Day of Completion

DEVOTION

THE LETTER TO THE PHILIPPIANS

DAY OF COMPLETION

Phil 1:1-6

1:1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,

To all the saints in Christ Jesus at Philippi, together with the overseers and deacons: 2 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 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.

NIV

It is good to remember all the fellow believers we have encountered over the years. We have fond memories of our times together. The question is whether we remember to thank God for all of those who we have known and fellowshipped with. Of course, in the hectic day to day affairs of life, we do not have those memories in the constant forethought of our mind. It would make sense that Paul did not either. He spent much of his time as a believer traveling around various regions, spending time sharing the gospel message first in the synagogues and then in the streets or various public forums. His daily life was quite filled with the present activity and at times he was persecuted, beaten and thrown out of town. So for him, as with us, the memories of past fellowships may not be our only thoughts. However, when something happens and we do remember those past associations, we should voice a prayer of thanksgiving, thanking God for bringing us together. In addition, when we do remember them and thank God for those believers, we should be filled with joy, because of them and their faith in Christ, and for what that have done and may well still be doing for the kingdom of God. Of course, some of those faithful believers we once knew well have gone home to be with the Lord. But we still have fond memories of those times together. Hopefully, they who are still alive would have fond memories of the times spent with us. What both of us can have confidence in is that it is God who began this good work in us. He was the one who broke through the darkness of our lives and shown his light into us. He is the one who called us into his service and filled us with His Spirit, empowering us to do that which he has called us to do. It is God and God alone who is going to complete that work in us. He is the one who has transformed us and is continuing to transform us into the image of his Son. That good work of his will continue until Jesus comes for us. We are always being in the state of being transformed. We will never arrive at a complete transformed state until the day of Jesus Christ. But we know it is God who does it all, from the beginning to the end. We live with anticipation of that day, however, we also live with confidence that God will do what he does best in our lives. So we live with our great memories with joy, and we live in the present with confidence, and we look forward to our day of completion.