When you love someone deeply, you long to share in a common purpose. In a similar way, your heavenly Father loves you and yearns for your willing participation in His glorious purposes. Of course, no one is indispensable to God, but His destiny for each of our lives cannot be fulfilled without our active cooperation.

We are sometimes reluctant to emphasize this fact. We freely quote Ephesians 2:8-9, "By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." But not wishing to sound contradictory nor to appear boastful, we stop there and avoid verse 10 about "good works." Yet Paul's meaning is clear—although we're not saved by good works, we are saved for good works.

Mysterious as it is, God has planned our good works in advance, so that as we fulfill them "we are God's fellow workers" (1 Corinthians 3:9). The great maker of the Stradivarius violin rightly said of God: "He could not make Antonio Stradivari violins without Antonio."

God has chosen to bless others uniquely through you, and you can do what no one else can do. But when He does use you, be careful to give Him all the glory.    — Joanie Yoder