T.D. Jakes - Experiencing Jesus: Gods Spiritual Workmanship in the Believer

Six Pillars From Ephesians: Experiencing Jesus
Gods Spiritual Workmanship in the Believer
Copyright 2000 by T. D. Jakes
T. D. Jakes Ministries

Ebook edition created 2012

All rights reserved under International Copyright Law. Contents and/or cover may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any form without the express written consent of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-1-4412-1344-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

Scripture quotations marked WUEST are taken from the New Testament: An Expanded Translation , by Kenneth S. Wuest. Copyright 1961 William B. Erdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

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CONTENTS

EXPERIENCING JESUS
GODS SPIRITUAL
WORKMANSHIP IN THE BELIEVER

INTRODUCTION

From the moment we are conceived, we have a built-in desire to run the world around us so that it benefits us and serves us completely. Lets face it: We are all born with a self-centered, me-first identity. We emerge from the womb a crybaby, our sole purpose being to see that every whim, desire, and need is fulfilled by those who have obviously been placed in our lives to accomplish this. In our eyes, the world revolves around us .

The description I have just given is the essence of the sin nature. There is not one sin we can name that cannot be labeled selfish and self-centered. Furthermore, the original sin is addressed in the first commandment, which contains the antidote to the sin nature:

T hou shalt have no other gods before me .

E XODUS 20:3

Gods purpose for our lives is that instead of a me-first identity, we have a God-first identity. We are to step off the throne of our hearts and give God full rule and reign in our lives. We are to throw up our hands in complete surrender to the truth that our well-being, fulfillment, and happiness are totally dependent upon our relationship with Him.

Pride says, I am the ruler of my own life. I make myself.

Humility says, God is the ruler of my life. He makes me.

Gods Word says:

W e are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works .

E PHESIANS 2:10

The issue of Gods workmanship in our lives is that it goes against our pride!

In the Psalms, we find a statement that puzzled me for years:

E xcept the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it .

P SALM 127:1

I asked myself, If the Lord is building, why do we have to labor? The issue was settled when I realized that God is the Master Architect and I am the carpenter. God builds us by design from blueprints drawn up before the foundation of the world. He gives us His plan, and when we labor, our labor must be in alignment with His design or our efforts will fail and have no eternal reward.

Imagine a carpenter looking at the architects blueprints for a large building project and saying, Well, thats all good and fine, but I think Ill just add this little wall over here and remove that wall over there and build a wing onto the building over there. Nobody will ever know. Ill just add the plumbing and the wiring and the air-conditioning and heating ducts as I go along. Forget what the architect designed. Its what I want to do.

That carpenter would be removed from the project immediately, and anything he had built according to his own design would be torn down and put in the trash pile. The same principle applies to Gods workmanship in our lives. He has the best plan. He sees the end from the beginning and all the battles and obstacles in between. All of our efforts must be in line with His plan for our lives to achieve the maximum joy, purpose, and function.

One of the most important lessons any believer or any body of believers can learn is this: We do not make ourselves. God makes us . And when God makes us, He does the full deal! There is no detail too minuscule or crisis too big that He does not provide for our complete redemption from everything that is evil and wicked in this life and the life to come.

Consider Abraham, who had a close encounter of the God kind.

N ow the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy fathers house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed .

G ENESIS 12:1-3

There were seven things God promised Abraham in this passage of Scripture, and one of those was greatness. God said, I will make your name great. When we first consider that promise, we leap with glee, as most of us desire to be great. However, Gods idea of greatness and our idea of greatness may be completely different. For instance, we often think of great men as being wealthy men. But what made Abraham a great man was not necessarily his extensive wealth, although God gave him great wealth. We also think of men who have accomplished supernatural feats as being great. But it might not have been Abrahams ability to sire sons past his productive years, although God gave him that ability, which made him great. Perhaps it wasnt even the fact that he controlled masses of wealth and land, was the guest of noblemen, and was the personal friend to kings in various countries that made Abraham great.

No, if we were to attempt to locate Abrahams greatness, it would probably be more aptly placed in his great faith in God. Called from the Gentile, moon-worshipping country of Ur, Abraham heard Gods voice in the wind and had the sensitivity and ability to see the invisible and do the impossible. In any case, whatever the measuring device God uses to determine greatness, the issue for us today is: Who made Abraham great?

Why is this such an important question? Because it hits at the heart of the Gospel, which is Gods workmanship, not our workmanship, in our lives. We did not call our names out from before the foundation of the world, create ourselves, and when we fell, provide the way of salvation. And neither did we provide the blueprint for our lives. What causes most of us to err and build monuments to our own vanity is that we have a low tolerance for delayed gratification. We do not want to wait on God to make us great. Like Satan, who said his five I wills to God in a rebellious declaration of eternal independence (see Isaiah 14:13-14), we say to God, You dont have to make me great, I will. For some reason, we really believe we can do it faster and better than God. Oh, the senseless, reasonless, illogical pride of man!

It is that self-imposed, egotistical inclination to exalt oneself that causes us to build walls, churches, companies, and countless other self-designed projects that are not on Gods original blueprints or His divine specification sheet. And it is because of this one fact alone that many believers today are experiencing the painful results of being a public success and a private failure. Without faith or patience, they have forsaken Gods plan and promise for their lives and turned to their own thinking, when Gods plan for them is far beyond their wildest dreams and creativity.

If we have any doubt of the veracity of Gods love and faithfulness toward us, our study of Ephesians, chapter 1 Loved By God will dispel it. Now, in Ephesians 2, the apostle Paul launches into a rich and vivid description of the direct impact Ephesians 1 all God has accomplished in Christ Jesus has upon us individually and as a corporate body. We are going to see how God makes us, from the moment we are born into His family to the end of time, and on into eternity. And God dont make no junk! He always makes us great!