“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed…”
— Romans 6:6
While driving through Puerto Rico, I noticed a building that was impossible to ignore.
It was enormous.
Floor after floor of exposed concrete. Empty windows. Weathered walls. Graffiti. What looked, at first glance, like another abandoned construction project.
But there was more to the story.
The building had already been finished once.
It had served a purpose. It had been occupied. It had even served as a ministry headquarters.
Then it was sold.
A new owner had a different vision for the property, and redevelopment began.
What had been finished was stripped back to its concrete structure.
Walls came down.
Interiors disappeared.
What had once looked complete suddenly looked unfinished again.
Then, on June 10, 2019, tragedy struck. A skid-steer fell through an upper floor, killing the worker operating it.
Work stopped.
Years later, the concrete shell still stands beside the highway.
And if you knew none of that history, you could drive past it and reach a very reasonable conclusion:
It was abandoned.
But appearances don’t always tell the whole story.
And neither does the unfinished condition of your life.
There are seasons in our walk with God when He does more than add something new.
Sometimes He removes.
Sometimes He tears out things we thought were permanent.
Sometimes He exposes what has been hidden behind walls for years.
Habits.
Pride.
Fear.
Bitterness.
Wrong thinking.
Old identities.
Things we learned to live with for so long that we eventually mistook them for part of the structure.
Paul wrote:
“Our old man is crucified with him…”
God is not renovating the old man.
He is not decorating him.
He is not putting fresh paint over what sin damaged and calling the project complete.
There are things that have to die.
There are things that have to come down.
And demolition rarely looks like progress while you’re standing in the middle of it.
That may be one of the most difficult parts of transformation.
We know what we were.
We have some idea of what God is calling us to become.
But sometimes we find ourselves living somewhere between the two.
And that middle can look awfully unfinished.
You may look at your life and see exposed places.
Missing pieces.
Areas where God has removed something, but you haven’t yet seen what He intends to put in its place.
You may even wonder why something that once seemed settled has suddenly been disturbed again.
But don’t confuse God’s reconstruction with His absence.
And do not mistake unfinished for abandoned.
The evidence that God is working in your life isn’t always that everything looks complete.
Sometimes the evidence is precisely the opposite.
Something is being exposed.
Something is being removed.
Something is being rebuilt.
And maybe you’ve been judging yourself by the scaffolding when God has been looking at the plans.
Paul gave us another promise:
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it…”
— Philippians 1:6
Notice what Paul didn’t say.
He didn’t say the work would always be comfortable.
He didn’t say we would always understand the process.
And he certainly didn’t say there wouldn’t be seasons when everything looked unfinished.
He said God would perform the work He began.
So if you’re somewhere between what you were and what God is making you…
Don’t walk away from the construction site.
Don’t rebuild something God tore down.
Don’t assume His silence means His absence.
And don’t measure His faithfulness by how finished everything looks today.
Because the shell isn’t the destination.
The Builder is still working.
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