John K. Jenkins Sr - A Good Work

Open your Bibles, your iPhone, your iPad, your Android, your Galaxy, your notebook paper, or your Bible to the book of Philippians, chapter 1. Philippians chapter 1, and I'm going to read verses 3 through 7. Say "Amen" when you get it. Amen. All right, beginning at verse number three, Philippians chapter 1: "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you all with joy , for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, 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." Just as it is right for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as both in my chains and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel, you all are partakers with me of grace. It is verse six that I want to focus my attention on today: "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." Tell your neighbor, "It's a good work, a good work." Now tell the person on the other side, "A good work, a good work." You all need to say it with a little more passion than that! Y'all sound a little reserved. "A good work!" Yeah! All right, sit down. I know y'all are tired. I want you to look around this building and tell me what you see. Just look around. Tell me what you see. People, right? All right, anybody else? Jacked- up people ? Somebody said "jacked-up people." I want you to look beyond the people and see that you're sitting in a beautiful facility-$62 million, 4,000 seats, 44 classrooms, 2,000 parking spaces. But it didn't start off being pretty . As a matter of fact, it started off with putting a shovel in the ground and breaking some dirt. It took longer than we planned for it to be built and cost more than we thought it would. But here we are , sitting here today, March 15th , eight years later, seven and a half years later. We're in this building. Thousands of people have been saved; thousands have been delivered from addictions , drugs, alcohol. Marriages have been put back together . As a matter of fact, some single people got married since we've been here ! Come on! I saw some ladies looking up here . Is that right? Let me see if I can- a lot has happened, but it did not start in this beautiful facility. It was a journey, a walk , a path , an experience of going through a lot of things . Throughout the course of the journey , we faced many bumps in the road, and that's the overall picture I want to talk to you about today . Too many people make decisions and choices on the basis of what the picture looks like today , without understanding that what you see today is not the finished picture. People walk away from their marriages and don't want to have anything to do with their spouses anymore-the person that just a few years earlier they said "till death do us part, better for worse, richer for poorer, in sickness and in health ." We make those declarations , but then hit a little bump in the road, and we walk away. We start jobs, create businesses, and when we hit a bump in the road , we walk away. But there's something I need to challenge you with today, and I want to share with you because Paul the Apostle writes to the church in Philippi. It is a church that he started; he founded this church. He 's writing back to them because they are supporting him during a very difficult season of his life and ministry . As a matter of fact, Paul is in jail-he's in prison-writing back to the church he started , and he's giving them encouraging words , thanking them for their support. But while he's talking to them, he drops this major bomb on them that just blesses my heart: verse number six. He drops verse six on them, and I wanted to talk to you all about verse six for just a few moments, because it is such a powerful , profound, and insightful thing . As a matter of fact, I like that he says to them in verse three, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, and I'm praying for y'all with joy ." In verse four, he says, "I'm grateful for your fellowship in the gospel with me; you've been faithful from this day even until now." But then he enters into verse six and starts off by saying this. He says, "We have to be confident." Somebody say, "Being confident." Being confident-that is the thing that messes most folks up. Here 's the truth that most people need: you've got to be able to face whatever you face in life with confidence. You've got to know some stuff. If our job, our career, our ministry is about helping people enter into the dimensions of life with a level of confidence , see, if you don't have confidence, the devil will talk to you. He 'll whisper things in your ear, and it'll have you believing that it isn 't going to work out, that it's all going to go wrong , that it's going to be horrible , that you're going to die, that it's going to end badly , that this is going to happen, that that is going to happen. But when you are a child of God, that's how you behave.