Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You Doing Enough? | Alex Gray | Ephesians 2:8-10

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. I'm Tanya Wilmuth. And I'm Patrick Miller. Hey, everybody. I want to introduce you to a friend of mine in Patrick's. Her name is Alex Gray. She is the co-director of a campus ministry at the University of Missouri called Veritas.

Starting point is 00:00:23 She is a master's from Covenant Seminary. I think you'll enjoy hearing from Alex. You know, you've done something wrong with your day when it's 3 p.m. And you have been to five coffee shops and you still have. two more to go. That was my Thursday a few weeks ago. Working in college ministry, a big part of my job is meeting up with girls who I mentor. And for whatever reason, the functional code word of sorts for this is going to coffee. Doesn't even make sense. How do you go to coffee? But I don't know. That's what we say. So here I was, three in the afternoon, having gone to coffee five times and about to go again,

Starting point is 00:01:00 feeling one, incredibly tired and two, way too wired. The caffeine, it was, buzzing through my body, making me a jittery mess, and yet my brain felt like sludge. I couldn't imagine emotionally gearing up as I waited there, sitting there, for the small group girl who was on her way. She had reached out to me because she wanted to talk through something going on in her life. Come to think of it, most of the girls that I had met with that day had texted me asking me to talk, process. They were seeking advice.

Starting point is 00:01:32 And even though I know that I do not excel on 10 hours of straight conversation and a gallon of coffee, I still said yes to all of them. And so as I sat there, I thought, man, why do I do this? Why did I do this again? Why do I willfully push past my limits and my capacity to just try to cram all of this into one day? And then it hit me. I want these girls to love me, to look to me for what they need, to meet their expectations. I want to be their favorite.

Starting point is 00:02:04 I've taught studies a few times over the years now on the book of Ephesians. And increasingly, it is one of my favorite letters of the Bible because of how rich it is theologically, but it's also just super practical. Every verse, it packs a punch, but then it all sort of weaves together into these beautiful concepts of things like what it means to be united to Christ, what God has done in his redemptive plan over time, what the body of Christ should look like. how relationships between people should work. It's all powerful stuff. It's a great book. But there's one verse that I come back to again and again. I guess to be honest, it's three. So maybe I'm breaking the

Starting point is 00:02:44 rules here, but I'm going to go forward anyway. My favorite verses are Ephesians 2, 8 to 10. You might recognize them, but here's what they say. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of work, so that no one may boast. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Leading up to these verses what Paul is doing, he's been writing to the Ephesians, and he's reminding them of the way that Christ has radically transformed them. They went from being 100% dead in sin, following their own desires, doing life as children of wrath, as Paul puts it, to alive in Jesus. Forgiven, made new. And now they're given this

Starting point is 00:03:36 place with Christ in His kingdom. The reason I come back to these verses, Ephesians 2 8 to 10, is that I have to hear over and over again, not just what God has done, but also what He promises to do. So this little trio of verses, it reminds me that when things in my life are going great, Well, it's not because of me. It keeps my pride in check when I'm tempted to think that my efforts or my skills, social savviness, competency, all those things, that those are the reason that I'm crushing it. These verses, they give me the needed humility of things like my own weakness, dependency, limitations as a human.

Starting point is 00:04:18 But they also provide me a ton of comfort when I start to doubt the things that really aren't going so well. In general, I am so grateful for the fact that I absolutely love my job. I could go on and on for another 20 minutes about the ways that I've watched God work and through college students. I could go on and on about the ways that I've watched God work in and through college students over the years, hundreds of them. And truly, my role is this awesome combination of all the things that I love to do most. But I'll admit, so often my joy in what I do, it's accompanied by this sneaky little voice in the back of my head asking, do you think you did enough today? Did you meet people's expectations?

Starting point is 00:05:06 Did you impress co-workers and students, or were they disappointed? Did you measure up or does everyone secretly think that you're failing hard? Now, I can tell you, on a good day, that I know where this voice comes from. not to be intense, but I know that this is the voice of the devil. It's Satan twisting my thoughts. And then it's also this conglomeration of things like my insecurities and doubts and need for approval, all of that, right, wrapped up together, shaping and twisting and distorting my perception of who I am. So that's easy to tell you. But even though I know all that, even though I know that voice is a lie, I'm so susceptible to listening to it and then running with my own assumptions of what it means.

Starting point is 00:05:55 So I have to come back to these verses because they are where I know that I'm going to find truth. I just go line by line, sentence by sentence. I walk myself through these promises that I find here starting with verse 8. For by grace you have been saved through faith. This right here, it means that at a base level, I have the one thing that I need. which is the grace of God that's reconciled me into a relationship with him. Just like those Ephesians, I was dead in sin for the first 18-ish years of my life, zero interest in Jesus. But when I was a freshman in college, he opened my mind and my heart to understand the gospel.

Starting point is 00:06:38 And suddenly, it was like I was fully alive for the first time ever. I remember feeling it. And that grace that brought me to life, it's guaranteed my salvation. I have nothing to fear because God's grace, it's powerful enough to pull me out of death for sure, but it's also powerful enough to fully secure my righteousness in Jesus. God sees me, and instead of condemning me or being disappointed in my shortcomings, my sin, the things that I would expect, he delights in me. He's pleased with me.

Starting point is 00:07:15 He wants me to draw near to him. So I have the one thing, one thing that eternally matters because God, in his mercy, has saved me by grace through faith. And what's great for me about that is that there's nothing I can or can't do to change that. The next sentence in these verses, it's the end of eight and beginning of nine. It says, this is not your own doing. It's the gift of God, not a result of your word. works so that no one may boast. Like I said earlier, sometimes this verse comes at me as a bit of a

Starting point is 00:07:50 rebuke, a conviction of the times when I noticed myself puffed up from doing something well, but a lot of the time, this verse is just incredibly soothing to me. It comes as an enormous relief because the one thing that I want, which is security in the God who sees and knows me, it's what I already have. And it's not maintained by or a result of my works, anything that I do or don't do. I can stop striving to earn my worth and my value because Christ has already declared that over me. Listen one more time to verse 10, that last sentence. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. We are his workmanship, which means we have inherent value and worth simply because we were

Starting point is 00:08:46 crafted by the all-powerful, all-loving creator of the universe. The whole universe, he created us. He was intentional with the way that he did that, the way he crafted you and I because he has a purpose for us. We're created for good works. That was always his plan from the beginning of time in your life and in mine. That totally refraims how I think about my responsibilities, my accomplishments, tasks, roles, all those things.

Starting point is 00:09:18 I don't need to do good works to establish my worth. First, because it's already securing Jesus, but second, because God promises to help me grow and walk in good works simply as I grow in my love for him. So those times that that voice in my head tells me to question whether I'm doing enough or whether I'm living up to people's expectations. When that happens, I just have to pull up these verses from Ephesians too and compare that voice, those lies, with these words. So I hear, you don't have people's approval. But Ephesians tells me that I have the one thing that I need. You have to do better. You have to do more. if you want to be seen, says that little voice. But it's not up to me. Jesus has already secured my

Starting point is 00:10:09 identity. I get to rest in that. I get to live a life of love for him, and that's all I have to do. You're failing. You're disappointing people, it says. But I know that God has always planned to use me for his purposes in his own timing. I'm becoming, over the remainder of my life, I'm becoming the person that he's created me to be. And he's just not disappointed in that because it's all in his sovereign control. I'm God's workmanship. You're God's workmanship. So I just want to encourage you, let's actually lean into what we see him doing in and through us and rejoice over the identity and the purpose that he already has in store for us. He is working it out as we speak. These verses, they've brought me just a ton of joy and peace, not just in my job, but in all areas of my life.

Starting point is 00:11:05 And so I hope that they do for you too. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with? Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are You Doing Enough? | Alex Gray | Ephesians 2:8-10

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