God’s part and our part

Is Jesus Christ a Saviour or a Wayshower? Don’t respond too quickly. The answer is not as apparent as one might think. In 325 CE/AD, the early Christian church spent months arguing over this question at the Council of Nicaea. … Following Christ as a Wayshower, I ran into a brick wall of self-effort and failure decades ago. Maybe I wasn’t being good enough. Or, worse yet, maybe God was teaching me a lesson.

Hannah Whitall Smith wrote a wonderful chapter about “God’s part in the work of sanctification and man’s part.” What a joy and a relief her book was for me! Briefly, she concluded that “man’s part is to trust, and God’s part is to work” (The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, 26-28). We are, literally and figuratively, “a lump of clay.” If we want to be “made into a beautiful vessel” (32), we’re going to have to surrender. That’s the only role the clay has to play. (Drawn from Living Large, chapter 56, ©️ 2013)