He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. \u2013Philippians 1:6<\/p>\n
When I was 5 years old, my parents bought their first house. One day they announced we were going to see our new home. We all jumped in the car and drove over to see where we would be living.<\/p>\n
I hated it.<\/p>\n
The house had no windows or doors, just openings in the walls. It had a funny smell. You could see the basement through big holes in the floorboards\u2013and there was only a ladder to get downstairs! Outside the house were all kinds of debris and wood. And the ground was just bumpy clay and dirt.<\/p>\n
That night I told my mom I didn\u2019t want to live in the house with holes in the floor. Why would anyone want to leave the nice place where we were living to go live in something like that? I couldn\u2019t understand why they would want to either.<\/p>\n
But what I had seen through my young eyes was not the complete picture. Eventually, the house did get windows \u2013 and doors. The \u201cfunny smell\u201d of new lumber faded. And the holes in the floor were covered. A staircase was added. The walls were painted. Mom put up curtains. And pictures on the walls. And plants in the living room. The leftover lumber disappeared. Dad put in a lawn, then some bushes and trees, and finally some flowers. It was now a home. And it was beautiful.<\/p>\n
Without the \u201cfinishing\u201d touches, no one would have wanted to live in that house. It was incomplete. As Christians, we need \u201cfinishing\u201d too. But that\u2019s not work that we can do on our own. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. The groundwork was laid at our conversion, and the Holy Spirit is continuing the sanctifying process. Our part of this job is to follow Jesus Christ, who is \u201cthe author and finisher of our faith\u201d (Hebrews 12:2). One day, our transformation will be complete.<\/p>\n
The saying goes: \u201cPlease be patient. God isn\u2019t finished with me yet!\u201d The process is absolutely necessary to produce the final product. Without being \u201croughed in,\u201d there can be no \u201cfinishing.\u201d<\/p>\n
You may sometimes feel that construction has stopped. There hasn\u2019t been any progress in quite a while. Don\u2019t give up. Continue your fellowship with the Lord. One day there will be some fine, finished masterpieces, ones that were designed and are now complete. That will be you . . . and me! \u2013CK<\/p>\n
REFLECTION
\n \u2022 Am I in the \u201croughing in\u201d process right now? How long have I been there?
\n \u2022 As I look back over the last few months, can I see anything that\u2019s different in my spiritual life? What has changed?<\/p>\n
God will complete the work He began in you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. \u2013Philippians 1:6 When I was 5 years old, my parents bought their first house. One day they announced we were going to see our new home. We all jumped in the car and drove over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5133,5132,4982,2921],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7252"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7252\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}