We Are God's Handiwork

What is the secret of holiness, peacefulness, and strength, but to have no will, separate from and prior to the will of God? To run the race God sets before us, to walk in the good works foreordained by divine wisdom and love. It is one thing to ask, “What good thing should I like to do for God?” Here, self is still choosing, and we please and serve after all ourselves.

But to ask, like Saul, beholding the divine Master,“Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” is the beginning of true separation to God.

If we run the race set before us, engaging in duties God-appointed and not self-chosen, and bestowing all our energies, and that cheerfully, on the God-appointed tasks and sorrows, then may we rest in full assurance that our strength shall never fail, that our fruit shall remain, that our life shall, though apparently fragmentary, be complete, that we shall reach the end, and be counted faithful in that day.

The believer has the Holy Spirit — and where the Holy Spirit dwells, He will not suffer a Christian to be idle, but stirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of all true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and to the exercise of charity to all mankind. — Martin Luther

Excerpted from His Victorious Indwelling: Daily Devotions for a Deeper Christian Life, edited by Nick Harrison (Zondervan). These 366 daily devotions bring together the best writings of such classic authors as John Calvin, Martin Luther, Watchman Nee, Charles Spurgeon, St. Augustine, and John Wesley, as well as contemporary writers such as Corrie ten Boom.

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