Next Best Thing

“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.” (Eph. 2:8-10 ESV)

For this brief text, I keyed in on the words or phrases of “grace,” “gift of God,” “workmenship,” and “prepared beforehand.” All of these ideas are directed at believers. These are positive phrases and encouraging thoughts. They should be! Again, these contain a powerful sense of God’s pleasure and pride in us. That as believers, we are and have been, conformed to Jesus’ image. We are to “look like” Jesus. Even more specifically; that we are representatives, agents, ambassadors of Christ. That, of course, does not mean that we are uniform, exactly the same, identical. Indeed, we are all unique, purpose built, designed for the good works that God has put in our paths.

So, in this brief text, we have a comforting sense of encouragement, affirmation, and pride from God.

But that’s not all!

We also have a strong implication that we must be out there doing what God wants done. We were created in Christ Jesus for … a purpose! There’s a reason we were saved. There’s a reason that God made us as he did. That purpose is “good works.”

These good works are not difficult for us to find. The text says that God prepared these good works for us that we would walk in them. I get the visual of a series of stepping stones, each of them a good work that I’m to do, all laid out for me. All I need to do (which does NOT mean this is easy!) is to step into that next good work that God has for me.

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This reminds me of a phrase from Craig Groeschel: “Doing the next, best thing in your life.” This idea of doing good works that God prepared for us is part of doing the next, best thing in my life.