In His Presence: Daily Devotionals

SATURDAY, 10 AUGUST 2024

TEXT: Ephesians 2:1-10

1. It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin.

2. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience.

3. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us.

4. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love,

5. he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us!

6. Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.

7. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.

8. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish!

9. We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing!

10. No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.

(The Message Version Holy Bible)

TOPIC: CREATED FOR GOOD WORKS

God’s love is manifested in all areas of human existence. No wonder, He follows us even in our sinful nature to transform us so that we can live for Him.

Paul informed the Ephesian believers of their former ways of life and how God showed them mercy by delivering them from darkness into His glorious light.

He did that to show the incomparable riches of His grace, as expressed in Christ, and turn them into instruments originally created for His work.

Our salvation is an act of God’s grace, which is the product of the faith we have in Him. We did not work for it but we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works which He had prepared in advance for us to do.

Get involved in the good works that you are called to do and you will be fulfilling God’s purpose for your life.

QUESTION: According to today’s passage, what is God’s purpose for your life?

PRAYER: Help me, dear Lord, to fulfil Your purpose for my creation, no matter where I find myself, in Jesus name. Amen.