Our theme for this month: “Change can be good for you”
Our Bible verse for today: “I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “God is at work in your life”
Philippians 1:6 is an amazing verse of scripture which communicates some deep and important truth about God, and about His work in our lives. Only twenty-six words in the Christian Standard Bible, but twenty-six words that reveal deep and profound theological truths.
For one thing, Paul tells us that God is at work in our lives and He is in the process of accomplishing something important. He started it at the time we placed our faith in His Son Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, and He will continue that work until the day in heaven when we are complete in Christ and we will be the person God intends for us to be for all eternity. Paul was writing about the doctrine of sanctification. Sanctification is the life-long process whereby the Holy Spirit slowly and progressively molds and shapes us into the people we are supposed to be. It’s an ongoing process that progresses daily, and will continue until you take your final breath and pass into heaven.
Also found in that verse is the implied truth that God must then be sovereign over the events of our lives. God is omnipotent (all-powerful); He is omniscient (all-knowing); and He is omnipresent (present everywhere, all the time). He is everywhere, He knows everything, and He has complete power and total control over everything. That includes the events of your life. You will never experience anything in your life that God isn’t aware of. You also will never experience anything that He has not either caused directly, or chosen to allow. And He uses all of it to help accomplish His good purposes in your life.
Fast-forward now to today’s COVID 19 crisis and the associated economic meltdown. Bad stuff, right? Inconvenient and painful, right? Yes, and yes. But God is sovereign over these events in your life, and He is using it as part of the process of your sanctification (Romans 8:28). That doesn’t mean that the things that are happening to you at the moment are necessarily good, but it does mean that God can and will bring good things out of this bad situation to help further His work in your life.
Can you see His activity in your life? Are you paying attention to it? Are you cooperating with Him as He works to bring good out of bad and to use it all in the continuing process of transforming you into the person He wants you to be? Sanctification implies change, and change means that things don’t stay the same.
As we continue our study of “Change can be good for you”, I will attempt to help us see some of the ways in which God may be using this current crisis to bring about good change in our individuals lives, and in our nation.
Oak Hill Baptist Church