Subject: “There is a Fantastic Finish in Your Future”
As a Child of God, you are a work in progress, you will finish well! You will experience a fantastic finish, because God, our master builder will finish what He has started In you. You can be confident of it!
Text: Philippians 1:6 “Paul and Timotheus, the servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ Jesus which 6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
Introduction: Believers today seem to be caught in a rat race for happiness. But the sad thing is, happiness is elusive because it depends upon our circumstances, and what happens to us. We never think about it, but what happens when our toys will rust, loved ones will die, health will deteriorate, money is stolen, and the party is over? Often happiness flees and despair sets in.
Paul in the book of Philippians lifts up the idea of Joy instead of happiness. For joy runs much deeper and stronger, it flows from the quiet confidence of a genuine relationship with God and his Son Jesus the Christ. We are encouraged to rejoice in the Lord always and again to rejoice. Paul is not writing the letter from a place of comfort and easy. He is presently in a Rome jail facing an uncertain future. Somehow he had learned, whatever the circumstance, to be content. He found real joy in focusing all his attention on Christ and fulfilling his heavenly calling.
The letter is really a thank note to the church at Philippi for the wonderful gift he received from them. Paul’s design and purpose is to strengthen and encourage the church to keep on keeping on. One of the main problems today in the church seems to frustration and anxiety. People struggle to find peace and contentment with others, with the church, and even with themselves. We seem to forget that we are all “A work in progress.” But you can rest assured THAT GOD IS GOING TO FINISH WHAT HE HAS STARTED IN YOU. And the truth is, His good work in you may have just begun. I know that this truth applies to my life, God is not through with me yet! In fact, sometimes I get the feeling, He is just getting started.
I want to try and show you, convince you through God’s Word, and Encourage You to See Yourself through God’s Eyes, To See How Much God Values You. We struggle to find peace and contentment because we down on ourselves and are sometimes disappointed with ourselves. But the entrance of the Word gives light and understanding to the simple. This passage has encouraged my heart, and I trust it will encourage you. When we take it to heart, and really listen to What God says about us in His Word, we will be overwhelmed by His Love, and we will begin to see ourselves in His light and we will then be hard pressed to be “down” on ourselves anymore.
I want to share three important things to remember as we run the Christian race: First, remember the great love God has for you and His joy over you. God knows you are a work in progress. So, count on a fantastic finish!
1. Remember God Loves you and Rejoices over you.
Php 1:2 “Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, 4 Always in every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy, 5 For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now;”
There is probably no parable that demonstrates God’s love towards us as the stories related to us in Luke 15. The parables talk about a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost son. The stories describe the Father’s love for you and me. Don’t miss it, let the idea stink in, and think about what it means in your life now. In each case given in the parable, no expense in spared, the woman who lost the coin, lit a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it. And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.” God spared nothing in His search for you. He gathered the greatest search party that has ever been formed in order to find you. He sent His Son, His Holy Spirit, and His Angels after you. As they searched, He had his people pray for you, you will never fully know how deep, how thorough, and how costly His search was. You do not belong to Him today because of chance, or accident, or a stroke of fate. You are His because He never gave up His search until He found You.
Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all--how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?” Do you know that God Rejoices because you are His? Remember God Rejoices over you......not based on how good you are, but He loves you for who you are.
2. Remember, God Is Still Working on You. Php 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
You are a work in progress, God has begun a Good Work in you. His Spirit is in you, living in you, changing you, molding you, using you for His good pleasure. You are a work in progress. You are a project that God is working on, and you will not be complete until Christ comes back. Allowing God to change you, to mold you, and to use you many times is painful, many times it’s hard, but it’s always rewarding and fulfilling. I always want to be open to God’s work in my life because the truth be told, when I accept Jesus, I gave up my rights to do my own thing. I died to myself, and I told God that He had control of everything. So I must continue to allow Him to chisel away, to sometimes convict me, sometimes discipline me, and always to use me how He sees fit.
There is always a lot of stuff on a construction site, some good and debris. Conditions constantly change on a construction site, there may be storms, disruptions, pandemic, floods, and sunshine. Don’t allow the stuff to frustrate you, it’s normal! It’s not a surprise to God. This is point where some Christians struggle in their Christian experience. They fail to completely surrender control of their lives to God. They refuse to allow God to work in them. Some lose out because of their unwillingness to grow beyond their salvation experience to discipleship and sanctification. There’s no such thing as camping right inside the pearly gates once you get saved, you must continue to grow on your spiritual journey, if you don’t keep growing and climbing higher, then you will eventually fall away. You are a work in progress, God will finish what He has started in you, but you must remember that God is the one working in you, it’s not your project. You can’t produce in your strength virtues only God can give. Only God through His Holy Spirit can produce His fruit in you: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and self-control. God is still working on you!
3. Remember, God Sees Your Progress
God does not see you as a failure when He looks at you. We like to keep score don’t we? It’s human nature to keep accounts, to keep the score, to try and find a winner and a loser. We bring this whole idea into our relationships; and in our relationship with God. We rate ourselves in relationships based on many things including our outward appearances. We tend to compare ourselves to others, compare our worldly possessions, and all kind of other things get involved. But how does God rate us? What criteria does He use? The number of prayers we say? How much we put in the offering plate? How often we attend Church? What? We have a real problem in this area. I believe that not only do we apply unreal standards for success or failure to ourselves, but we also think somehow that God judges us by those same kinds of standards. When we do, we give ourselves a double burden. As I was thinking about How God looks at me, I started asking myself, How do I look at my kids? I know that even my views of my kids are skewed by the way we all look at things. But I realized that when I look at my sons, I wouldn’t judge them a success or failure based on material things, or whether or not they made A’s or D’s. When it’s all said and done, the only thing that really matters is do they have a personal relationship with God? Do they love Jesus? Are they continuing on to know Jesus more?
When the Father sees you, He’s not looking at your report cards, or your work schedule, or your paycheck stubs. He’s looking at your heart, do you Love Him? Do you love Him more than anything else that’s put in front of you? Will you striving to serve Him? When God sees us, if we’re a Christian, He sees a heart that has been covered by the blood of Jesus. He sees a person who is living for Him. Our responsibility is to keep growing, to never stop growing. Part of the growing process is making mistakes. In fact, if you don’t embrace the fact that you’re going to make mistakes along the way, you will never grow. The fact is in life, the question is not will you make mistakes; if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with your mistakes and problems. J. Wallace Hamilton said: “People are training for success when they should be training for failure. Failure is
far more common than success; poverty is more prevalent than wealth; and
disappointment more normal than arrival.”
Apostle Paul knew that there is no achievement without failure. There is no reigning with Christ without suffering. So, he encourages the church to keeping growing and going. We must not give up on ourselves or others. We are all a work in progress, at different stages of growth and development. God is our wise master builder. Every trial He allows will help develop and shape us. We don’t give up. With every defeat He allows we move us closer to victory. With every discouragement God allows, will work for us. As Christians, we just need to be that much more determined, with every slammed door, we must knock harder, and never give up because we believe that God loves us and He is still working in us and through us! We believe that God is maturing us for a specific purpose. So, when we get knocked down by life or discouragement, we get back up and continue on.
Be encouraged in your own spiritual life because you are loved by God. Be encouraged because you know and believe that God is not through working in you, and He is going to complete what He has started in you. Put away your doubts. Put away your fears. Those things are not of God. Stand on the truth, live by faith, believe and be excited about what God is doing and will continue to do in your life and in the community of faith. Php 1:6 “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:”
