HANDS, FEET, AND TRUST

 HANDS, FEET, AND TRUST 

Running on Empty | Day 15 

"Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but  now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and  trembling, for it is God who works in You to will and to act in order to fulfill His good  purpose." — Philippians 2:12-13 (NIV) 

Good morning. There is a question waiting at the start of most days, often before our  feet hit the floor: how much of today is up to us, and how much is up to God?  

It is one of the oldest tensions in the life of faith, and it wears us out from both  directions. On one side sits the believer who has decided that trusting God means doing nothing, sitting on our hands and waiting for heaven to move while the work God placed  in front of us goes undone. On the other sits the believer who has decided everything  depends on us, who plans and strains as though God were a distant spectator and the  whole outcome rested on how hard we push. Both are exhausting. The first wears us  down with guilt and stalled obedience. The second wears us down with the impossible  weight of carrying what was never ours alone to carry. And most of us do not pick one  and stay there. We swing between them, sometimes hour to hour, never quite sure  which error we are committing today.  

Work Out What God Works In 

Paul hands us the resolution in a single sentence, and it is not a compromise between  the two errors but a complete dismantling of the choice itself. He writes, "Therefore, my  dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much  more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it  is God who works in You to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose."  (Philippians 2:12-13, NIV). Read quickly, the call to work out our salvation can sound  like a summons to earn what only grace can give. Read in full, it says the opposite. We do not work for our salvation. We work it out, the way a spring works its way to the  surface, because it has already been placed in us. And the next clause removes any  doubt about where the power comes from: it is God who works in us, both the willing  and the acting. The hands are ours. The energy in them is His. We work out what God  works in, and there is no contradiction anywhere in that sentence.  

Nehemiah lived this out in a single, vivid act when the wall of Jerusalem was under  threat and the workers were afraid. He did not choose between faith and effort. He  refused the choice entirely. "But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and  

night to meet this threat." (Nehemiah 4:9, NIV). They prayed, and they posted a guard.  Not prayer instead of the guard, as though asking God for help meant standing down.  Not the guard instead of prayer, as though preparation made God unnecessary. Both, in  the same breath, from the same trusting heart. Each was the proper expression of a  people who knew their security rested with God and who also picked up the tools He  had given them to use. 

The order of things matters here, and Scripture keeps it straight for us. "In their hearts  humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps." (Proverbs 16:9, NIV).  We are not told to stop planning. The planning is assumed, even blessed. What we are  told is that the establishing belongs to God. We map the course with the minds He gave  us, and He settles where the steps actually land. This is the difference between  planning held with open hands and planning gripped in a clenched fist. The faithless version plans as though the outcome were ours to guarantee. The faithful version plans  fully, works hard, and then releases the result to the One who alone can establish it.  

Where the Strength Comes From 

There is a line, though, that separates labor that sustains us from labor that drains us  dry, and it is not the amount of work. It is the source of the strength behind it. "Unless  the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over  the city, the guards stand watch in vain." (Psalm 127:1, NIV). Notice that the builders  

still build and the guards still stand watch. The psalm does not send anyone home. It  calls work apart from God vain, which is a different thing entirely. The hands are still  busy in both pictures. The question is whether the Lord is building through them or  whether they are building alone, and that is the difference between work that leaves us  empty and work that does not.  

This is also the right place to set down a verse quoted often and understood rarely. "I  can do all this through him who gives me strength." (Philippians 4:13, NIV). Lifted out of  its setting, it becomes a slogan on banners and gym walls, a promise that we can  achieve whatever we set our minds to if we believe hard enough. But Paul wrote it from  prison, and the all this he had in mind was not triumph. It was contentment in any  circumstance, whether well fed or hungry, in plenty or in want. The strength he  describes is not strength to accomplish our ambitions. It is strength to endure, to keep  standing and keep serving whether the season is full or empty, supplied by Christ and  not by our own reserves. That is a far better promise than the slogan, because it holds  on exactly the days the slogan would collapse.  

Paul names that source plainly when he describes his own labor, and it is worth sitting  with how strenuous his language is. "To this end I strenuously contend with all the  energy Christ so powerfully works in me." (Colossians 1:29, NIV). This is not a portrait  of a man sitting on his hands. He strenuously contends. He pours himself out. There is  nothing passive here, nothing of the false trust that mistakes idleness for faith. And yet  the energy he contends with is not his own. It is the energy Christ powerfully works in  him. Here is the whole tension resolved in one apostle's testimony: full effort, fully  dependent. He worked harder than almost anyone, and was clearer than almost anyone  that the strength was never his to begin with. What he ran on was the energy of Christ,  and that supply does not run dry.  

And this is where the tension finally comes to rest, because Jesus Christ Himself is the  perfect picture of hands and feet and trust held together without strain. When He was  questioned for healing on the Sabbath, He answered with a window into His entire life.  "In his defense Jesus said to them, 'My Father is always at his work to this very day,  and I too am working.'" (John 5:17, NIV). The Father is always working, and so is the 

Son. Jesus did nothing apart from the Father and leaned entirely on the One who sent  Him, and at the same time He worked, He healed, He taught, and He set His face  toward Jerusalem and finished the work He came to do. Fully dependent and fully  active, all the way to the cross where He completed the one work we could never do for  ourselves. That finished work is what we are now working out. We are not laboring to  earn a salvation still in question. We are living out a salvation Jesus Christ already  secured, with hands He gave us, in strength He supplies, toward a purpose He  guarantees. The trust and the effort were never enemies. In Him, they were always the  same thing.  

Prayer 

Father, I confess that I have lived on both sides of this tension and been worn out by  each of them. Some days I have sat on my hands and called it trust, leaving undone the  very work You placed in front of me. Other days I have gripped the outcome as though everything depended on me, planning and straining as if You were far away and the  whole weight rested on my shoulders. Forgive me for both. Forgive me for mistaking  idleness for faith, and for mistaking exhaustion for faithfulness. 

Lord Jesus, thank You that You held perfect dependence and full effort together without  strain, and that the salvation I am now living out is one You have already finished and  secured. Teach me to work with the hands You gave me and to lean entirely on the  strength You supply. Let me plan with open hands, labor without fear, and release every  outcome to You. When I drift toward one ditch or the other, draw me back to the place where trust and obedience are the same motion. In Your name, Amen. 

The work in front of us today has not gone anywhere, and we still have to pick up the tools and do it. But we can go at it differently now, knowing the strength in our hands  was never ours to manufacture and the outcome was never ours to guarantee.  Tomorrow we look at what happens when the work knocks us flat anyway, when we  have given it our best and still find ourselves on the ground, and why getting back up is  so much a part of the Christian's calling. Stay with us.  

To God be the glory. 

Pray, praise, and give thanks, for God is good and His mercy endures forever.  

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