Start Something You Cannot Finish

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This morning Al Mohler spoke to the December graduates at Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, KY on the theme Start Something You Cannot Finish based on Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3:6, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” I love this challenge because it reminds me that someone was here before I arrived, and long after I’m gone someone else will carry on God’s work. At best we are all just links in the great chain of God’s purposes that stretches across the generations.

It’s a wonderful, liberating perspective to know that it doesn’t all depend on me. I have a part to play, and my part is vital, but I build on the work of others before me, and someone must come behind me to carry on the work of God. This perspective saves us from the twin follies of presumption and despair. If we start saying, “Look at this great work I’ve built for God,” remember that you aren’t the first person on the scene. If we work for years with little to show for our efforts, remember that you may be planting seeds that someone else will harvest.

A few years ago I spent a week with some retired missionaries who had served Christ in the Muslim areas of Africa. They spoke of how difficult it had been for the first missionaries. Many labored for decades with only a few converts. But in one area there had been a fruitful harvest, not in the first generation, not in the second, but in the third because the grandchildren remembered their grandparents had known the first Christian missionaries.

We are all like runners in a relay race. We take the baton of truth, run as fast we can, and when the time comes, we pass it off to the next generation. I love this because it means two vital things:

God’s work doesn’t depend on me alone, and
God’s work will continue long after I’m gone.

Here is how Dr. Mohler concluded his message this morning. I take them as a benediction to my own heart:

Start something you cannot finish and give yourself to it for the length of your days, with the strength of your life, to the glory of God. Dream dreams and see visions, and take up this calling as you plant and water in the fields of Christ. Build carefully upon the foundation laid for you. The hopes and prayers of God’s faithful people go with you.