Open Hands, Willing HeartSample

God’s Workmanship

Take a moment and look at your left thumb. The combination of lines and swirls that make your thumbprint belongs to you alone. No one on this planet of 7.5 billion people shares the same print. God crafts unique purposes for you, giving you the opportunity to participate as He unfolds His plans.

Maybe you are struggling over important life scenarios: your marital status, your finances, your job, your children, your character defects, or your health. Perhaps an unhealthy relationship has taken center stage in your life and God is asking you to let go and turn the relationship over to Him. Perhaps God has given you clarity on an area of disobedience and is calling you to confess and turn from the sin. God may be calling you to live more purposefully, less busily, or less complacently. Maybe God is asking you to humble yourself and seek help from a trained professional for an addiction. Perhaps His Spirit is encouraging you to forgive the person who hurt you, or He wants you to get out from under the weight of trying to please others and follow their will rather than His. 

We are born into this world without control over our family of origin. We have no control over our gender, ethnic makeup, cultural heritage, family history, socioeconomic class at birth, or gifts and wiring. But God has His reasons for forming us as He has. “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).

We may not have the opportunity to see the direct outcome of our choices or live the life we always dreamed of, but God maps out for us a way to walk in freedom from our expectations of how we think life should unfold, even when our circumstances don’t make sense to us. He invites us to relinquish control in the midst of the unknown, the unanswered questions, the bewildering circumstances, and the sense of being overwhelmed. In this place of surrender, we deepen our intimacy with Him. Our challenge is to relinquish what hinders us from seeking and following His will, wherever it may take us. 

How would you describe the posture of your heart at this time in your life? What are some things you clutch or try to control instead of surrendering them to God?