"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 1:5-7 NAS

"He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." What a wonderful thing to know as we walk this daily walk we have in Christ that He is working in us constantly and faithfully till His return. He is always at work in us. Since we can be confident in this very thing, everyday we can work out our salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). This means of course to walk it out daily not work ourselves righteous. We are like purchased land that needs constant construction until the owner comes and takes possession.

Have you ever noticed that there are certain places where you drive that seem to have perpetual construction? They fix an area or repave an area and then it seems that the barricades are back up again. You are on the freeway and yet again there is construction going on in rush hour no less. I think some state people take pleasure in always having the roads under construction. To me, it seems like the roads they just were repairing last week are working fine. Well this we can be confident of; God takes pleasure in us and working in our daily lives.

In Philippians 2:13 it says, "for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure (NAS)." We are a constant construction site ourselves. If you could look at our hearts as a construction zone, you would see signs all over that say, "God at work!" instead of "Men at work". When we were in the world it was "Men at work". We were the construction crew of our lives and we were messing it all up pretty good. We might have been mixing too much mortar in our hearts to harden them. Cement is great until it is hardening in the wrong place.

We may have been trying to drive a backhoe into our hearts and digging ourselves into a great big hole. Whatever we were doing it was a mess that needed to be torn down and rebuilt by the Master Builder. We are a constant work in progress. When a crew comes out to repair or repave a road they know what they are doing. Have you watched a house get thrown up these days? It is amazing how fast a house can be built. It is experience that gets the job done right. It is people who know what they are doing and for sure God knows perfectly what He is doing with us.

When we try to build our hearts house on our own it gets done all wrong. Our foundation is not stable or level and that is the beginning of many problems. Jesus is the mortar of our lives. He is the rock of our salvation. When he pours into us the foundation then it is just right. "He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus." He is always improving us for the day when He will return and the work will be completed in us. We will be in perfection and in the very presence of the master builder, the eternal engineer and designer of our souls.

For most of us He had to come in and demolish the old dwelling. He had to then take out a lot of rubble from our hearts. He might have had to take away truckloads of broken down mortar and old rotten support beams that had failed. Then He comes in and gives us a new foundation with eternally strong footings all around. It has to have His foundation or the rest of the building will not stand. Some try to use a man made foundation with God made buildings materials. The end result is collapse and failure and it is unusable.

In the end when the foundations are tested the ones who have done this will say, "'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?' "And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness (Matt 7:22-23 NAS).' They may have decorated their lives with the things of Jesus, but have no real grounding to stand on. They may have done all the requirements of their church and still never built their hearts on the cross of Jesus Christ.

We who are the children of God and have surrendered our hearts to the Lord for whatever construction needs to be done will see Him faithful in the verse. We will see it until we see Jesus Christ in all His glory. Have a very blessed weekend in the Lord. Part two to come in the next devotional.

"Under Construction" in Him,
Adam