“…baring confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
Have you ever started a project and never finished it? Many years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, a close friend and I asked a retired farmer if we could tear down a dilapidated old barn that was on the back of his property. The barn was literally falling down. Our goal was for each of us to obtain enough usable lumber to build a small storage shed on the back of our property. The farmer readily agreed. It was a win win situation. The retired farmer would get rid of an eyesore for free and we would get the lumber we needed to build our storage sheds. However, as we began the project, doing it after work and on Saturdays, we soon discovered, after a few weeks, that the project was much bigger than we thought. The work was taking much longer than we had anticipated. And then life happened! Our jobs began requiring more of our time and our ability to work on the project began to quickly diminish. Finally we had to abandon the project altogether because of limited time. That was a disappointing experience for us as well as the farmer. I have always regretting not completing that project and fulfilling our agreement. I had to apologize to the farmer and ask his forgiveness. The farmer gave the remainder of the usable lumber to someone else and burned the rest.
The wonderful thing about Jesus is that whenever He begins a project, He always finishes it! He is never caught by surprise or overwhelmed by the size of a project. [After all He created the entire universe. John 1:3]. He knows from the beginning exactly how long a project it will take and what is required to complete it. Nothing catches Him by surprise! He is not limited by time and space. He exists in eternity and always has the eternal perspective and the finished work in mind.
Jesus has promised that the work which He began in us on the day of our redemption, will be fully and perfectly completed on the day when He returns and establishes His eternal Kingdom! That is indeed good news!
We may think that we are too old, too broken down, too unsightly, too messed up, too useless and too hopeless for God to do anything with us. We may wonder how God could possibly do anything with us in out condition! But Jesus has promised to “make all things new”; including us! (2 Cor.5:17; Rev.21:5). And because nothing is impossible with God, (Mark 10:27), we can therefore trust Him to complete what He has begun in us! We are not yet what we want to be. And we are not yet what we are going to be. But thank God, we are not what we were! We are a work in progress! And we can rest assured that the work that He has begun in us will be completed and it will be perfect!
James W. Black