“As God continues his favor towards his own people without intermission, all the good he has hitherto done to us should serve to inspire us with confidence and hope, that he will be gracious and merciful to us in the time to come.” -Calvin (on Psalm 9)
I needed to hear the part where Calvin says that God shows his favor to his children without intermission. He never stops. Even when it feels like he isn’t there, and I have felt that several times, it does not mean that he isn’t working. God is continually working to bring us to completion at the day of Jesus Christ (Phil 1:6). He is constantly working to complete us to present us as a holy and spotless bride to the Creator of the universe. We must not forget his blessings to us in the past. They are there. Since he has so blessed us in past, what makes us think he will not continue to bless us in the future? He is not going to stop blessing us because he himself said that his steadfast love never ceases, his mercies never come to an end, indeed, they are new every morning (Lam 3:22-24). He is faithful. GREAT is his faithfulness. He does not stop working on us because he cannot stop working on us. We aren’t finished yet.
John Newton says it well:
“I am not what I ought to be — ah, how imperfect and deficient! I am not what I wish to be — I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good! I am not what I hope to be — soon, soon shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection. Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, ‘By the grace of God I am what I am.'”