Question: Do you feel like you have "arrived"? Are you a complete person? Is ours a complete church? Have we, as a congregation, fully arrived?

Paul wrote this letter to the Philippian church in northern Greece, which he had helped start during his second missionary journey about the year AD 52. Philippi was a strategic city made distinct by at least three characteristics. Because of gold and silver mines, which had been worked out over hundreds of years, it had become a commercial center. The city itself had been founded in 368 BC by Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, at a strategic site commanding the road from Europe to Asia. It was a Roman colony filled with people proud of their unique citizenship.

This was the city to which Paul and Silas had journeyed to found a church. It was this same city to which Paul wrote ten to twelve years later from his prison cell in Rome. The Book of Philippians is filled with some of the Bible's greatest texts -- some familiar, some not. Paul wrote to express thanks to his brothers and sisters in Christ who had been faithful in supporting him. He alerted them to the physical illness of one of their number who had been with them in Rome and would soon be returning. He gave encouragement to them in their trials. And he made a classic appeal to remember their unity in Jesus Christ.

He opens with his typical words of encouragement. He wishes them God's grace and peace. He expresses his enormous thanksgiving for the partnership he had shared with them in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, from the very first day he had met with them to the present.

Then Paul targets his message to believers, both at Philippi and today, with these words, "And I am sure that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ" (Philippians 1:6). This verse is packed full of significance for you. It involves the whole process of your becoming a complete person in Christ. It addresses our sense of incompleteness as individuals, as a local church, and as a denomination. It helps explain why we can't say that we have fully "arrived" in any of these three areas. Let's take a look at four specific implications.

I. You can be confident in God.

Today we hear a lot about the art of confident living. Enroll in a Dale Carnegie course, and you will be taught principles which will help you convey self-assurance.

Some time ago a repairman came to our house. Our dryer had gone on the blink. We immediately liked him. Pondering on it later, we realized that it was his bearing that we had found pleasing. He gave the appearance of knowing what he was doing. Quickly he checked out the dryer, dismantled a certain portion of it, replaced two little parts, put the machine back together again, and left. His job was completed. He seemed to have no doubt about what he was doing.

However, self-confidence can be misleading. Not everyone who looks like he knows what he is doing can do it. During the same period of time our dryer was acting up another one of our appliances was giving us trouble. For six or seven weeks a repairman, who looked just as confident as the one who fixed the dryer, worked on it. There was only one difference. We began to lose confidence in him, because the unit didn't stay fixed. He seemed just as sure of himself but that wasn't enough. He finally admitted he didn't know what really was wrong. He consulted someone else. Although his self-confidence was somewhat diminished, he became stronger as he sought help outside himself.