God Will Finish What He Has Started In You.
Pastor Glenn Newton 1-17-01
Text : Philippians 1:3-6
How many of you here this morning have a unfinished project waiting for you at home?
Go ahead, raise your hand, Something you have been working on, trying to get finished,
maybe for along time, but for whatever reason, you haven’t quite completed it? How
many? Somebody share with us, what is your project that your needing to finish? It’s
confession time.
I would say almost all of us have some kind of project, some kind of goal, that we are
working on, or at least from time to time we have one. It’s a human nature kind of thing.
Whether it’s working in your yard, planting flowers or tree’s, or maybe fixing up your old
barn, or maybe it’s redesinging your house, or it could be reading a book, doing a puzzle,
whatever. We all have some kind of projects that we undertake.
Now my next question will probably divide us up evenly, and it can be the source of
conflict in some cases, but let me ask it anyway.
How many of you will only do one project at a time, and you will not even think
about starting another one until the first one is finished? If this describes you, I would
guess that unfinished projects kind of bother you until there done, right?
Then there’s the other side, how many of you can have two or three projects kind
of lying around, all of them about half-way done, and your attitude is kind of like, I’ll get
to them when I get a chance?
Now if you put these two different types of people working on the same project, can you
understand the why’s there’s conflict? But you can also understand why they compliment
each other and make for a good blend, if done properly.
This morning My Real topic isn’t conflicting personalities, but instead I want to
Remind You, THAT GOD IS GOING TO FINISH WHAT HE HAS STARTED, IN
YOU. And This Truth also applies to the New Hope Church, God isn’t done with us, In
Fact I get the Feeling He’s just getting started.
For the next couple weeks, 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.
If your down on yourself, these next few weeks, I hope that You will Find God’s
Truth and New Light about You. You see, I’m convinced that when we will take to heart,
when we will 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.
This morning I want to share 3 Things to Remember as We Talk about How God
Will Finish What He has started in my life.
First, Remember God’s Great Love for you, and How He rejoices over you even now,
right now.
Turn in your Bibles with me to Luke 15:8-9 - Jesus is telling a Parable, a story that
describes the Father’s Love for you. Don’t let it get by you this morning, take it in, think
about what it means in your life today.
“Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Does she not light 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 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 your His?
How many of you parents ever have walked into your childrens bedrooms at night right
before you go to bed, just to look at them, all quiet, peaceful, do you remember your heart
just jumping with joy........you could say, Rejoicing because there so precious to you.
How much more does God Rejoice over you, His Child? Remember God Rejoices
over you......not based on how good you are, but He loves you for who you are..,,,
The Second Important Reminder, God Is Working In You.
In our passage, it talks about a Good Work that has been started, that work
specifically, is God 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. Now, for those of you that don’t like
projects that don’t get done “right now”, this idea might be hard for you to swallow. But
for people like me, who don’t mind a couple of projects all going at once, I can handle it
OK....
Let me give you the key, 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
can look at my wife and see how God has done so much in her life, What you see today is
a result of God working, but also a result of Nola allowing God to work in her.
I always want to be open to God’s work in my life, because the truth be told, I gave up my
rights along time ago, I died to myself, and I told God that He had control of my
everything. And if that’s true, then I must continue to allow Him to chisle away, to
sometimes convict me, sometimes discipline me, and always to use me how He see’s fit.
What changes has God done in your life this last year? Can you list some of the things
that He has chisled away? Can you list some of the areas that He has convicted you
about? How has he used you this last year to minister to other’s?
I will warn you on this point, this is where to many Christians begin to grow cold
in thier Christian experience. They don’t surrender control of their lives, and God is not
allowed to work in them, and this leads to disobedience, which leads to sin. Many
Christians have lost out because of their unwillingness to grow beyond their salvation
experience. There’s no such thing as camping right inside the pearly gates, when you get
saved, you must continue on your spiritual journey, if you don’t keep climbing, then you
will eventually fall away.
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 What God only can give.
Only God through His Holy Spirit can produce: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness,
Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and self-control.
The Third Important thing to Remember, God Doesn’t See Failure When He
Looks At You.
We like to keep score don’t we? It’s human nature to keep acconts, 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, outward apprearances, we compare ourselves to others, we look at
worldly possessions, all kind of things get involved.
So becuase we use these types of things, does that mean God does too?
Does God rate us as a failure or a success? And if he does, what is the critieria? How
many prayers do I say? Is it how much I put in the offering plate?
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 kind of standards. We give ourself the double whammy.
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 girls, 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?
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 serve Him?
When God see’s us, If were a Christian, he see’s a heart that Has been covered by His
Son’s Blood, and he sees’ a person who is living for Him. Our responsiblity is to keep
growing, to never stop growing.
Part of the growing process is failure. In fact, If you don’t embrace the fact that
your going to fail along the way, you will never grow.
The fact is in life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are
going to deal with your problems.
“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.” J. Wallace Hamilton -
The truth is there is no acheivment without failure. How many times did the
disciples have to fail miserably before they could see their need for the Holy Spirit? How
many times did the Apostle Paul get thrown out of town while trying to Preach the
Gospel? How many times was he arrested? Beaten?
How many times will we show the church before it sells? How many different
plans do we need to come up with to accomplish what we want? The answer is not a
number friends. The answer is We don’t stop. We don’t give up. With every defeat,
were that much closer to victory.
With every discouragement, we just need to get that much more determined, with
every slam of the door, we just knock that much harder, we don’t give up. We Believe
that God is still working in us and through us, Don’t we?
We believe that God is Raising up New Hope Church of the Nazarene for a
specific reason don’t We? If so, then we don’t get down, we just keep getting ready.
This morning I am challenging you, in your own spiritual life and in the church.
You need to know and believe that God is not done working in you, and He is going to
complete what He has started in You. And in our Church.
So I’m asking you, I’m pleading with you, Put away your doubts. Put away your
fears. Those things are not of God. Stand on Truth, Live by Faith, Believe and Be
excited about What God is doing and will continue to do in our community of Faith.
Friends, it’s time to bring in the harvest, it’s time to meet those neighbors, it’s time
to talk to those strangers, bring them to New Hope, Let’s share What God has for them.
Let’s share His Love, His Light, His Life, which make’s a difference.
Are you ready for the new year? Remember, God is still working in YOu.
