NOW FINISH THE WORK!
Erwin Bourne
The report comes back: “Mission accomplished!” The
master replies, “Well done…!” The sweat, the tears
and prayers are over. Now it’s happiness. No
excuses. No regrets. No shame. Let’s read it from
Mt. 25:21 (NIV). “Well done, good and faithful
servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I
will put you in charge of many things. Come and share
your master’s happiness!” Two persons are happy—the
master and the servant. Advancement is going to come
to this faithful, happy man!
Your first step forward to surrender your life to the
Savior can be compared to Armstrong’s first step on
the moon. This was just the beginning. Science must
move from one experience to the next. Paul wrote in
Galatians 5:7: “You were getting along so well. Who
has interfered with you to hold you back from
following the truth? It certainly wasn’t God, for he
is the one who called you to freedom” (NLT).
When Jean and I were in the states awhile back, we
made contact with a missionary family who once worked
in Manaus, Brazil. The married son was extremely
interested in coming back to the Amazon to work with
us. He was skilled in all types of communication—from
Morris Code to Internet. He knew the language well.
We needed just such a man. Though I knew his parents,
and had communicated with the son by numerous phone
calls, we had never met.
I made arrangements for him to meet us at the Miami
International airport as we passed through on our way
to Bogota, Colombia. Another friend in Florida was to
drive him to Miami. They came and were at our
boarding gate waiting. However, with no fault of our
own, the plane we were on was very late in arriving.
Air-flight attendants took us the shortest, fastest
route directly to our Bogota gate. We totally missed
our scheduled contact. The young man took this as an
indication that he was not to go work with us.
Hudson Taylor, founder and director of China Inland
Mission, wrote the following: Not to advance would be
to retreat from the position of faith taken up at the
beginning. It would be to look at difficulties rather
than at the living God. Difficulties were formidable;
and it was easy to say, “All these things are
indications that for the present no further extension
is possible. But not to go forward would be to
cripple and hinder the work; to throw away
opportunities God had given, and to close, before
long, stations that had been opened at great cost.
This, surely, could not be His way for the
evangelization of Inland China.”
Flying World Mission Inc. is at the position that it
must advance or retreat! I wrote in a publication
recently that “We will be rewarded, not for what we
did, but for what we longed to do.” I’m rethinking
this. Indeed, we have been given bodies that can’t
sustain our spirits. We have bills that outnumber our
funds, and we have challenges that outweigh our
strength. But our text found in II Cor.
8:11reads—“Now finish the work, so that your eager
willingness to do it may be matched by your completion
of it according to your means,”
Dear reader, if you are not a Christian, get saved and
get started! If God has given you a responsibility,
take heart and do your job well! If you are a pastor
or missionary with a big job ahead, finish the work!
Of course this goes on to say, if you have the means
and the desire to support God’s work, do it
cheerfully. If God’s work becomes a begging work, it
dies! As for me, if I fall, I’ll fall face forward.
Erwin Bourne
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