Good Works

Every Tuesday, we get our verse of the week to meditate and memorize.  I want to encourage you to keep trying to focus on just one verse for the week.  If you stay determined, the Word will take root in your heart.  If you have failed with some of the previous verses, don’t get discouraged and quit, but continue to press on.  This spiritual discipline is worth pressing through our failure!  So free yourself of guilt and let’s go! 

 Good Works

By Shirley Mitchell

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

We are God’s workmanship, His handiwork.  Creator God made us from the dust of the earth with His hands.  He didn’t just speak man into being but touched him with His hands.  We are the only creation that God got personally involved and personally touched.  We are also the only creation made in the image of God.  Then, He breathed life into Adam and put His breath in Adam’s nostrils.  However, Adam sinned and death came into the world and to man.  Through Jesus Christ, we have been born again and get to live with God forever and ever.

God didn’t save us and then take us to heaven.  He has more planned for believers than that.  He prepared good works for us to do.  Yes, we are saved by grace and not by works.  The Scripture right before this tells us that, but God still has good works for us.  You and I have things that only we can do.  God prepared them for us before we were even born, before the beginning of time.

God isn’t hiding them like a cruel big brother may hide all the Easter eggs in difficult spots and ruin the Easter egg hunt for the little kids who can’t find them in his extra tricky hiding places.  No!  God won’t plan the good works and then not lead us to get them.  He will show us the way.  If we follow Him with all our hearts, we can be assured that we will complete the good works He has planned for us.  Carry this verse with you wherever you go this week – be it written on an index card, recorded on your smartphone, or imprinted in your heart.  Study it, pulverize it, and memorize it!

Memorization Reminders:

Please join me in memorizing these verses and implanting God’s thoughts into our minds.  I’m expecting for God to radically change our lives if we do this.  Redeem your time to make room for memorizing God’s Word.  Take this verse with you wherever you go.  Meditate on it, and pulverize it.

We are blessed to live in a time where we can have the Bible at our fingertips even through the internet or an actual Bible in our hands.  Yet, this blessing can become a curse if we do not treat the Bible with such honor to savor every word of it as those through the centuries who have longed to have His Word so much. They had to memorize every Scripture they had ever been given because their own copy of the Scripture was not possible.

Most of us probably don’t memorize Scripture because we think that we do not have the time.  However, our minds have a lot of wasted space that can be given to God.  We have to redeem the time.  For women, we can use the time while putting on our make-up or blow drying our hair.  For men, use the time while shaving.  For both genders, we can use the time while we shower, stop at red lights, do the laundry, wash the dishes, and mow the lawn.  Let’s face it:  our minds are thinking about something during this time.  Instead of being focused on our obsessions, worries, cares, to-do’s, and problems, give this time to God.

Take your verse(s) with you wherever you go.  You can type your verse out and put it on beautiful sheets of your choice.  You can write it out on index cards.  Many people prefer index cards spiral bound to keep them together.  For iphone users, I’m sure there is an app.  You can write it on your iphone notepad or record your voice speaking it and replay it throughout the day.

Now that we have the verse and we have found the time, let’s focus on the method.  We don’t just memorize it by saying it over and over; we meditate on it.  We spend time thinking about what each word means and what it doesn’t mean. 

Then one of my favorite techniques as taught by Waylon Moore is to pulverize the verse.  Say the verse over and over each time focusing on a different word in the verse to emphasize.  For example, say Ephesians 2:10 (today’s verse) aloud and say with more umph the underlined and bolded word:

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

“For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

 Ephesians 2:10

Repeat this process until each word in the verse has been emphasized.

After meditating and pulverizing the verse continuously for a week, the seed planted in our hearts will begin to germinate.  You and I will no longer be merely short-term memorizing, but the Word will dwell within us.  When God’s Word dwells within us, something miraculous happens.  Our minds are renewed and transformed into the mind of Christ.  We worry and fret less.  We are armed for the attacks of the enemy.  Our lips will be full of praise for our God.  My friend, I’m ready for that kind of transformation!