Wood and Nails

The work was done with nothing but
Wood and nails in Your scar-borne hands
O show me how to work and praise
Trusting that I am Your instrument
Wood and Nails by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project

Over the past few days, this song has been playing on repeat in my head. Those four lines, playing over and over like a broken record. I cannot seem to get them out. But, to be entirely honest, I don’t want them to leave.

The work was done.
It is finished was His cry. The debt was paid. The ransom handed over. The innocent Lamb of God, sacrificed so that the guilty can go free. It will never be undone. It can never be undone. My Saviour died and rose for me so that I could be free from all my sin and shame. Free from the slavery of the flesh. Free to be His. Called to be His. I am His.

With nothing but wood and nails in Your scar-borne hands.
It was not by my hands that I am made His. Nothing in my hands I bring. Simply to the Cross I cling. The Son of God, the chosen Messiah, died upon a Roman cross so that I can have life eternal. By His wounds, I am healed. Now I am to live in response.

Oh show me how to work and praise.
I want to go into vocational ministry. The only response I can think of that would honour the Saviour of my life, it to spend it telling and teaching others about how the good news is to be part of theirs. I want to praise Him with all of who I am. I want my life to be a life of utter worship and devotion to my Lord. But I know that this is only possible because He is at work within me.

Trusting that I am Your instrument.
Now that I am His, I am at His will. I am His to bring Him glory however He sees fit. My life is now about His glory. About His praise. About Him. I am to be His instrument to call others to Himself. May He see it pleasing to use me until my life is spent so that I am able to say with joy that I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith.

Just before he died, Polycarp prayed this prayer. Let these words be mine when I am taken to glory:
O Lord God Almighty, the Father of your beloved and blessed Son Jesus Christ, by whom we have received the knowledge of you, the God of angels, powers and every creature, and of all the righteous who live before you, I give you thanks that you count me worthy to be numbered among your martyrs, sharing the cup of Christ and the resurrection to eternal life, both of soul and body, through the immortality of the Holy Spirit. May I be received this day as an acceptable sacrifice, as you, the true God, have predestined, revealed to me, and now fulfilled. I praise you for all these things, I bless you and glorify you, along with the everlasting Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. To you, with him, through the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and forever.

Amen.