As Christians, it is our joy and privilege to serve the Lord; what a blessing is this, that He would condescend to use sinners such as ourselves to accomplish His purpose!

But we should also realize that He is not merely using us for the sake of His work. Rather, we need to be clear that God, being our heavenly Father, brings us into His work so that He may bring us into a closer relationship with Himself. To put it another way, we may feel God desires to gain us to do His work, but in a deeper sense, He is using His work to gain us.

We see this in the verse above. Have you ever noticed the order of the prepositions here? It is different from what we would expect. We would certainly put “over all” first, as the verse does, since God is the one who arranges everything in this universe for the sake of His purpose. But then we would put “in all” next, and only after that say “through all”; this is because we naturally feel God must first work “in” us before He can carry out His purpose “through” us.

The apostle, however, switches the order of the last two prepositions, telling us that the Father is first “through all” and then “in all.” He does this because, as our Father, God’s goal is not merely to accomplish a work; rather, it is to gain so many sons who know Him and are in relation with Him. And very often, the way we come to know Him more deeply is through the work He gives us to do for Him.

Are you serving the Lord in some capacity today? If that service is genuine, it will cause you to know God more deeply as you deal with Him to carry out that service. And we should certainly have that view—that I am not only doing a work for God, but rather, through that work, my heavenly Father is bringing me into a deeper experience of what it means to be a child and son of God who is in relation with Himself. Because that, and not some mere work, is what is really on His heart for me.

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— 15 July 2026 —