Thursday, April 14, 2005

Endless Revisions

Some of you may recognize this blog entry as an old chorale testimony of mine...others have perhaps read it as a weekly devotional on Kingdom Building Ministries' website. I was reading the verse this morning and it was on my heart again, so I decided to post it here.

"...being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" --Philippians 1:6

As a writer, I spend a whole lot of my time revising. Once I finally get a first draft on paper, my job isn't even close to finished. No matter how long I work on an essay or an article or a poem, it seems like the piece is never complete--for every part I fix or improve, I can find a million more that need to be tweaked!

Many times, I've wondered if God feels that way with me. Ever since I received Him as my Lord and Savior, He has been molding and shaping me to be more like His Son. But sometimes I get discouraged as I realize how far I have to go. I've grown a lot since those early days in my journey with Him, but I am still not anywhere close to where I want to be--and where I know He longs for me to be.

I thought about how frustrated God might be as He realizes how much revision is still to come in my life. I can just imagine Him saying, "The revisions never end! Each time I teach her a new lesson, there are four hundred more for her to learn. And then she stubbornly insists on being taught the same ones over again!"

But in his letter to the Philippians, Paul encourages the believers by saying that as he prays for them, he is "...confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." Paul knew that the Christian life is a marathon, not a short sprint, and that sometimes the road of growth ahead seems daunting. He reminded the Philippian church that God wouldn't give up on them!

I am so comforted as I realize that God doesn't get fed up with me and quit trying. I may be tempted to quit revising and call a writing project "good enough," but thankfully, God doesn't ever quit the work of refining and perfecting my character. That confidence is a great hope to me: His work in me didn't end with my salvation! That gift of grace was only the start of the countless ways in which He would be continually working in and through my life.

God doesn't start something without finishing it. He promises to work on perfecting us until the day Christ comes!

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