servant. The walk of faith has to be a walk of obedience: we do what we are told to do, no more, no less. So what has He told us to do? I think  there are two levels of command. There are scriptural commands which are for everyone, and there are specific directives which are unique to each of us. Jesus told us to love God with all our being, and to love our neighbour as ourselves. His “new commandment” was that we love one another. Without love, we are nothing (1 Cor 13:2), and as the whole of 1 Corinthians 13 makes clear, our works are worthless.

I think we find another “level 1” directive in Micah 6:8, where we find these famous words:  “And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?” If we are walking humbly before our God we are more likely to hear the specific directives at level two – whether we are Heidi Baker being told to go to Mozambique, or A N Other being told to give $100 into a specific ministry, or to pray for someone’s healing in the street. If we are looking for power encounters and adventures of faith without paying attention to level one, the chances are that we will be operating out of personal ambition and spiritual pride and not humility and love, and it’s unlikely that the Lord is going to give us any of the John 14:12 “greater things“  to do. But when our hearts are set on obeying the Lord at level one, “you will hear a voice behind you saying this is the way; walk in it” (Isaiah 30:21), and that word will be confirmed in such a way that we will not doubt the instruction. This leads us to rule three:

Rule Three: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  (John 13:34-35)

Rule three is to walk in love. Not only is nothing we do of any value if we don’t walk in love, but Jesus tells us that we will glorify Him if we do – because all will know that we are His disciples. The love Jesus is talking about is His sacrificial “agape” love. Somebody I know well in our church has been given a vision for a project in Liberia, where there is 85% unemployment. This project, when completed, will provide income and employment and bring a little bit of God‘s kingdom to earth. Her dream is to do something that will lift a community out of poverty, and she thinks about it night and day. She said once that she wasn’t sure if it was from the Lord. I said I’m sure it is. Why? Because, apart from other confirmations she has received, she gets absolutely nothing out of it for herself, yet is prepared to invest a significant amount of time and money into the work. It is an expression of agape love with no self interest. Where does God’s Love point us? Because that is where His works will be prepared.

Rule four: “Pray always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit“ (Eph 6:18)
Faith and agape  Love are only ours by the Spirit: “The flesh profits nothing.” (John 6:63)  Faith is “the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast,” (Eph 2:9) and God’s love is “poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.“ (Romans 5:5) Faith and Love are two of the only three things that “remain“ when all else has passed away (1 Corinthians 13:13) Spiritual projects are carried forward by spiritual prayer. Paul asks the Ephesians to be “praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints— Paul’s work as a messenger of Christ was sustained by the prayers of the body of Christ. If Paul needed prayer support to walk in the walks prepared for him, then so do we, and we need to be upholding others with our own prayers.

So to fulfil the purposes that we were created for in Christ Jesus, we receive our instructions from the Lord, and we trust Him to provide us with what we need to carry them out. We are 100% motivated by the blessing that we are expecting others to receive from the work, and we ensure that every step is covered and guided by Spirit-led prayer. If we take our steps according to these principles, I think we will see the works that God has prepared starting to take shape in front of us as we walk.

Christian Life, Discipleship and witness, Living by Faith, Walking in the Spirit

The Key of David

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I was recently at the UK National exhibition Centre (the NEC) where our company was exhibiting and I was a speaker at an event. It’s a while since I have set up our exhibitions stand at a show, but the people I usually delegate weren’t able to do this one, so the lot fell to me, and because I have had other priorities over the last couple of weeks – and because I tend to leave things till the last minute anyway – my preparations were minimal, and I arrived at the exhibitor traffic control entrance for the exhibition hall expecting the procedure to be the same as last time we were there. It wasn’t.

“Have you got a QR code for me, mate?”

“QR code? Sorry, what QR code?” Apparently I should have registered on the (new) traffic control website to be given allocated a timeslot for setting up. I would have been given two hours. There had been road works and a diversion just before the NEC where it had seemed like every access to the centre was closed, and I had gone badly astray,  and with other (more self-imposed) delays I was already over an hour behind my hope-for schedule. I was on my own, and I had a van full of stuff to unload to build my stand and set up my display. This was not what I needed.

 However the gate attendant was very friendly and helpful, and said, “Don’t worry mate. You can do it now.“

So I logged onto the site on my mobile phone, filled in my details, (hassle, hassle!) and pressed register. Nothing. I pressed register again. Still nothing. I could not register on the site. No matter how many times I pressed the “register“ button, the site failed to respond. I called the attendant over. “I can’t log on!“ I shouted through the van window. I had asked the Lord for help with setting up – angels, I was thinking – as it’s a good few years since I have set up a big exhibition on my own, and at this moment I did not see the help that had just come my way.

The attendant grinned. “Ah! Site crash!“ he said. “Don’t worry mate – hold on a minute.“ He went back to his little hut, and came back with a printed form, which he started scribbling on. “ Here you are!” he said. “You’re Dave today! Put this on your dashboard. That will keep security happy.”


He gave me the form he had filled in, and “Dave” was written in the space where my name should have been. Why he didn’t ask my name to fill in I wlll never know, but what I did know straight away was that I am a brother of Jesus, and Jesus was the Son of David. I was very happy for Dave – David – to be my name. Revelation 3: 7 says “And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, ‘These things says He who is holy, He who is true,”He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens,” and right now this was my key of David, and indeed it opened the way into the exhibition hall for me.

But that isn’t the whole story, and of itself would hardly be a tale worth telling. What is worth telling though is that because the traffic control website crashed, I wasn’t allocated a time slot on the system. It took me four hours to set up my stand. A heavenly hand had frozen the system for me because God knew how long I would need, and what the key of David opened for me no-one could shut…

But it doesn’t end there. I left the hall at 7.30 – the last man standing, in fact – and headed for where I thought the hotel was. I found a multi-story car park and a brightly-lit complex called Resort World, but nothing that said The Genting Hotel. I drove round some cones in the road to ask another gate attendant if he could help me (The NEC is full of cones and gate attendants), but all he did was shout at me for driving round the cones and point me to the multi-story car park, where the entrance to the one-way system yawned like the gates of hell I had two suitcases – mine and Anne’s, my laptop, and another large shoulder bag, and I had visions of having to park the car and still go looking for the hotel, carrying all that luggage.

Actually the Genting Hotel is inside Resort World, but I didn’t know this until I had gone to the very top of the multi-story, parked the car, and saw the sign by the entrance to the lift.

When I came out of the lift at the bottom I was in a world of loud music and bright lights: the shopping arcade and the bars and restaurants of Resort World, but I saw the entrance to the hotel off through an archway. So by his time I had got lost in the diversion, been unable to find the hotel – oh yes: I hadn’t been able to find the exhibition hall loading bay  either – had an unwelcoming encounter with a gate attendant, and now found myself in a world of noise and bright lights and shiny people heading for their night out, when all I wanted was rest,  dinner, and my bed. I was supposed to have been at a speaker’s welcome dinner at six o’clock, so that ship had truly sailed. I felt like an alien in Babylon.

However when I finally got to my hotel room it was delightful, and I did manage to find a restaurant where there was no loud music and I could eat a nice meal in pleasant surroundings, and when I went back to the comfort of my room and reflected on the evening I saw a glimpse of the story that the Holy Spirit was writing…

Hebrews 12:23 says that we have “come to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven.” Because I am registered in heaven there was no need for me to register for my limited timeslot, because my Father was going to supply all my need (4 hours) according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus, not just half of it. (Phil 4:19) By Christ Jesus He gave  me the Key of David which opened a door that none could shut. I felt like an alien in Resort World because I am one: I am not of the world, even though I am in it.  And in that world there is going to be opposition – traffic diversions, confusing road signs or lack of them, unfriendly officials, all seeming to conspire against me fulfilling the purpose I was there to accomplish.  But Jesus has overcome the world, and in the midst of that alien environment He didn’t just give me a few scraps that would keep me going, but He looked after me as a child that He loves, and whom he had sent into that place for a purpose.

What was my purpose at the event, as a speaker and an exhibitor? My talk was well-received, and the exhibition of our products was a success commercially. But none of that was really the purpose of my mission: they were just aspects of the marketplace where the Son of David was walking with His key on His shoulder, ministering His truth and love. Because in the course of the social events of the following evening He opened opportunities for me to speak of Him to four different people: a lapsed Baptist, a liberal vicar, and two agnostic academics.

Whatever we are doing, our purpose in the world is to reveal Him through it. Whatever opposition we receive, all things will work together for good because we love the Lord and are called according to this,  His purpose. Because we are his beloved children, registered in Heaven, He will meet our need according to His riches in Christ Jesus and not our poverty; because we are His masterpiece walking in the works prepared beforehand for us in this crumbling world, and because we are His light shining like stars in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, He will make a way where there is no way. (Rom 8:28, Heb 12:23, Phil 4:19, Eph 2:10,  Phil 2:15,  Isaiah 43,  2 Cor 3:3)

We are the epistle of Christ: what is the Holy Spirit writing through you today?