Good Work Perfect

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

Philippians 1:6

Every now and then I get on a role where I give God my best effort and the results don’t pan out the way I think they should.

When I was young, I went on a local mission trip. The goal was to take the Gospel to every door in a small city.  We spent a couple days learning the right way to present the Gospel.  Then we were paired up and sent out to do door to door evangelism.  My partner and I spent a week having doors slammed in our faces.  The last hour of the last day we were rejoicing that our ordeal would soon be over.

Then we knocked on a door and a teenage boy answered.  We gave our speech about how we were going door to door to invite people to a new church and then we worked our way into the Roman’s road to salvation.  When we finished, we asked the critical question, “Would you like to ask Jesus to be your Savior?” 

The young man said, “Yes.”  And, we prayed with him.

We could hardly contain our joy that at last our work bore fruit.  We gave the young man a Bible and an invitation to Church. 

Years later I realized that all those slammed doors represented seeds of the Gospel, which might later grow as others came after us and presented the Gospel. 

The work we thought was not perfect was part of God’s plan and God used us to help perfect it.