In my professional career, I was honored to lead a sizable division in a publicly traded company. We had a highly capable staff, and together with the disciplined execution of our regional office partners, we established a strong pattern of profitable growth. Over time, I found great satisfaction in all the meaningful change we engendered—product evolution, pricing sophistication, and stronger management tools, to name a few. All of these and other changes testified as proof of our presence—fingerprints of impact and success. It was both gratifying and humbling at the same time.
How much greater, then, are the fingerprints God leaves on our lives! Can you see the changes in yourself, the proof of His presence in you? King David did. “When my heart was grieved and my spirit embittered,” he wrote, “I was senseless and ignorant; I was a brute beast before you. Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory.”1 His was a living testimony of God’s transformational love, something God does not just in Biblical giants like David, but to all who are born of the Spirit through faith in Christ. The apostle Paul assured the everyday folks in Philippi, “I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”2 So then, what good work has God begun in you? Stop and think about it; don’t focus on the setbacks and discouragements along the way—we all have them—but try to recount ways God has changed your life into the image of His Son. Jot down what comes to mind, and think about it as a testimony to His faithfulness.
I’ve been retired for seven years, and I’m quite sure many of the advances we implemented are now obsolete and that other developments are but foundations of subsequent iterations of improvement. But God’s work in our lives is never obsolete; in fact, it points to a day when “we shall be like {Christ], for we shall see him as he is.”3 His fingerprints are on us, for His presence is in us, and His image awaits us. How gratifying! How humbling.
Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting! Psalm 139:23-24 ESV
1 Psalm 73:21-24
2 Philippians 1:6 ESV
3 1 John 3:2
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Paul Nordman—Author 