Two or three big ones, about thirty others less significant—so many things to figure out. Decisions to make, changes to mull over, tactics and plans and figuring to do.
Planning is a genuine joy in my life.
It’s also a genuine distraction—from trust, from true rest, and from dependence on Jesus.
I long to whisk my mind away for hours—organizing, scheduling, researching, figuring.
Yet the whisper seems to roar today: “Walk in Me.”
My rebuttal: “Walk with me in these plans, Lord!”
Patient and gentle He bids: “Walk in Me through all I’ve already figured.”
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10).
You may wholeheartedly disagree—and that’s okay by me—I’m certainly in a minute minority, perceiving the exhortation of Ephesians 2:10 a bit differently than most. I understand the translation of original texts to lend more toward, “on the basis of,” rather than “for.” It shifts the hero of the good-work narrative, from me to Jesus.
We love this verse, considering all the good and exciting plans for us and deciding how faithfully we’ll perform them. But as I see it, we walk on the basis of Christ’s goodness and faithfulness—not on ours. The good works were His, and they’ve been accomplished. Now we are invited: Walk in them. No figuring needed.
What if, instead of worrying and hustling our way through figuring it all out, we trusted our way through all He’s already figured?
What if instead of walking in the ‘faithful’ work of our hard-fought plans, we learned to walk instead in the faithfulness of Jesus—that which has already been done and already been won.
“Therefore, as you received Him”—through faith alone…
“So walk in Him”—through faith alone.
(Colossians 2:6).
