March 4, 2025
“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)
The founding elder of the first church for which I was the pastor was a home builder. He did beautiful work. When a couple wanted him to build their home, he would take them to a beautiful home he had built and say to them, “By the grace of God this is by workmanship.” The verse above is saying to all of us who are followers of Christ that our risen living Christ would like to point to each of us and say, “This is My workmanship!”
We are all a work of Christ in progress. In addition to that thought this verse is stating that when we came to faith and were saved by grace through the faith our Lord gave us, He created us for good works. In fact we’re told that before He saved us he already planned that we would do those works for Him.
I don’t know about you, but that truth excites and inspires me greatly! We’re so self-centered that when we come to faith our focus is often on what trusting Christ to be our Savior is going to mean to us. Many followers of Christ have the attitude, “What have you done for me lately?” The Apostle Paul had the right vision when he met the risen Christ on the road to Damascus and asked the question, “Lord, what do you want me to do for You?”
As a follower of Christ have you been asking and seeking to know what those works are your Lord and Savior planned for you when He saved you by grace?
Dick Woodward, 08 March 2010
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February 28, 2025
“When I am weak then I am strong…” (2 Corinthians 12:10)
In these eight words the Apostle Paul gives us a formula for strength. When we are having a serious operation, instead of counting to 10 as the anesthesiologist administers the medicine that knocks us out, I suggest we say these eight words. While most of us like to be in control, after experiencing the full effects of anesthesia we give up control. But, as believers when we give up control, we find ourselves underneath the everlasting arms. (Deuteronomy 33:27)
This makes us stronger than we have ever been.
Paul, quoting Isaiah, writes the key to spiritual strength: God gives strength to the weary and power to the weak. One translation reads that God’s strength looks good on weak people. The key to spiritual strength is therefore not found in our strength but in our weakness. These eight words therefore form the formula for our strength.
They will give you great spiritual strength in your time of absolute weakness. Discover with the Apostle Paul that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness, not in trying to make ourselves strong. We find our greatest strength in the Everlasting Arms that are there underneath us.
Prove what Isaiah and Paul teach us. The everlasting arms give us more strength than we have ever known as healthy active people. The next time you experience weakness on any level of life remember to pray these eight words: “When I am weak then I am strong.” You will soon find yourself saying, “I’m not but He is; I can’t, but He can;” and then, “I didn’t but He did” when you let God perfect His strength in your weakness.
Dick Woodward, 26 February 2014
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 25, 2025
For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sins I will remember no more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)
When we sin, we need to look up and believe the first fact of the Gospel – the Good News that God forgives our sins because Jesus died for our sins. Then we need to look around, forgive those who have sinned against us and seek forgiveness of those against whom we’ve sinned. We also need to look in and forgive ourselves.
When we place our trust in the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, we need to forget what God forgets and remember what God remembers. We are promised, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (I John 1:9)
After we confess our sins, our faith in God’s promise is flawed when we remember our sins as guilt baggage long after God has forgiven and forgotten our sins.
A Catholic Monsignor in Paris was told about a nun who talked to Jesus every night. When summoned to meet the Monsignor, he asked her, “The next time you talk with Jesus, ask Him this question: What sins did the Monsignor commit in Paris before he became a priest?”
Several days later the nun met again with the Monsignor. He asked her, “Did you speak with Jesus again, my child?” She replied, “Yes, your Reverence.” He then asked, “Did you ask Jesus my question?” The nun said that she had indeed asked Jesus his question. “And what did Jesus say?” The nun replied, “Jesus told me to tell you He doesn’t remember.”
As we receive by faith the inner healing of salvation, we must discipline ourselves to remember what God remembers and forget what God forgets.
Dick Woodward, from In Step with Eternal Values
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 21, 2025
“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God…” (Philippians 4:6)
Have you ever heard someone confess, “I’m a control freak?” My response to that confession is: “Welcome to the human family!” The truth is sometimes we are all control freaks. Both Jesus and Paul taught that we should not be anxious. That means don’t worry. They both taught us not to worry about the things we cannot control – like the height of our body or the lives of other people.
Speaking as one control freak to another, the thing that really freaks us out is what we cannot control. In what Alcoholics Anonymous call the “Big Book,” there is an illustration with which we control freaks resonate. We think that life is a stage on which we are directing a play. The people in our lives are characters in that play. As the play director we give them their scripts and their cues, but when they don’t respond to our direction, our frustration drives us into a bottle or some other addiction.
When I was a college student, I had a mentor who wrote a poem with these lines: “You can’t control the weather or rainy days, but you can control the emotional climate that surrounds you. You can’t control the height your head will be from the sidewalk, but you can control the height of the contents of your head.”
After quite a few of those lines his punch line was: “Why worry about the things you cannot control? Accept the responsibility for the things that depend on you.”
Follow the advice of Jesus and Paul and don’t worry about what you can’t control. “…but in everything by prayer and supplication…let your requests be made known to God…”
Dick Woodward, 20 February 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 18, 2025
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption… What counts is a new creation.” (Galatians 6:7,8,15)
The Apostle Paul wrote these words to the Galatians. The first part of this passage is often preached to unbelievers, but Paul was addressing professing believers. As believers this is a spiritual law of our lives in Christ. Every day we can sow spiritual seeds in the gardens of our lives, or we can sow seeds of our flesh in that garden.
William Barclay, a professor of Bible at Edinburgh University for forty years, wrote that when the Bible refers to our flesh it means “human nature unaided by God.” According to Paul, human nature unaided by God is a seed that produces corruption.
Every day we have the option to sow spiritual seeds in our lives. Paul writes that these spiritual seeds produce a continuous creation. David prayed “Create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit in me.” (Psalm 51:10) In the New Testament the apostles refer to being born again as a miracle of creation.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God…” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18)
This means we have two options before us every day: creation or corruption. We can sow spiritual seeds in the gardens of our lives that continue the act of creation God is miraculously performing in us, or we can sow seeds that produce corruption.
What seeds are you sowing in the garden of your life today?
Dick Woodward, 15 February 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 14, 2025
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love… I am nothing.” (I Corinthians 13:1-3)
The Apostle Paul composed an inspired poem of love in which he declared that the agape love of God should be the number one priority of spiritual people. In First Corinthians 13 he wrote that love is greater than knowledge and more important than faith.
Paul’s teaching about spiritual gifts in the previous chapter concludes with: “Earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I will show you a more excellent way.” (I Corinthians 12:31) Paul begins his great love chapter with his prescription for that most excellent way: “Let love be your greatest aim,” or “Put love first.”
A SUMMARY PARAPHRASE APPLICATION:
“If we speak with great eloquence or in tongues without love, we’re just a lot of noise. If we have all knowledge to understand all the Greek mysteries, the gift to speak as a prophet, and enough faith to move mountains, unless we love as we do all those things – we are nothing. If we give all our money to feed the poor and our body to be burned at the stake as a martyr, if we give and die without love, it profits us nothing.
Nothing we are, nothing we ever become, nothing we have and nothing we ever will have in the way of natural and spiritual gifts should ever move ahead of love as our first priority. Nothing we do or ever will do as an expression of our faith, our gifts, our knowledge, or our generous, charitable, unconditionally-surrendered heart is worthy of comparison, or can replace love as we live out our personal priorities in this world.”
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 11, 2025
“Love never fails.” (I Corinthians 13:8)
Human love is often based on performance. When we apply the love of Christ, our love is not based on the performance of those we love. That is what makes this love indestructible. The love of Jesus Christ is a tough, indestructible love because it is unconditional.
In wedding ceremonies, many couples make the unconditional vow: “…for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death us do part.” The living Christ, empowering the love Paul prescribes in 1 Corinthians 13, is the dynamic that makes that possible.
We can also make the application that these ways of love are irresistible, because they are inspirational. Peter, ultimately, could not resist the positive reinforcement of Jesus calling him a rock. I personally could not resist when my mentors prayed, imagined, dreamed, hoped and believed in my ultimate potential.
If you ask Christ to make your life a conduit of His love to your spouse, children, and those who are difficult to love – you may make the joyful discovery that they will ultimately find the love of Christ to be irresistible and inspirational. They will begin to believe what you pray, imagine, dream, hope and believe about and for them.
For 28 years, I experienced the gradual and relentless onset of paralysis, which reduced me to a helpless, bedfast quadriplegic. During that time, I have learned much about the love of Christ from my wife, who is the most selfless, others-centered person I have ever known. In all these years she has never taken a day, weekend or vacation from her care of me. There are very few people in this world who know how I do what it means to be the recipient of the unconditional and indestructible love of Christ.
Dick Woodward, from A Prescription for Love
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 7, 2025
“The Lord is my Shepherd…” (Psalm 23:1)
God created you and me to be people who make choices. God very much wants to be our Shepherd, but we must choose to make God our Shepherd. We must deliberately choose to say, “baa!” and become one of the sheep of God’s pasture. Can you declare the first five words of this great Shepherd Psalm as a personal confession of faith? Can you confess, “The Lord is my Shepherd?”
People touch me as they describe the way the Lord came into their lives, made them lie down and say, “baa!” I am frequently concerned, however, when I fail to hear how that relationship is working in their lives today. One of David’s most remarkable declarations in this psalm is that the blessings provided by his Shepherd-God are in place ‘all the days of my life.’
Be sure to make the observation that David’s great profession of faith is not, “The Lord was my Shepherd,” but that “The Lord is my Shepherd.” When the Lord makes you lie down and confess, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” you are also confessing that you are a sheep. Sheep are completely helpless and hopeless without their shepherd.
Years ago I was out of bed at an early hour. When my wife asked why I was getting up at 4:30a.m., I told her what I read during my devotions: “When you wake up, get up, and when you get up, do something for God’s lambs.” She responded, “baa!” (She was reminding me that she and our five children are also God’s lambs.)
Psalm 23 is filled with sheep talk that shows us that God wants to hear every one of us say, “baa!”
Dick Woodward, from Psalm 23 Sheep Talk
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Posted by Dick Woodward
February 4, 2025
“For if I make you sorrowful, then who is he who makes me glad but the one who is made sorrowful by me?” (2 Corinthians 2:2)
Every relationship we have is a two-way street. According to the Apostle Paul, whatever we send down that street comes back up the street and has a dynamic impact on that relationship. Jesus conveys this same truth with a positive spin when He teaches hypercritical people, “With the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.” (Matthew 7:2)
This was a marketplace metaphor in the culture where Jesus lived. If you were selling oats and a fellow merchant was selling wheat, when you bought from each other you could request to use their bushel standard of measurement. Paraphrased, this means whatever standard you use when you give to another person in a relationship, they will use when they give to you.
We cannot control the weather, but we can control the emotional climate that surrounds us in a relationship. Communication is not only what is said but what is heard. It is not only what is said but what is felt. How does the communication you are contributing within a relationship make the other person in that relationship feel? If you’re sending negative waves into that other person’s life, is that likely to inspire positive waves in your direction?
Paul gave us another great teaching on this subject when he wrote, “Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for the building up of others, that it may impart grace to the hearers.” (Ephesians 4:29)
Dick Woodward, 05 February 2011
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 31, 2025
“… But for this reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.” (John 12:27-28)
When we have a vision, we must also have a plan. It has been said that without vision the people perish, but without a plan the vision perishes. Nehemiah not only had a vision to repair and rebuild the wall around Jerusalem, he had a plan to do it. As an enslaved exile his plan was to present his vision to the emperor for whom he was a cup bearer.
This was extremely dangerous because there was a death penalty for being sad in the presence of the emperor, or for bringing anything negative to the emperor’s attention while he was serving him. Nehemiah had the faith to pray and then present his vision to the emperor. The emperor showed empathy and compassion for Nehemiah. He not only approved his plan, he supplied everything needed to see the plan was followed to the letter.
Has God put a vision in your heart of what He wants you to do? If you have a vision, do you have a plan? In that context consider this formula for your vision:
vision + faith + sacrifice = miracle
If you have a vision and a plan to carry out the vision, are you willing to sacrifice for that vision? Are you willing to die for that vision?
Jesus had a vision and a plan. He was willing to sacrifice and die for His vision. He mandated that we follow His example. Regarding your vision and plan, are you willing to pray: “Father glorify Yourself and send me the bill. Anything Father, just glorify Yourself…”
Dick Woodward, 30 January 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
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