LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
God's Work in Us
"Let thy work appear in thy servants" (Psalm 90:16).
This Psalm is full of experience and wisdom. It is subtitled: "Prayer of Moses, a man of God". Who but he knew God as a refuge, ever faithful and merciful? Moses knew brokenness, and in all the dealings of the Lord with his life and with his people, he learned that man is frail, that he cannot be trusted, for he is full of foolishness, ephemeral and ignorant.
What does man know of the power and fear of God? But how different it is when God acts in man! "Let thy work appear in thy servants". This is perhaps the deepest and most anguished prayer of a servant of the Lord. When all our work is troubled, when we count our days and seem to have done nothing meritorious. The psalm has a sad tone, like the cry of a dejected servant who has learned, through many blows, that the only thing of real value is God's work in us.
God has been at work within us for a long time, ever since we knew him, and even before. Paul, writing in anguish to his beloved in Galatia, expressed this very thing: "My little children, for whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you" (4:19).
This is the work of God that must be manifested in us. Our problem is that often "our work" appears, our history, our forms, and then we separate ourselves from other servants and differentiate ourselves by our littleness. However, when the work of the Lord appears in us, his servants, we will no longer have anything to boast about, because then the light and glory will be his alone.
The work of the Lord in each of His servants coincides where Christ is being formed, where His character is being shaped. There, unquestionably, there will be agreement and communion, for light has communion with light, faith with faith, love with love, meekness with meekness; in short, where is "Christ in us, the hope of glory".
This is the work of God that must begin to appear more and more clearly in our time, while ours is wearing out, and everything in which we have lost our way seeking our own glory deteriorates and even dies, the work of God must shine forth, unmistakable, powerful, stable, and eternal. "Let thy work and thy glory appear in thy servants over their children!".