Years ago when we built our house, I would walk around the construction site and think, “Man, this is just a dirty mess! How long is this going to last?” Especially during the early phases of construction when it was windy and rainy, it was so muddy and the progress so slow. It’s a bit like our lives. We are all under construction, and sometimes the road to progress is a struggle and not pretty. When you’re tempted to get discouraged, you have to remember what the apostle Paul says: “Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it” (Philippians 1:6). You will get to the completion phases because God is going to fulfill His promises to you.
The life of Abraham demonstrates what it means to be a work in progress. He was living in a land where his father and relatives had settled when God spoke to him, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:1–2). God was saying to him, “I want to take you and make you.” Abraham willingly trusted God to take him to a land unknown to him, and he trusted God to make him fully into the person He created him to become, a blessing to all the people on earth coming through him. There were times of great struggle, setbacks, mistakes, and it took many years, but God fulfilled His promises to Abraham, and it was through his lineage that Jesus Christ was ultimately brought to this world. So you and I are the children of Abraham through our faith in Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:29).
It was the same when Jesus called His disciples and said, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). “I will make you” means He will enable us to become everything He calls us to be. God’s pattern is to take us and make us. He’s saying to us what He said to Abraham: “I want to bless you and make you a blessing. I am going to complete My work in you and get you to your intended destination.”
Abraham was not called by God because his faith was perfect. He was called by God because he was willing to follow and to believe God, and along his journey he “was strengthened in faith” through God’s promise (Romans 4:20). That is how Abraham became a “God-made man,” and that is how we become the same. Just be willing, and He will take and make you.