God's Masterpiece

• What Is God’s Masterpiece?  Is this revealed in Scripture?

Ephesians 2:8-10 (NLT)  God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. ¹⁰ For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
So you are God’s Masterpiece.  He has amazing things planned for us to do!  We’ll come back to this later.

• How far does grace go?  God saved you by his grace- we didn’t deserve it then nor do we deserve it now as it continually flows into our lives. Occasionally we reach a goal or reach completion of a long sought after accomplishment, how much of that accomplishment is due to us and how much is the blessing of God.  I recently was mediating on this.  I was giving thanks and praise to God for the strength to do some labor-intensive work. 

• Journal:  The strength you feel in your body is My provision.  Never take this for granted.  You are able to be motivated to exercise and eat properly by My grace.  You are able to exercise and work at physical things because I give you strength. 

I will come back to what else the Lord said to me, later.  I hadn’t really thought deeply about this in some time.  Have you had an accident or been hurt in the past?  Last winter, I stepped out of my truck to go to the mailbox on that thick ice we received.  Before I knew what had happened, I had fallen on my left shoulder and searing pain shot through my whole body.  It took my breath away it hurt so badly.  I managed to get up and get home.  Fortunately nothing was broken but I had to wear it in a sling for a couple days.  I was amazed at how many of the things you do affect the shoulder.  I couldn’t write, type, lift things and I couldn’t exercise.  It was a couple weeks before I could even do any exercise to my lower body because of that injury.  It was sobering.  I began to realize how much God’s provision or grace and healing mean to me.  It is one thing to be unmotivated to eat properly and take care of our body through exercise and quite another to be unable to do so because of sickness or an accident. In a new way I was thankful for the grace and blessings of God I have enjoyed all my life.    

Journal:  You are free of disease because of My power working in you keeping you and sustaining you. 

Let’s think a moment, what aspect of our life is not dependent on the grace and provision of God?  How long can you hold your breath?  Breathing is a gift of God.  How long does someone live once the heart stops beating?  It only takes minutes.  How long does one live?  I notice the obituaries in the newspaper; it is eye-opening how many people die that are younger than me at my current age.  Since we know that we live on average 76 years as a man & 78 as a woman, in Madison County, why would anyone fail to recognize the importance of the grace of God and refuse to invest in a relationship with the One who provides life and breath?  That is worth pondering, would you agree?

• Journal:  When you have a difficulty, simply rely on My Word and My goodness to heal you and restore you.  These are all provisions of My hand and flow out of My love.

1. Our Body’s Healing Ability:  God made our bodies with the incredible ability to heal itself of many things.  I punctured a hole in my thumb a few days ago.  My body just went to work restoring the wound.  Even the heart at times reroutes the blood flow when there is a blockage.  My shoulder was restored by God’s healing work.

Everyday Inspired Choices By Susan Banner.  …Then Mom landed in the hospital with severe complications of diabetes, and I thought everything I was frantically juggling would come crashing down around me. Still, when I met with the specialist who was treating my mother, I didn’t expect him to ask about my health.

“I’m here about my mom,” I said.

“You are your mother’s primary caregiver,” the doctor said. “She needs you to be in good shape to help her.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted.

“Really?” he asked pointedly.

All right, it was obvious I was a good 40 pounds overweight. Grudgingly, I admitted my diet wasn’t healthy, I didn’t exercise and I wasn’t sleeping well.

“Your mother’s problems are all related to her diabetes. With your poor lifestyle habits, you’re headed down the same path.” His bluntness caught me off guard. “But it’s not too late to adopt a healthy lifestyle,” he said. “It’s about the choices you make every day.”

The doctor’s words nagged at me long after I’d left his office. But you know how sometimes you need more than one nudge from God to make a change? That’s how I was...

By summer Mom was recovering slowly but steadily, and I finally had time to focus on myself. One evening I was driving home from work when a discussion on the radio caught my attention: A woman who had diabetes described the shifts she’d made in her day-to-day lifestyle. She was able to stop taking insulin. Others chimed in with similar stories about healthier everyday choices. Exactly what my mother’s doctor had told me...

I did some research online before dinner. There was plenty of medical evidence to back up what I’d heard on the radio. Exercise and a proper diet could help control my blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, and weight—all of which would lower my risk for diabetes. Okay, Lord, I hear you. But I’m really going to need your help to follow through. Big time.

Every morning I got up at 4:00 a.m. and walked the recommended 10,000 steps accompanied by my most supportive cheerleaders, my two golden retrievers…

My healthier choices made a big difference. Within seven months I lost those 40 extra pounds and went down two dress sizes. More crucially, my stress level dropped and I slept like a rock. My mom’s condition stabilized, which definitely helped.

One morning while I was out walking, a woman stopped her car to say, “I see you exercise every day. You’ve inspired me.” That meant a lot. But not as much as the admiring looks Larry [her husband] was giving me. Occasionally I’d catch him eating a salad or munching on carrot sticks. But I didn’t push him. After all, hadn’t it taken me a few nudges to make needed changes?

It took a few years, but one day Larry told me, “What you’ve done is amazing. You’re not just healthier, Susan, you’re happier.” He paused, then went on, “There’s this coronary health seminar I heard about…will you go with me?”

I had to thank God for going above and beyond what I’d asked![1]
 

2. God’s Supernatural Healing:  These two ways of healing are both God’s grace.  The Scripture says, “By His stripes you were healed.”  Jesus paid for your salvation and your healing by grace, His underserved, unmerited favor.  Jesus healed everyone He prayed for.  We have to expect more and contend for healings and miracles.  I appreciate so much the Bethel Church, they are contending for miracles.  They are learning and testifying of what God is teaching them.  When Les Coombs was here he told of a 35 year old woman with debilitating neuropathy.  She came to their healing rooms and got prayer and God healer her.  She got her life back. 

A young woman, Elizabeth, on the Bethel Team last weekend shared how God increased her faith to believe Him for more.  Her mother died of cancer tumors yet in the healing room she found herself praying over Skype on the internet for a woman with many tumors in her chest.  Ten tumors disappeared as she prayed.  Our God loves to heal, let’s ask Him for miracles and then let’s tell about what He has done.

• Journal:  Testify of these things and praise Me at all times.  Many know a different life and have given up on a quality of life in the years ahead.  They have just accepted that they will get worse and worse and then die.  They feel there is nothing they can do.  It is not true but they have perceived it to be true.  Model a different life and stay active and exercise your body regularly, this will bless you and cause things to be better.

1. Testimony:  Revelation 19:10 NKJ And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant, and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”  When we testify of what Jesus has done, it becomes prophecy.  I have been taught that in the definition of the word testimony there is the sense of “do it again.”  Romans 10:17 (NKJV) So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.  Prophecy is also the “rhema-word” of God just as “rhema” is translated “word” in the Greek in this passage.  When we hear God’s rhema-word, faith arises.  As we receive what God (who is not a respecter of persons) did for another, we too can receive the same thing.  This is another good reason to know that Rev. 12:11 is true.  Revelation 12:11 (NKJV) And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.  We overcome our adversary by the word of our testimony.  We help each other by telling the great things God is doing. 

• We are God’s Masterpiece: 
• Video Clip: God’s Masterpiece

Ephesians 2: 10 (NLT)  For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.

1. Masterpiece: Definition--a work done with extraordinary skill; especially : a supreme intellectual or artistic achievement.[2]

2. Masterpiece Mystery:  Colossians 1:27 To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.  We are the ones through which God has chosen to reveal His glory.  We find purpose in Him, meaning in life is in finding Him, the “Pearl of
   Great Price.”  God has a great plan He is working in you to bring glory to Him through you!  He has chosen to work through us to do “good works” as the NKJV says in this passage.  The “greater works” He has prophesied in Scripture will be done through us.  John 14:12 “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father. 

Perhaps you have difficulty seeing yourself “doing the things He planned long ago.”  Begin by asking Him to use you.  Make yourself available to Him to use you.  Begin to speak what He has said in His Word about these things.  What we believe in our heart and speak with our mouth come to pass.

3. Confessions: 

1. I Am Your Masterpiece! (Eph 2:10)
2. I Can Do all things Through Christ who strengthens me! (Phil 4:13)
3. I am doing the things He planned long ago! (Eph 2:10)
4. I am participating in the “Greater Works” Jesus said I would do! (John 14:12)
5. When I cry out to You, then my enemies will turn back; this I know, because God is for me. (Psa. 56:9)
6. I have not received a spirit of fear but of power, love and a sound mind! 1 Tim 1:7