God @ Work

One of the most captivating, thrilling and moving quotes I have used in the current series on work at LBC is this one from Tim Keller.   I'll be honest and say it puts a lump in my throat every time I read it.  And it does that because it's true; profoundly true.   God wants to use us where we are, in whatever we are doing - everything can have dignity if we do it for Him.   

Farming takes the physical material of soil and seed and produces food.

Music takes the physics of sound and rearranges it into something beautiful and thrilling that brings meaning to life.

When we take fabric and make a piece of clothing,

when we push broom and clean room,

when we use technology to harness the forces of electricity,

when we take an uninformed, naive human mind and teach it a subject,

when we teach a couple how to resolve their relational disputes,

when we take simple materials and turn them into a poignant work of art –

we are continuing God’s work of forming filling and subduing.

Whenever we bring order out of chaos,

whenever we draw out creative potential,

whenever we collaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it

we are following God's pattern of creative cultural development.

Just as he subdued the earth in his work of creation so he calls us now to labour as his representatives in a continuation and extension of that work of subduing.

Keller, Every Good Endeavour

Grace Explained

I love this explanation of grace from Martyn Lloyd Jones.    

We are Christians entirely and solely as the result of the grace of God. 

Let us remind ourselves once more that ‘grace’ means unmerited, undeserved favour. It is an action which arises entirely from the gracious character of God. So the fundamental proposition is that salvation is something that comes to us entirely from God’s side. 

What is still more important is this, that it not only comes from God’s side, it comes to us in spite of ourselves—‘unmerited’ favour. In other words, it is not God’s response to anything in us. 

Now there are many people who seem to think that it is — that salvation is God’s response to something in us. But the word ‘grace’ excludes that. It is in spite of us. . . .

Salvation is not in any sense God’s response to anything in us. It is not something that we in any sense deserve or merit. The whole essence of the teaching at this point, and everywhere in all the New Testament, is that we have no sort or kind of right whatsoever to salvation, that the whole glory of salvation is, that though we deserved nothing but punishment and hell and banishment out of the sight of God to all eternity, yet God, of His own love and grace and wondrous mercy, has granted us this salvation. Now that is the entire meaning of this term ‘grace’. . . .

Creatures who were spiritually dead are now alive—how has it happened? Can a dead man raise himself? It is impossible. There is only one answer, ‘By grace ye are saved’. . . .

I must confess it passes my comprehension to understand how any Christian looking at himself or herself can say anything different. If when you get on your knees before God you do not realise that you are a ‘debtor to mercy alone’, I confess I do not understand you. There is something tragically defective, either in your sense of sin or in your realisation of the greatness of God’s love.

Lloyd-Jones, D. M, God’s Way of Reconciliation—An Exposition of Ephesians,1972, p. 130.