Last Monday I woke up thinking, “It doesn’t even feel like I slept. I have no idea how I’m going to get through this day. I’m tired and I’m not even out of bed yet.”
Ever have a day like that?
Then, suddenly, I thought of 2 Cor. 9:8:
God is able to make all grace abound to you so that in all things, at all times, you may abound in every good work.
I knew I’d need abounding grace that way, that day.
Since the Lord speaks most clearly through Scripture “according to the need of the moment” and He was so evidently speaking to me, I responded and said,
“Lord, I am admitting right out of the gate that I don’t have what it takes to do the work You have given me to do today. But Since You gave it to me to do, and You promised to give me the grace I needed to get the good work done, in spite of my feelings or the feedback my body is giving me right now, I trust You to go ahead of me and make a way for me. Give me the strength during the day just when I need it. I totally believe You’ll do this. And at the end of the day I’ll look back at how it all went and see the little places where You just showed up… that suddenly I found that I was doing okay, and I didn’t get stuck in my feelings or think I couldn’t go forward.”
And so I got with it.
I didn’t question whether He’d fulfill that promise that day. It was His verse, not mine, and I didn’t go fishing for it. He delivered. He said that He was able to make all grace abound for that day, that I’d have all that I needed, so I could abound in every good work.
Abounding grace for abounding work. They’re proportionate, those two. Equal measures of both, and how much is that? Abounding. That’s a lot of grace, but it also speaks of a lot of work. What does the work look like? Normal work.
So how does the everyday grace play out?
God breaks into normal. And He loves it. We live in normal and He wants to live not just in us, but with us, doing normal things. It’s the stuff of fellowship, that “We will live with you” kind of way that He mentioned in Revelation 3:20,
“if anyone hears My voice, I will come in and sup with him and he with Me.”
He expresses this beautiful, close, familiar, happy interaction between Himself and me, and that changes every normal experience into something much more than ordinary.
That’s because God turns the everyday things, the small things, into Divine things. Purposeful things.
And why not? Jesus did normal things when He was physically here like
- making breakfast,
- talking to regular people,
- coming up with amazing lunches using what was on-hand without going to the store,
- picking up little kids and talking to them,
- and just walking around having thought-provoking conversations.
But just think: He who was with the Father at the Creation of the world talked about Divine truths using examples like eggs, rocks, birds, flowers, being out of bread when company shows up, running out of oil… normal stuff.
He was comfortable with normal. He was raised in a carpenter’s home and could find his way around the shop. He was used to sawdusts and having it get into His sandals. He knew how to plane wood, sand, and hammer. Normal stuff.
I think we miss that part of Him. And when we do, we miss a part of fellowship that doesn’t come any other way. We think of Him in light of the Big Picture. Jesus was mindful of it all the time, but His divine purpose played out in the middle of His everyday life in a thousand little ways.
That’s still what He wants to do: live His life out through me in a thousand little ways.
He has designated me to be the body on-site in my sphere of influence that He can use for His good purposes, with a heart that is yielded and ears that are listening.
So the human application of His Divine strength looks like emptying the dishwasher, picking up socks, and returning phone calls. It’s not just for Billy Graham-sized tasks; His abounding grace works in my to-do list.
This is what it means to be co-laborers with God: doing everything to the glory of God, by the grace of God.
My main objective: God's glory
Now my main objective in life is not my own happiness or preferences, nor is it even the good of others, but the “glory of God”, which is doing whatever He’s given me to do with a grace that demonstrates His Personality to the world. It means that I should, in dependence on Him, conduct myself as His representative. I need to do things the way He’d do those same things if He was here walking around in my house.
We miss that kind of fellowship with the Lord when we only see Him in the big picture, the grand redemption plan that God put in place at the foundation of the world. We miss the joy of the egg stories. And so we miss Him.
If we really understood that the Holy Spirit is God, and that He is vibrantly living in us, we would see normal stuff differently. The truth is, that as we abide in Him and He with us, the things that are getting done are half divine, God is doing His part and us doing ours; it’s God with us doing whatever is in front of us. What a partnership! (I Thessalonians 5:24)
This changed me.
Now when I wake up, I don’t just think about what I have to do that day, about laundry or errands, or office work, I think that I get to do those things alongside my Lord. That connects me with Him in a way that wouldn’t happen if I only thought about Him in terms of His Divine plan for mankind. It also reminds me that one day I’ll get to spend forever with Him in His beautiful house. Praise God for His abiding Holy Spirit!
Bless the Lord.
Living differently,
Cathy