Walking Out God's Will part II

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.    ^{1 Thessalonians 5:23-24}He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.

For the last several days, I have been going over what God’s will is for us and I have gone over a little about how to walk that out.  I’ve been building on what our part is, but that’s just building up to the big finish.  These last two verses in the paragraph that’s the climax, these verses are so monumental in living out God’s will.

Hi, my name is Keith and I’m a complete failure, and I’m okay with that.  I have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and for my sin, compared to the holiness of God, I deserve to stand before God the Judge, guilty.  The sentence I deserve, death (Romans 3:23; 6:23).  Thankfully, I have the best lawyer (advocate) on retainer (the price of which He already paid) who has pleaded my case before the Father and has taken the death penalty upon Himself (1 John 2:1-2).
I have no power to do anything on my own.  I am not good enough to live up to God’s standards.  If I stood before God right now, I cannot say, “Hey God, look at all these great things I did, look at all the money I gave to my church.  Let me into heaven.”   That’s not going to get me anywhere.

Obedience is my part, and on my own, I’m not very good at that either.  I’m human, I stumble.  What’s so amazing to me is this, I cannot live up to God’s standards alone, He gives me the power to enable me to do it on His power.  I’ve studied other religions, and this is a feature unique only to the Gospel.
Let the words, “He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it” sink in.  Those words are so overwhelmingly powerful. 

I picture a father working on a carpentry project and has his little child helping.  The father is cutting the wood and pounding nails in with his tools, the child has his Fisher Price plastic tool set.  The father stops periodically to let the child “hammer” in a nail using his little plastic hammer so the child thinks he’s really helping, but the father is doing the real work.

When we’re called to do something, we think we are doing something, but it is really God working in and through us to get the job done.