A Piece of Work - (Who am I Becoming)
1. We are God’s ‘Piece of Work’ – Created by God, Individually unique,
? Your hands have made me and fashioned me. (Job 10:8)
? For you formed my inward parts; You knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them. (Psalm 139:13,14,16)
? God’s plan from the beginning of time was that you (each of us) would be : Conformed (fashioned like) to the image (likeness) of His Son, ~ Romans 8:29 NKJV
? Becoming more and more like Jesus.
2. God our Father made us and shapes us as a potter does clay
? Now, O LORD, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our Potter; And all we are the work of Your hand. ~ Isaiah 64:8
o He alone has the design, the plan, the blueprint – and the power to shape the clay according to His plan.
o Know the Potter ? God is love (1John 4:16) ? We can trust in His love.
o For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)
o Knowing that God loves you and trusting Him, can release you from fear, and free you to willingly welcome His shaping in your life.
? We are the Clay – Man was originally created by the shaping hand of God (Genesis 2:7),
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.
(to mold into a form; especially as a potter)
o God continues to have the capacity to shape us. – We are a ‘piece of work.’
o Take the clay out of the Potter’s hands, and it becomes purposeless and useless.
o The only way to discover God’s unique design for your life is to yield to the shaping hands of the Potter.
o The clay of a person’s life yielded wholly to the loving hands of the Master Potter, finds his life being shaped and made into something beautiful and full of use to God and man.
? For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. (Eph 2:10)
o We can be shaped ‘on purpose’ and ‘for purpose.’
3. God’s Ongoing Commitment
? And I am sure that God, who began the good work within you, will continue His work until it is finally finished on that day when Christ Jesus comes back again. (Phil 1:6) (NIV)
o Confident: Convinced, assured, certain…
o God has begun good work in your life… and He will continue that work!
? Don’t give up… God won’t
o He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it. (1Thes 5:24)
o …for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that Day. (2Tim 1:12)
As God shapes us, we are directed to shape others: Our children : Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it. ~ Proverbs 22:6
