Finish What Was Started….
2 Corinthians 8:10-12 (New Living Translation)
10 Here is my advice: It would be good for you to finish what you started a year ago. Last year you were the first who wanted to give, and you were the first to begin doing it. 11 Now you should finish what you started. Let the eagerness you showed in the beginning be matched now by your giving. Give in proportion to what you have. 12 Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have.
As many of you know I am going through a divorce, not because I chose this course, but because this is the course I was given. But during this time, God dealt with me and told me that dating anyone was not something that I could not do until I finished what had been started. It was strange to receive that mandate, because I had watched others, and I myself (in the past) move on before things were totally, completely finished. This time God declared things would be different, He was specific in His instructions and has been showing me purpose in why He directed me this way. God has shown me how I could not move on when I was still tied to another, even if it is only legally; there is still a tie, none the less legally and spiritually. God allowed me to see that the zeal needed to begin again could not fully rest upon me until I had finished what had been started. I would be like someone who was a dual personality disordered tied to one, while trying to have something new with someone else…How ironic. When we start before we are finished we drag the dirt and steamer trunks from the past right into our present and our future…
We do just this with God, in so many different areas. God begins to heal us but instead we don’t let the process continue, because we allow our doubts, our emotions and apprehensions to keep us bond to events, misgivings, and people in our past. God starts to deliver us, but instead of being obedient, we stay when He says go, or we continue to hide when He says come out and stand strong. There are times when God will give us an assignment and instead of us doing what He has told us to do, we want to move on to something else instead completing the task given, because we may view it as mundane, less important, boring or trivial in comparison to something else or the task given to someone else. We are quick to want to keep it moving without any thought to completing anything. But God is a God of completion, and a God of order. He want us to let Him complete in us the works that He has begun, and He wants us to purpose in our Hearts, minds, bodies and Spirits to complete those things that He has commanded and requested us to do. The word of God in James 1:7-8 it says “For truly, let not such a person imagine that he will receive anything [he asks for] from the Lord,8[For being as he is] a man of two minds (hesitating, dubious, irresolute), [he is] unstable and unreliable and uncertain about everything [he thinks, feels, decides].” When we do not finish a work or allow what God has started to be completed in us we are divided, we are tied to the unfinished work, and yet the other portion of us attempts to move on, which brings instability to all that we do, say and how we approach and serve God.
It is time to let God tie up those loose ends and repair those broken areas, set free those areas of bondage and to give us beauty for all of the ashes we have accumulated in our lives. It is time for us to stop being the half painted room, or the incomplete assignment. God wants to give us great zeal and great joy to go on, but only after He has finished and we have finished what was started!
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