“He’s still working on me, to make me what I need to be. It took him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the Sun and the Earth and Jupiter and Mars. He’s still working on me, to make me what I need to be…”
This was the message I sang for my grandparents’ answering machine, and it played for most of my childhood. At the time, it was just a song I sang in Sunday school, but recently I was reminded of this song, and it now has a much deeper meaning to me.
My granddad built and moved into a new house about six years ago and passed away soon after he and my grandmother moved in. When they were building the house, he planted pear trees, apple trees, fig trees, blueberry bushes, plum trees, and more. These trees and bushes have, quite honestly, been the most hideous, dead-looking trees for the past few years, and they have never produced fruit. But this year, they all produced bountifully. I picked blueberries, pears, and plums. The fig trees are currently weighed down with ripening figs. We did not water, prune, or do anything to these trees. However, beneath the surface, these seemingly dead, useless trees were growing deeper, and the roots were being nourished. The Lord was still working on them, and they did not lose their purpose. What we could see above ground looked purposeless, but what he was doing to the roots of the tree would only show later.
Isn’t this true in our lives as well sometimes? We feel like we may have lost our purpose or like God is “done” with us. Or… Maybe like the trees, you feel like you never had a purpose, to begin with. Maybe you feel like God has put a pause on working in your life or the lives of your family members.
I was immediately drawn to the story of Abraham and Sarah when I thought of the Lord working in a seemingly dead situation. The Lord created Abraham for a purpose, to be “the father of many nations.” When he was 99 and he and his wife, Sarah, were both well past childbearing age. They both thought the Lord wasn’t working in their life in that way. They even tried to take matters into their own hands and use a surrogate. However, God made them a promise and, within a year of the covenant, delivered Isaac to them. I’m reminded of a couple of verses in Philippians when I think of Abraham and Sarah:
Philippians 2:13
“For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose.”
Philippians 1:6
“Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
God is never done working on you. He is never done with you. In times when we don’t feel Him working, it may be because we are the ones who walked away. Or, like Abraham and Sarah, tried to take control of the situation and not let God do the work in us. Either way, He is not the one who gave up on us… We are the ones that gave up on Him. Surrender that control, turn back to Him. He’s ready to keep working.
There have been seasons of my life when I can see the fruit of the purpose that God has for me, and I can see the work He’s doing, but other times… most often the hard times, is when I feel like my purpose is dead or that God is no longer working in my life. That’s when we need to remember that God is never done working on us… just like the song says:
“He’s still working on me, to make me what I need to be. It took Him just a week to make the moon and the stars, the sun and the earth and Jupiter and Mars. He’s still working on me…”
Kristie Brothers
Lean into Jesus Ministries
#kristiebrothersblogs
