Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. The reading for today titled A Good

Work was written by Kenneth Peterson. As a teenager, Charles Spurgeon wrestled with God. He'd grown up

going to church, but what was preached seemed

bland and meaningless. It was a struggle for him to believe in God, and Charles, in his own words,

rebelled and revolted. One night, a fierce snowstorm forced the 16-year-old Spurgeon to seek

shelter in a tiny Methodist church. The pastor's sermon seemed

directed at him personally. In that moment, God won the wrestling match, and Charles gave

his heart to Jesus. Spurgeon later wrote, long before I began with Christ, he began with me.

In fact, our life with God doesn't begin with the

moment of salvation. The psalmist notes that God created our inmost being, knitting us together

in our mother's womb. The Apostle Paul writes in Galatians, even before I was born, God chose me and called me by his marvelous grace.

And Philippians 1-6 tells us that God doesn't stop working with us when we're saved, saying,

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion. We're all works in progress

in the hands of a loving God.

He leads us through our rebellious wrestling and into his warm embrace, but his purpose with us then is only beginning.

Philippians 2.13 says, for God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.

Rest assured, we're his good work regardless of how old we are or what stage of life we're in.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Psalm 13-29, verse 13 through 24.

For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you,

because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my

unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

How precious to me are your thoughts, God, how vast is the sum of them?

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