“But now finish doing it also, so that just as there was the readiness to desire it, so there may be also the completion of it by your ability.” (II Corinthians 8:11)

The Apostle Paul was addressing the Corinthian church here, referring to the offering the churches of Greece were taking up for the impoverished saints in Jerusalem. In :10 he reminded them that “a year ago” they had started to take up this offering, and in fact were “the first … to begin to do this.” But a year later, as Paul wrote here, they had not yet completed taking up their gifts. So he exhorts them here, that just as they had started taking up the offering, “Now FINISH doing it also.”  There is a good word here for many of us — and not in regard to offerings only!

How many of God’s people are just like the Corinthians: the Lord has laid a certain project or ministry on their heart, and perhaps they have even gotten as far as starting it. But again like that church, time has gone by — perhaps like them, a year? Perhaps more? — and the project is still incomplete; the ministry has never been launched. God’s word to those of us with these incomplete assignments? “Finish!” It was a great thing for you to want to begin that project, or to desire to kick off that ministry, just as it was a great thing for the Corinthians to want to take up that offering. But God did not call you merely to BEGIN it.  He wants you to FINISH what you started.

Several sports teams the past years, who have fallen just short of their championship goals, have adopted as their theme for the next year, “Finish!” They have posted that reminder on their locker room walls, and printed it on their t-shirts. Paul reminds us here that many of us as God’ people need this same word. What project, or ministry, has God laid on your heart that you have never followed through with? It was good of you to be sensitive, and hear God’s voice, and get started on that thing. But starting is not enough. God’s word for you is like the one He gave to the Corinthians here: “But now FINISH doing it also”!