Welcome to today's encouragement from our daily bread titled Putting the Pieces Together. It was written by Lisa M. Samra.

While our family quarantined due to the global pandemic, we took on an ambitious project, an 18,000 piece puzzle. Even though we

worked on it almost daily, often we felt like we weren't making much progress. Five months after we

began, we finally celebrated adding the final piece to the nine-by-six-foot puzzle that covered

our dining room floor.

Sometimes my life feels a bit like a giant puzzle. Many pieces in place, but a whole lot more

still lying in a jumble on the floor. While I know that God is at work transforming me to be more

and more like Jesus, sometimes it can be hard to see much

progress. I take great comfort in Paul's encouragement in his letter to the Philippians when he said

he prayed for them with joy because of the good work they were doing. But his confidence came not

in their abilities but in God, believing that he who

began a good work would carry it on to completion. God has promised to finish his work in us.

Like a puzzle, there may be sections that still need our attention, and there are times when we don't

seem to make much progress.

But we can have confidence that our faithful God is still putting the pieces together.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Philippians chapter 1, verses 3 through 6.

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.

Being confident of this, that he who

began a good work in you will carry it onto completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good work that you've done in our lives. Help us to look

back and see just how far you've brought us and trust you to continue the work as we faithfully give

ourselves over to you. Thank you, Lord. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Alicia Reisinger,

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