It’s not uncommon to hear of pastors or parents taking up a hobby that allows them to monitor progress and see a finished result. Ask almost anyone that spends their life helping people and they’ll tell you that they enjoy working on projects that result in a finished product.
Items on a to-do list get checked off. The result is measurable. The work is finished.
What pastor or parent doesn’t know the guilt and frustration of viewing the church or their children as unfinished works in process rather than people to love? We look for benchmarks along the way, seeking to measure progress and growth, but so much of real, Christ-exalting, Spirit-empowered, discipleship-driven ministry and parenting can’t be measured and doesn’t always have a finished product that we can see.
On top of that, we add more tasks to our lists than we can accomplish. We have great plans for all we’ll do at the outset of the day, and some emergency or counseling need or mess or other delay arises, and we fall further behind. The people you’re discipling take two steps forward and three steps back. Your kid does that thing you’ve been correcting him for again, for the tenth time that day.
Pastoring and parenting are full of stalled out starts and works in progress, and we’re in progress as much as anyone we’re leading.
And this is where I’ve found fresh encouragement today: God has never begun something he didn’t finish!
This is the glorious truth promised to us in Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in you will be faithful to bring it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
That promise is sweet to every believer. Who doesn’t wish they were more like Jesus than they are? Who doesn’t get discouraged that they struggle with sins they feel they should have conquered by now? The one who cried “It is finished!” over our redemption from the cross will cry “it is finished!” over his fully sanctified, Christ-like, glorified new creations in the coming kingdom. Jesus will finish what he started in his people. Every single one of us.
This is also amazing encouragement for both pastors and parents.
Fellow pastor, I pray this encourages you: God started the work in the people he entrusted to your care, and he will finish his work in them. He will bring every single blood-bought and struggling saint in your local congregation safely home. They will become completely Christ-like when they see Jesus face to face.
Fellow parents, may this land deep in our souls: God alone can begin and finish his saving work in our children. We can’t produce it or create a formula to make it happen. We plant the gospel. We water with his word. But God alone can make hearts come alive and make them his dwelling place. And in spite of our parenting failures and our children’s wanderings, he will bring all who are his home and completely finish the work he started in them.
Next time you feel the limitations of your humanity in unfinished ministry or undone projects, rejoice in knowing that God never leaves his work undone. He doesn’t need us, but he delights to work through us and in us. He will bring all his work to completion. May God’s faithfulness to his work in you and through you fuel greater courage and hope in the work he’s called you to.
