DAILY DEVOTIONAL · June 3, 2026
The slow work of God
Philippians 1:6 — "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ."
A spoken reading of this is being recorded — it will appear here soon.
"Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:" — Philippians 1:6 (KJV)
Paul is writing from prison, to a church he loves, about a work he cannot oversee. The sentence is one of the great quiet promises in the New Testament: the work is being done. Not by you. By Him. And not finished on any timeline you can hold a stopwatch to — at the day of Jesus Christ. Christian formation is patient because the One doing the forming is not in a hurry.
This is a strange comfort in a generation taught to demand instant results from everything. The phone gives instant photos. The chatbox gives instant text. The streaming service gives instant entertainment. Every layer of the modern day has been engineered to compress the wait. And then a Christian sits down with the Bible, prays, and feels — sometimes — that nothing is happening at all.
Something is happening. It is just happening at the speed of soul-work, which is the speed of trees and rivers and slow rains, not the speed of the timeline at the top of a feed. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, writing to a young friend a hundred years ago, said trust in the slow work of God. Generations of Christians have repeated the line because it is Pauline — it points at the same patient God who started a good work in the Philippians and intends to finish it.
A small practice: when you are tempted to rush your own spiritual life this week, pray a single short sentence. Lord, finish what You began. And let the day be what it is.
Lord, You are doing what we cannot see. Help us to wait without anxiety. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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