Hammer Time?
I saw Jim Coffield last night when I participated for the first time in the graduation ceremony for Reformed Theological Seminary. One time I was building a shed in my backyard. Jim, who is now head of the practical psychology department at RTS Orlando, came over to help. My son Alex, who was maybe two or three years old at the time, was out with us with a little plastic red hammer. I was unloading all my anxieties and the weight of my burden as a church planter to Jim. He said something like this: “Larry even on your best days you are like your son Alex with his little red hammer. God is building his kingdom and his church and you’re working up a sweat with your little red hammer. You act like he needs you to help him build your kingdom but He’s doesn’t, He just likes having you with him in the work.” I often forget that but when I remember and recall that picture it invites me up into something bigger than me and about which there are no fears. The Westminster confession says because of our adoption we serve God, “not with slavish fear but child-like love and obedience”? I’ve been trying to remember lately to pray in faith, as a child, every time I feel anxious or concerned. Or for that matter every time I see an issue that needs to be addressed or an action that needs to be taken or a problem that needs to be fixed. To pray in light of Philippians 4 – be anxious for nothing but in everything with prayer and petition let your request be known to God. Or the promise of Jesus in Luke 11 — ask, see, knock, your Father gives the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.
J.I. Packer says talks about the doctrine of our adoption in his book Knowing God. He says.
Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love, and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship – he establishes us as his children and heirs. Closeness, affection and generosity are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the Judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the Father is a greater”
[Knowing God, pp. 206, 207].
If you are a child of God through faith in Christ, listen to the music of the gospel and pick up your little hammer and dance around with it as you join the Father in his work. Hammer away not because God’s purposes depend on you but because it delights him to have you by his side as he fixes what needs to be repaired and builds his church and his kingdom.
Larry is the senior pastor at 
Sometimes we must use that little red hammer to beat the gospel into our heads!
I love this, “Hammer away not because God’s purposes depend on you but because it delights him to have you by his side as he fixes what needs to be repaired and builds his church and his kingdom.” Picking up that same theme in Philippians, Paul in chapter 2 explains to the Christians that “it is God who works in them both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” This is remarkable because it can produce in us that unique balance of humility, because it is God working, and confidence, because he delights in having us get involved in the work he is doing.
Are you trying to tell me I wasn’t helping very much with my red hammer?