“Works of Your Hands”
1 It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
Psalm 92:1-4, ESV
to sing praises to your name, O Most High;
2 to declare your steadfast love in the morning,
and your faithfulness by night,
3 to the music of the lute and the harp,
to the melody of the lyre.
4 For you, O Lord, have made me glad by your work;
at the works of your hands I sing for joy
On one cold snowy winter evening in 2010, as I found myself in the ministry line receiving prayer at a worship service, something very unexpected happened to me. With my eyes closed as one of the ministers was praying over me, I began to see in my mind what must have been a memory filed away and suppressed a long time ago.
I grew up in the southeast, and my dad would sometimes take me outside to help him work in the yard when I was a young boy. I saw myself standing on the concrete walkway leading to our front door with a little plastic rake my dad gave me to work on the ground raking up pine needles while he went up onto the roof. I must have been about 4 years old or so, but I decided that I was going to climb the ladder and get up there. I got up to the roof, and called out to my dad, hoping he’d be so proud that I made it up there to help. Of course, like most any dad would in that situation, he yelled at me in a panic to sit down. He must’ve said something like “Sit down, you’re gonna fall off the roof and kill yourself!”. I remembered sitting down and crying, saying “Daddy, I just wanted to help you…” (whether out loud or to myself I don’t know).
This memory hit me seemingly out of nowhere, and I felt the pain in my heart of that little boy sitting on the roof crying. Then I heard the voice of the Spirit of God in my head saying, “Your earthly father was angry because he wasn’t strong enough to keep you safe, but you can come up with me where I am and do the work that I am doing, because I am strong enough to keep you.“, and then I totally lost it and began to weep before the Lord that night. It was a time of healing, and He showed me that I’d been holding back in my life in timidity and fear. But no more.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:10, ESV
God formed and fashioned you in His image with His own hands, and He gave your hands to do great works that He had in mind since before the foundation of the world. Jesus even said that those who believe in Him would do the same works that He did, and even greater because he was going to the Father (John 14:12). Jesus did some amazing works during His earthly ministry, so what does that mean for us? We might think, “Well maybe someone else, but not me”. Moses gave God every excuse and objection he could muster of why he wasn’t the right man for the job (Ex. 4:1-13), yet God took this timid 80+ year old guy with a fear of public speaking and used him to deliver a whole entire nation of oppressed people out of slavery from the leader of the world superpower at that time, foreshadowing what Christ would ultimately do in delivering all peoples from the slavery of sin.
What amazing work is God calling you to set your hands to? Spend time in prayer asking Him today. Surrender your doubts and fears to Him. He made you; He knows what you’re capable of. He’s strong enough to keep you.
Song for today:
Prayer for today:
Father, thank you for designing me and making me capable of amazing things through Your grace and power. I confess that I often have small faith regarding what You can and will do in and through me, but “I believe, help my unbelief!”. In my weakness You show Yourself strong. Please reveal to me the greater works that Jesus talked about, and the things that were in Your heart for me before the world was made. Help me humbly do the work you’re doing. These hands are Yours.