Philippians: God Isn't Finished Yet

This blog is about pages 141-143 in the book The Smart Guide to the Bible: Paul and the Prison Epistles.

Philippians 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (NKJV).

This verse shows us that we are not in control over our spiritual growth; God is. It says that He has begun a good work in us and that He will complete it. Sometimes I feel like I should be working harder to grow spiritually, but it isn’t up to me. We shouldn’t obey God just because we want to grow spiritually, but because we want to please Him. We need to trust that God is working in us because the last touches won’t be done until we reach heaven. If we try ourselves to reach perfection, we will be disappointed in the end. I really struggle with this because I like trying to do things myself. But really, I should be glad that only God can do this because then the fact that I can’t do it doesn’t make me any less of a person. But when I depend on God, I am perfect in Him.

The “work” that Paul is talking about is God making us into the likeness of Jesus. Things that happen in our lives are put there by God to shape us into the likeness of Jesus. We can’t be completely like Jesus as long as we are in our mortal bodies, but when we meet Him face to face in heaven, we will be made complete. Still, we need to grow closer to that, and the only way we can continue to grow is to allow God to grow that in our lives. Sure, on our own we can get so far, but with God’s work in our lives, we can grow even more than we could on our own. I’ve been experiencing a lot of this in my life these past few months. Before, I thought that it was my job to grow spiritually and to work to become more like Christ. It’s safe to say I wasn’t doing that great of a job. But recently I’ve been handing more and more over to God, and He has been making me grow faster than I would have ever imagined!

We will never stop growing. If we ever come to a place where we think we are done growing, then that is like telling God we don’t need His help. We will always need His help, and we will always be growing. A year ago, the place I am at now was my goal. I thought once I got here I would be done. But now I look back and know I’ve come a long way, but I also look forward and see that God has so much more He has to teach me and grown in me. I will never have that comfortable walk with God—no one that is truly doing God’s will in their lives will have a “comfortable” walk. God wants us to struggle and grow all of our lives. The only time when we will “arrive” at a place where we can stop growing is when we arrive in heaven and God completes the work He has started in us.

When we look at spiritual growth, we need to be careful to look at things long term instead of day to day. When we look at things day to day, there isn’t much growth and we can be discouraged. I know that I haven’t grown much since yesterday, but when I look at even a month ago, I see such great growth in my life. God has shown me a lot this past month. Sometimes there will be dry periods, and growth can’t be measured by month, but by year. When we look at our growth, we need to look long term so we aren’t discouraged by the lack of growth in the smaller periods of time. God’s timing is a little different than ours, and we need to remember that He will do things when He knows they are right for us.