A Work of Art
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:8-10 ESV)
Many of us fear that we’ll make the wrong decisions in life, due to verses like these, and often that fear keeps us timid and risk-averse, worried that we won’t become what God has planned for us.
We tend to interpret these kinds of passages like this:
âGod has a purpose, a plan, a position, a place, and my job is to pray and find out exactly what He wants me to do and do that only for the rest of my life. I better find out His will.â
“For I know the plans I have for you,â declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.â
â Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
But, “Plansâ and Willsâ are actually talking about Godâs “desiresâ
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord.â (Ephesians 5:8-10 NIV)
The question then is: What does God like?
âIn Ephesians 2:10 good works is a general and comprehensive expression for godly behavior… Put simply, it is Godâs will that those who belong to the new creation should be characterized by a lifestyle which ultimately reflects his own character and action.” (Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Ephesians)
His âPlanâ (Desire) from the beginning was that we may look like Jesus!
âGod knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son… We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. After he called them by name, he set them on a solid basis with himself. And then, after getting them established, he stayed with them to the end, gloriously completing what he had begun.â – Romans 8:29-30 MSG
This means: Life is not a fixed maze, but a work of art.
The term “workmanship” (poiema) in the verse is the word from which we get the English word “poem.”
“… In a very real sense the redeemed person is Godâs poetry… The translators of The Jerusalem Bible here render the noun poiema as âa work of art,â somewhat expanding the picture.â (D. Edmond Hiebert)
So then, as Pastor Bryan said, “life is an expression of gratitude, rather than a test in spiritual aptitude.”
âAbove all, remember that the meaning of life is to live it as if it were a work of art. Youâre not a machine. When youâre young, start working on this great work of art called your own existence.â â Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1972 Interview
As children of God, our Father loves gifts made from the heart. Thus, “good works prepared beforehand” doesn’t mean a fixed, unchangeable will of God. What if it means, we can dream up ways to bless and move God’s heart in our everyday lives.
If we are His workmanship (His poetry) than we must take care of and protect ourselves.
And if life is an expression of gratitude, we must be willing to take risks and be vulnerable and courageous.
There’s a story from a pastor named Jon Tyson. After he and his son walked around a cemetery; Jon says, âThe thing you will notice about all these people is that their tombstones contain two dates. There is the date of their birth (show a date on the left side of the dash now), the date of their death (show a date of death on the right now), and a tiny dash between them. The whole of your life on earth is going to come down to that tiny little dash.â Then I pressed in a bit further. âNate,â I said, âwhat will your dash be?â âI donât know,â he said, âI guess Iâm still trying to figure it out.â After a moment of reflection, he said,
âWhat do you think makes a great dash, Dad?â
Pray with us this week:
May my life be a PoemÂ
written on the palms of Your hands,
sung by the chords in Your voice,
heard by the people You love.
May it move Your heart.
May it bring tears to Your eyes.
May it be pleasing to You.
Amen.
You can listen to the sermonA Work of Art from the Ephesians series that inspired this post here.Â
A Work Of Art
Honey, I Shrunk the Cross
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faithâthat you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.â (Ephesians 3:14-21 ESV)
We grow in gratitude and adoration for Jesus when we realize the proper scale of the chasm that lay between us. But the reality is, many of us can be thankful for the chasm that was crossed, and yet we often feel joyless and tired.
The problem is that though we have a growing understanding of the chasm, we don’t have a proper vision of the cross.
“Something crazy has happened, for it’s obvious that you no longer have the crucified Jesus in clear focus in your lives. His sacrifice on the Cross was certainly set before you clearly enough. Let me put this question to you: How did your new life begin? Was it by working your heads off to please God? Or was it by responding to God’s Message to you? Are you going to continue this craziness? For only crazy people would think they could complete by their own efforts what was begun by God…”
“…If you weren’t smart enough or strong enough to begin it, how do you suppose you could perfect it?â
âGalatians 3:1-3 MSG
When the cross remains small, our joy remains small and our efforts becoming tiresome. We begin to embrace a life of performing or pretending.
As we grow in awareness of Godâs holiness and our sins, we have a choice; envision the cross properly or shrink the cross and compensate for it. We say, âGod is holier than I thought, I donât know if the Cross was enough to earn approval and right standing before God. I should help Jesus help me earn approval.â
Q: â What do you count on to give you a sense of personal credibility?â â¨(validity, acceptance, good standing)
Heretical Framework:⨠Cross + My Contributions = Heresy
Compensating by Performing
We try to help fill the gap between Godâs Holiness and the Cross by performing. We become self-righteous.
MANTRA: “I am better than others.”Â
Examples:
âI care about the poor and disadvantaged the way everyone else should.â (Mercy Righteousness)
âI donât drink, smoke, or chew, or date girls who do. Too many Christians just arenât concerned about holiness these days.â (Legalistic Righteousness)
âI manage money wisely and stay out of debt. Iâm not like those materialistic Christians who canât control their spending.â (Financial Righteousness)
âIf you really love God, youâll vote for my candidate.â (Political Righteousness)
âI am open-minded and charitable toward those who donât agree with me. In fact, Iâm a lot like Jesus that way!â (Tolerance Righteousness)
“Religion has accepted the monstrous heresy that noise, size, activity and bluster make a man dear to God.â
â AW Tozer, The Pursuit of God
Compensating by Pretending
On the flip side, we also compensate for a small cross by pretending; by being in self-denial.
MANTRA: “I am not that bad.”Â
Examples:
âI find it difficult to receive feedback about weaknesses or sin. When confronted, my tendency is to explain things away, talk about my successes, or justify my decisions. As a result, people are hesitant to approach me and I rarely have conversations about difficult things in my life.â See, Iâm not that bad. (Defending)
âI strive to keep up appearances and maintain a respectable image. My behavior, to some degree, is driven by what I think others think of me. I also do not like to think reflectively about my life. As a result, not many people know the real me.â (Faking)
âI tend to conceal as much as I can about my life, especially the âbad stuff.â This is different from faking, in that faking is about impressing. Hiding is more about shame. I donât think people will accept or love the real me.â (Hiding)
We can stop pretending and performing by confessing now because of the Big Cross!
“My guilt overwhelms meâit is a burden too heavy to bear.â â Psalm 38:4 NLT
Confess. Instead of compensating for a small Cross, have a proper vision of the cross. This frees us to confess freely.
âHow happy he is whose wrong-doing is forgiven, and whose sin is covered! How happy is the man whose sin the Lord does not hold against him, and in whose spirit there is nothing false. When I kept quiet about my sin, my bones wasted away from crying all day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me. My strength was dried up as in the hot summer. I told my sin to You. I did not hide my wrong-doing. I said, âI will tell my sins to the Lord.â And You forgave the guilt of my sin. So let all who are God-like pray to You while You may be found, because in the floods of much water, they will not touch him. You are my hiding place. You keep me safe from trouble. All around me are your songs of being made free.â (Psalm 32:1-7 NLV)
Accept the cross. Stop performing by accepting that Jesus and His work on the cross is sufficient for you to make you holy before the living God.
Be like the thief on the Cross next to Jesus who knew the only thing he could do was believe and accept Jesusâ work on the cross. He knew he couldnât add anything to it or pretend he wasnât someone bad.
Preach the Gospel to yourself every day.
Accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior and embrace the Cross every day.
“What will today look like if I knew I was accepted because of Christ. What if I didnât have to pretend and perform today?â
Pray with us this week:
May the Cross be ever in my focus.
I confess that only You
Are sufficient.
Only through You,
I find joy.
Only in You,
I find rest.
You can listen to the sermon Honey, I Shrunk the Cross from the Ephesians series that inspired this post here.
The above charts have been adapted from The Gospel-Centered Life by Robert H. Thune and Will Walker.
For further reading and resources, please also check out Sonship.
All images and materials are copyright protected and are the property of Ekko Church unless otherwise noted and credited to their maker. Please do not copy or distribute without permission.
Honey, I Shrunk The Cross
Removing the Tiles
With one hand outstretched and the other on our hearts, we commission our team of faithful, dedicated servants spearheading the Special Abilities Ministry. We say yes and amen as Pastor Janette prays, âMay we welcome, engage and listen to voices of people living with disabilities and be profoundly surprised and transformed by what we discover about them, ourselves and God as we do.â
Though Sunday marks the official date we launched and commissioned this ministry, the dream actually started five years ago in a ramen shop.
âYou know,â Pastor Bryan had said to Caroline, âGod has been placing children with special needs on my heart,â as they were having lunch after a conference. Immediately upon hearing this, she began to cry. God had been placing these children on her heart as well, and as they came into agreement, over the course of a few weeks, God began to open doors through relationshipsâincluding a divine appointment and connection with Matt Mooney of 99 Balloons. It was through 99 Balloons that they began to download the dream for rEcess, a program provided by the organization for families of special needs.
rEcess is a free, monthly respite program offered to serve families with children with special needs. It allows parents to experience Sabbath rest while trained volunteers watch and play with their children in a kind and safe environment.
As God began to move, He started to place this heart for families and children with special needs into the members of the church. Two years after God had planted that seed, Ekko launched our very own rEcess in August 2015 with ten volunteers and two children. Since then the ministry has grown as Ekko has been able to offer Godâs rest to more and more families every month.
âRest comes when you feel like you belong and that you are loved. That is the greatest mission of the church; it is to express Godâs love to His people,â Pastor Bryan said of the ministry. Rest through unconditional love and belonging is the hope that drives and shapes us in rEcess. It is about serving the marginalized in our community by providing them with the opportunity to experience Godâs Sabbath and His love for them.
This is the metric of success in rEcess.
It isnât measured by the conversion rate of families or the number of them attending, but rather, it is in incalculable rest experienced by the parents and by the children that we freely offer.
And as we do so, month after month, we find ourselves being changed. After each child has left with lunch box in tow, shoes still untied and precious art pieces made from the day, we also come away filled with the fullness of God having been a conduit of His love and His eyes to see His children and His people.
We are reminded of how much God desires rest and joy for us as well.
We come away becoming more of who God created us to be.
“To reveal someoneâs beauty is to reveal their value by giving them time, attention, and tenderness. To love is not just to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell them that they are special and worthy of attention.â
â Jean Vanier
In the Gospel of Luke, we hear a story about friends who took their paralyzed friend to see Jesus, but when they couldnât find a way to get him into the room, they did something remarkable, and, frankly, pretty inconvenient: âWhen they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus.â
Now, imagine the sweat and exertion of lifting your paralyzed friend up a ladder (careful not to drop or break him), the heat and cuts from the tiles as you worked to remove them.
Imagine the courage and the conviction you must feel as annoyed glares and shouts come from those below as you maneuver your friend down. Â
What they do in this story was not easy, nor was it careless.
This was a profound illustration of deep love and devotion for a friend and a rooted faith and trust in Jesus.
All they knew was one thing: they just needed to get him into the room with Jesus.
And if they could just get their friend into his presence, that would be enough. Â
Caroline said during the commission, âThrough our Special Abilities Ministry, we want to remove any of the barriers that hinder families and children from experiencing Godâs love and serving in the body.â Through this ministry, this is our way of removing the tiles from the roof to create the space for our children with all abilities to get into the presence of Jesus. Because much like the friends in the story, âwhen they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd,â we are choosing to make a way.
“Only 5 to 10 percent of the worldâs disabled are effectively reached with the Gospel, making the disability community one of the largest unreached â some say under-reached â hidden people groups in the world.â
â Joni Eareckson Tada
Our Special Abilities ministry is an extension of the ministries that we currently have through rEcess and Buddies. In Buddies, each child with special abilities is paired with a buddy for that particular Sunday in order to nurture a love and joy for each individual child to encounter God in their own, beautifully unique ways. This also allows newcomers and members to attend Sunday worship gatherings with the confidence knowing their child with special abilities is paired with a trained volunteer who will lead their child through an accessible and comfortable experience at church.
The beating heart behind Special Abilities Ministry is our unrelenting desire to become more like Jesus. In the Gospels, we see our Savior leading a hospitable ministry among people with disabilities. Discipleship isnât just about what you learnâitâs about what you do. And when we do the joyful work of making space for others who have been hidden or overlooked we, in turn, are transformed more and more into the likeness of Jesus, the one who we were always meant to image.
Our dream is that our church would be a welcoming, non-intimidating place where families and children with varying abilities can belong and become the people God intended them to be.
âThrough the Special Abilities Ministry, we are opened to the very heart of the Gospel and to new ways of being, thinking and living in Godâs fullness of life,â Pastor Janette prays. And when the sons and daughters of God lean into our differences and learn to be hospitable to all the facets of humanity within Jesusâ body, that is when we begin to grow in our understanding of who God is and who we are in Him.
If youâre a member of Ekko and would like to participate in our mission to be a hospitable church to people of all abilities, you can serve as volunteers in rEcess and Buddies. You can also help us create a sensory room for our children with special needs by following this link.
To hear a podcast of the talk with Pastor Isaac, Pastor Bryan and Caroline Pae on the origins of rEcess, you can listen to that here.
New Story
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,  to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (Ephesians 1: 1-14 ESV)
The problem is, even though Christ has redeemed us and we are now sons and daughters of God, we often still live as Orphans. We tend to live in anxiety and fear.
“For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!‘” â Romans 8:15 ESV
How do you know you’re living as an Orphan? Orphan Spirit vs. Spirit of Sonship Chart š
EXAMPLE:
- Orphan Spirit: Feels alone. Lacks a vital daily intimacy with God. Is full of self-concern.
- Spirit of Sonship: Has a growing assurance that âGod is really my loving heavenly Father.â
We often stay in these cycles.² When we face uncertainty or uncomfortable situations, we make FAST decisions and often follow the course of blaming, avoiding, victimizing… etc.
But, as a child of God, the cycle is broken. We can make SLOW decisions, and instead: bless, be neighborly, love, forgive, give and serve.Âł
- As a child of God, I am Blessed (satisfied) and now I can Bless (and not use others for my satisfaction alone, I can take ownership over my life, be thankful in everything) and now in humility, I can help others knowing that I was weak and deserving of blame and shame.
- As a child of God, I am Adopted, hence I can be hospitable, eating with sinners, the broken, because I know I was a sinner and contaminated everyone else. I can now by neighborly.
- As a child of God, I am Redeemed. I am liberated from Oppression, Injustice, Past Offenses, and Offenders, therefore instead of being defined by past âPharaohsâ I can now be present and pay attention to others! I am free to love others.
- As a child of God, I am Forgiven and in light of His mercy, I can Forgive.
- As a child of God, I am an Inheritor of the Kingdom of God, therefore I can give generously and sacrificially without desperately asking for things in return such as money, affirmation, or acknowledgment.
- As a child of God, I am Sealed with the Holy Spirit, therefore, I am empowered to serve.
Live like you are a Child of God, and not like an Orphan.
âTherefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can anyone of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you-you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, âWhat shall we eat?â or âWhat shall we drink?â or âWhat shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” â Matthew 6:25-34
Pray with us this week:
Heavenly Father, help me to remember:
Through Jesus,
I am Your child.
I have Your smile,
Your hands,
Your feet,
Your heart,
Your spirit,
But, when I forget who I am,
Remind me again of Who You are.
You can listen to the sermon New Story from the Ephesians series that inspired this post here.
š From The Gospel-Centered Life by Robert H. Thune and Will Walker.Â
² The cycles were adapted from 5 Days to a New Marriage by Terry Hargrave, Ph. D. & Shawn Stoever, Ph.D.Â
Âł The idea of the Six courses we often subscribe to in the orphan spirit was originally adapted from a talk given by Brian McLaren.Â
All images and materials are copyright protected and are the property of Ekko Church, unless otherwise noted and credited to their maker. Please do not copy or distribute without permission.