Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

This evening’s passage of consideration is a very familiar one to all of us. We have used it often to encourage one another in those times of difficulty, of frustration, and of despair. It is a bedrock passage of the Christian life lived out from Christ. Without the full assurance that God will complete that which He has begun, many of us would give up and succumb to the defeated attitude that this world order tries to instill into its victims. This deceitful age traps its victims in the roots of their utter despair of anything. When a person believes that there is no hope, that despair opens the floodgates to all the depravity and vial lies that this world uses to ensnare and bind its captives. That is why this passage is one of the confident declarations of truth as laid out by the Holy Spirit, in the Word of God, to give us the hope and the assurance that is required to live the life unto which we are called on this earth. As we know that God will complete that which He has started, so will we confidently hold firm in Him until the day of Christ.
As I mentioned, we are familiar with that aspect of our passage of consideration, but how fully indwelling is it in the very heart of our beings? Let us look at this in another way. We are confident that God will do that which He has started in our lives. That is the beginning aspects that most of us realize and hold onto. We see the Lord working in our lives, bringing about those changes which are required for His Life of Christ to shine forth from these vessels that we have offered up unto Him. In us, we see the Holy Spirit actively bringing into fruition, those hearts that have sought after the Lord to have His way, by whatever path He may choose to use. Yes, there are those times of seeming inactivity, but even after a period of desert dwelling, we come into the refreshment of continued growth in Him, and we can see how far He has brought us.
This truth is wonderful and will be evident, even if we can’t see it at the moment. But this is such a limited aspect of the reality of this passage. There is much more at work, by the Holy Spirit, than the egocentric view of His being at work simply in us to accomplish His will, glorious as that miracle is in itself. 
We need to have the Lord bring about a further reality of this great spiritual certainty. It is not just in us that God is at work. He is at work in all those who are His children. Ah hah! You may say to yourself! I knew that. But my question is how fully do we acknowledge this fact? How much of this truth is instilled into our hearts after the work of the Lord in those members of our family, as an example? When we view our spouse, are we viewing him or her with the eyes of spiritual enlightenment that God is accomplishing His perfect work in them as well as in us? Do we realize that God is using us as a tool to bring about that which He desires in their lives? Have we given ourselves over to the Lord to completely and absolutely love them by whatever means He chooses? 
There is so much impact in our beings in this passage, if we take the opportunity to allow the Lord to open it in our hearts. I am in nowise stating that I have a full understanding that I am imparting to you! That would be absurd on my part. I am simply bringing forth what the Lord seems to be doing in my life, in the life of my family before Him, and in the lives of the family that we are together in the Lord. As such, I think it would be of benefit to look at the passage in terms of the manner in which it is constructed.
The first thing that we notice is that there is a confidence in what we know of the Lord. This confidence, according to Barnes …is strong language. It means to be fully and firmly persuaded or convinced; … It means here that Paul was entirely convinced of the truth of what he said. It is the language of a man who had no doubt on the subject. (from Barnes' Notes, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1997 by Biblesoft)
When we are entirely convinced of the truth of something, we cannot be persuaded against it. It is only when we have doubts that we can be moved right or left by argument and by persuasive rhetoric. We should be settled and securely attached to the truth that God will do what He has begun, and will do it to completion, and will do it to perfection. There is no doubt of this and there should be no doubt in us about it. Contrast this with the way we feel at times. There are those times when we are emotionally strained or drained to the point of having our feelings control our thoughts, rather than the Holy Spirit’s truth guide us. We begin to question what God is up to with this or that person. We begin to criticize and to demean them because we think they should have gotten to some higher spiritual point. We may even begin to question their heart after the Lord. Rather than rejoicing in the fact that God will complete His work of Love in them, we denigrate them to some lower level because they don’t measure up to what we think they should be spiritually. We might have worked with them for months or years, and now have lost our patience and our long-suffering on their behalf. We may not have seen any growth with our eyes, and therefore we have given up on them because of our inability to see any more value in spending our precious time and effort on their behalf.
This is a horrid stance to take. If one truly examines it, it places us into a most precarious position of trying to usurp the very authority of God in another’s life. We are telling that person and God that the effort is no longer acceptable in that person’s life. This is especially damaging in a spousal relationship. When we judge our life-mates as less than being worthy of the perfect work of God and the patience, the effort, the understanding, and the long-suffering for their sake, the marriage is doomed. We have taken a vow before God to love, honor and cherish the other until death do us part, and yet we are willing to throw that vow back in the face of God as a mistake, as an impetuous error on our part and on the part of God. We might not seek a legal divorce, but our heart has divorced itself from the heart of our spouse. Rather than two becoming one, as is the model of marriage in Christ, there is a deep division, a chasm between the husband and wife that deepens and darkens with each passing day.
How much different a marriage is when both partners are looking at each other in the context of the confidence that God will complete that which He has started. Rather than a dividing asunder, there will be a deep rooted desire to see to completion that which God will accomplish. Marriage becomes an adventure to see the hand of God in action to bring into being the oneness that is the purpose and course of marriage. The road will be filled with bumps and pot-holes, of that there is no doubt. But the unity that develops as those crises are faced together, with Christ as the center of each spouse’s desire is one of the purposes of those rough roads. They shake and rattle apart the self-tendencies of the couple and bring about a unified reliance upon the Lord, if we give ourselves to that in Christ. Rather than seeing the hard times as being to our undoing, they are seen in the light of God accomplishing that which He desires through them. They are recognized as His perfect manner of bringing us to the end of ourselves and of our efforts, and to a total reliance on Christ to be our life.
It is because we are confident in Him to complete His perfect will in our lives, for our lives and through our lives, that we can view our spouses with unveiled eyes that see the work of God in progress. Rather than being critical and finding fault, or being resigned to the idea that he or she will never change, so I might as well learn to live with it; rather than this kind of a suffering martyr syndrome, we rejoice in the work of God to do His good pleasure in His good time. He is good and He is faithful beyond measure, and we can count on Him to work in us and in the lives of others about us. 
I have just spent a few moments with the idea of our spouses and the confidence we have in Christ to love them, to forgive them, and to cherish them as God so perfectly does. But, even when we can see the Hand of God at work in our marriages, many times we are beset with doubts about our children. As we see them struggling with the world’s ravaging traps and snares, we are sometimes doubtful if they will ever come through it intact. We see them doing the things that are odious to us, and we become discouraged and disheartened. They tell us the desires of their young hearts, and we sink in our souls and in our spirit at the foolishness that they hold so dear.
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Yeah right! The only thing I am confident of is that one of us isn’t gong to survive these teen years. How can I have confidence when I am seeing, with my own eyes, the road of destruction that is being traveled by this one that I have spent these last 17 years loving? I tell him that I love him, and all I get is a sneer and a request for more money, which I know will be spent on something that is probably illegal or disgusting. I tell her she is the apple of my eye, and she just smirks and goes into her bedroom to assault us with that horrid music. This family is disintegrating and You, Lord, tell me through your Word to have confidence. Can’t you see what is going on in this household that belongs to You? Don’t You understand that his mother and I are at our wits end. Lord, can’t you see that trashy girl who is throwing herself at him. Aren’t you aware of the boy that she is dating and the evil influence that he is on her? Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.
OK Lord! But the only thing I am confident of is that life in this household has been turned upside down and we don’t have any more answers or ideas how to change it. Only You can make a difference. Only You can bring something good out of this dung heap. Only you can bring forth beauty from the fiery remnants of the relationship we once had with each other. Lord, I have no choice but to trust my son, my daughter, my child to You. Give me some sign, some light at the end of the tunnel to us, as parents, going on in the Love that You desire to shower on this child. Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. Lord, the only way I can have any confidence is if you instill it in me. 
	How often, as parents, are we brought to the end of ourselves in the love that we have for our children? How much glorious work of God is accomplished in us, through the work that is being done deep within them? It may not seem to be evident at times, but He has not let them go. We have dedicated them to Him. We have taught them of His Word and of His Way. We have held them up in prayer and now it is time to hold them up in the Love of the Lord. They are coming into their own, and no longer look to us to guide them. It is now that we need to have the greatest measure of confidence in the Lord to see them and to see us through it. This bedrock passage of our consideration is a vital part of any Christian parent’s heart in the love that we have for our children. It is also another avenue of the Lord to establish in us, the parents, an even deeper reliance upon Him in all situations and strife. What hasn’t been dealt with in the dealings of the Lord with our spouses surely, comes to the forefront in the stewardship of our children unto Him.   
	Where is the confidence that we are to exhibit on a moment by moment basis? It is in the fact that God is the One Who is doing the work unto His end in the lives of those who are His. If the confidence were in something that man was doing, there would be no surety of the final glory to be seen. Man has never been able to do anything lasting or good. Everything we put our hands and minds to becomes corrupted and defiled and suffers the same decay as all else in this world. Yes, if our children are left to our endeavors, they would not survive and would not become the living vessels of Christ’s Love. We would kick them out of the house when they cause us grief and wash our hands of them. We would meet them at the door with the same hostility that they show us, and refuse to allow them sanctuary in our house, much less in our hearts. 
But that is not where our confidence lies. It is set firmly in the fact that God is the One Who is doing His good pleasure in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones. He is the One Who will see them and us through these years of anguish, of rebellion, of strife and of experimentation. All we can do is what we should always do, and that is to hold these precious ones up in prayer before His throne and seek His covering and His protection and His guidance to keep them unto His heart. His Word is that He will complete that which He has begun. He has begun His good work in them and He is the only One Who can guide and bring to successful conclusion that which He has started. He is the only One Who knows the end from the beginning, and He alone will establish His glory in their lives and in our lives. 
The following is taken from Barnes as a statement of what this verse holds for us as confident believers of the Word of God to be true. This is a reference to the basic principles held securely in this evening’s passage:
That ground of belief is something like the following:
(1) It is in God alone. It is not in man in any sense. No reliance is to be placed upon man in keeping himself. He is too weak; too changeable; too ready to be led astray; too much disposed to yield to temptation.
(2) The reliance, therefore, is on God; and the evidence that the renewed man will be kept is this:
(a) God began the work of grace in the soul.
(b) He had a design in it. It was deliberate, and intentional. It was not by chance or haphazard. It was because he had some object that was worthy of his interposition.
(c) There is no reason why he should begin such a work and then abandon it. It cannot be because he has no power to complete it, or because there are more enemies to be overcome than he had supposed; or because there are difficulties which he did not foresee; or because it is not desirable that the work should be completed. Why then should he abandon it?
(d) God abandons nothing that he undertakes. There are no unfinished worlds or systems; no half-made and forsaken works of His hands. There is no evidence in His works of creation of change of plan, or of having forsaken what He began from disgust, or disappointment, or lack of power to complete them…
 (from Barnes' Notes, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1997 by Biblesoft)
	We have dealt with this in terms of personal knowledge and the working of the Holy Spirit within us to bring about the completion of His good work. We have seen that the Lord works to make our marriage that same expression of the Oneness that is fully and completely in Him. We have seen how God works in us as parents, as children, as a family to bring about His complete glory in us. There is another avenue that this passage addresses in a deeper context of what God is going to complete. To get a better sense of this, let us look at Eph 5:27, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Here we see the great truth begin to flower forth. There is far more to what is being developed in our lives than what we sometimes consider. There is a great plan and purpose of God at work to bring about that which He has ordained from the endless beginning. We, as humans, are sometimes so egocentrically minded, that we cannot or refuse to see beyond our part in anything that we consider. We are on this earth for a mere flash of time; 70, 80, 90 years, if that long. We spend that whole time looking for our place, our part, our position within the realm of our daily reality. There is, however, a far greater reality at work in this universe that will affect the entirety of creation for all of eternity. God is preparing a pure Bride for His Son. There is going to be seen, throughout all the ages of ages, in every corner of the endlessness of the universe of God’s creation, the union, the perfect and complete union of God and man in the marriage simile of the Bride and Bridegroom. What the whole of creation will witness is the perfect work of God in His Being of Holiness, of Righteousness, of Omniscience, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, of Love. There will be none who can decry or denigrate the work that God has accomplished in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior. There will be none who can accuse the bride of being anything less than the perfect life mate for the Honored Groom. And there will be none who cannot see the glory of God radiating forth in brilliance as that union is revealed unto all of the created spheres and beings for all the infinite ages of ages to come. That, my brothers and sisters in Christ, is what is being pronounced and accomplished in the consideration of this verse.
	What God is bringing to pass in you and in me, in our marriages, and in our families, is nothing less than the miracle of the union, one with each other, and together, in Christ Jesus. That has tremendous consequences attached to it, if we are enabled, by the Holy Spirit, to see past our part and to look to the reality of God at Work in us, as the bride, cleansed from any blemish, washed from all iniquity, and clothed in the radiant beauty of the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. 
	We, as a fellowship, are being brought into this place in the heart of God, and we need to see that truth, and live that truth, especially in relationship with one another. Too often churches have become the targets of the arrows of this world order because they never look beyond their own place on the earth. They find a comfortable niche in the community and they fit themselves into the mold that this earth has patterned. There is dissention over finances, jealousy over ideals and doctrines, discord over elements of pride and self-righteousness, never looking beyond themselves and their place to the full glory of God that is being besmirched in their presentation of God to this world order. We do not need to look far to witness the rapid and violent abuse that is heaped on all Christianity when this world targets a church, an evangelist, or a minister with its ridicule and its arrows of torment. The relentless abuse heaped on such targets is not just aimed at the detriment of the victims, but at the person of Jesus Christ. This world failed in its every effort to foil God’s plan in the death and resurrection of Christ, so now He is being targeted through the onslaught of this world on the bride that is being prepared. Every effort is expended to bring shame upon the church in a futile attempt to derail the plan and purpose of God. That is why Jesus gave us the following exhortation in John 16:33, These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation : but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. 
However vicious the world may be, it has already lost the battle. God will have His way and He will have His perfect church, the prepared bride to be presented to the Bridegroom. We, as a fellowship, need to look beyond our fleeting and petty feelings and those injuries, intentional or inadvertent, which have been targeted at us. Yes, they are real and they sting, but they pale terribly in comparison to that which God is after. These few years on this earth are the time to allow the Holy Spirit to fit and to mold us together, perfectly, into the church of God’s heart. Let us lay aside all those entrapments of self, and give our hearts over to God to complete that which He has begun. God’s glory alone should be the concern of our beings, of our souls, of our hearts. In line with that goal, we need to look at each other as we do our spouses and our children, with the prayer that God would teach us to take one another into our hearts and to cover and to establish His Love in all of us. That is after all, why we are joined together, to learn of Him, and to be cleansed of self in order that the life of Jesus Christ will be evident, not only in our lives, but in the finished work of God’s Hand in all of us as the perfect Bride, prepared by God. In that revelation, all of creation will give glory and honor and majesty to God for the great work that He has done in humanity, in you, in me, in all of us, in Love. 
Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.