Forward Momentum

Maybe it is just me but sometimes in areas of my life I do not feel like there is always forward momentum.  The Enemy has seemed to play on this in the past, assigning the spirit of intimidation to try to get me to back up and believe I am not making any progress in my life.  When we assess our progress in life:  our kids are not as godly as we hoped, we are not as in good a shape as we would like, we want to be stronger in the Lord, and we want to see victory in all areas of our lives.  Take heart you are making progress!  How do I know?  Because Scripture declares it in Philippians 1:6 "...being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete [it] until the day of Jesus Christ;".  Amazing that Paul is saying he is confident that the One (God) who started the work is going to finish it, transforming us into the very likeness of Christ.  I am so sick of misperceiving my progress and thus being tempted to go down the road of discouragement (I tend toward this anyway).  Since early in my life after losing my father, it seems most forward steps in my life have involved much opposition.  My twisted (carnal) thinking tends to put many missteps together to formulate this idea that I am going down the tubes towards death.  If any of us look at our lives apart from the finished work of Jesus Christ we can quickly fall into despair, the truth is we are all hopeless apart from Christ.  Being saved does not mean that I get to evaluate how I am doing on the journey, the Holy Spirit alone is the One qualified to tell me how I am doing.  I have been looking at road bikes after saving several hundred dollars, it is easy for me to feel inadequate as I talk to the salesperson in the bike store.  He asks me what my goals are and if I want to ride a century (100 mile ride).  I am now 41 years old and do not have ambitious plans to be some consistent century rider, if I ride one in my life that would an accomplishment.  At my age I have noticed a shift within myself towards really wanting to see what I want to spend my life on, after living 40 years I have tried a lot of things and not been satisfied.  I have been deceived to believe something, someone, or some position will give me life only to find that there is limited life there.  The Word is clear that if you have Christ you have life (1 John 5:12), somehow I think I fall short of really knowing and experiencing all I have.  The salesperson at the bike store is not going to guarantee me that if I buy this bike I will successfully ride many centuries.  Yet God guarantees the deposit of the Holy Spirit to produce the likeness of Christ within us, in other words God has not only purchased us, forgiven us, put us in right standing with Him, given us a new life, but also has absolute confidence in His Spirit within us to make this real in our lives.  It is not my job to change me, yet I seem to get deceived into believing it is up to me (to be more like the person I envision myself to be).  I surrender to how the Lord is changing and transforming me, I don't seem to help when I take over by believing I haven't made enough progress.  God knows that I will fail at some area of my life 82 times but delights in the 83rd time when I see a breakthrough.  I even believe God sees the little steps of progress of my surrender to Him changing me. whereas I have too much of a propensity for looking at my failures.  I find myself having some envy of my wife who has had the experience of being coached in swimming (all the way through high school), encouraging her to reach goals and progress.  I never had this kind of coaching so I tend to quickly internalize the negative, rather than see the positive progress even if it is small.  I now have the best coach on-board, the Holy Spirit is totally confident He is going to complete the work He began and even sees the finished product (me totally transformed).

Being Transformed from glory to glory,
Bret