By Justin Pratt, Clear Springs Baptist Church Senior Pastor
My guiltiest pleasure is simple: I like some old-school country music. Before you assume the worst, I’m not talking about songs celebrating drunken binges or bad decisions. I’m talking about the golden era. The story songs. The kind of song that made your mind sit still long enough to reflect on the realities of life their lyrics were telling us about.
I was a teenager in the late ’80s and early ’90s, which means I had a front-row seat to what I still believe was country music at its finest. Picture it: a little Mazda B2200 pickup with the windows rolled down, no power steering or air conditioning, and a casebook full of CDs thrown onto the dashboard or in the floorboard. Those mid-90s country songs from George Strait, John Michael Montgomery and Garth Brooks told stories. They were about working men, faithful love, small towns, heartbreak and redemption. They didn’t need flashing lights or auto-tune. They had steel guitars and lyrics that actually meant something. It was less about the beat and more about the backbone.
I recently heard an old song I remembered almost every lyric to, “Work in Progress,” by Alan Jackson. If country music in that era were a front porch, you’d find Alan Jackson sitting on a rocking chair with a sweet tea in one hand and an electric guitar in the other. He didn’t need much to get his message across: with just long blonde hair, a cowboy hat, a mustache, and a melody, his catchy songs would hit you right where you lived.
And that is exactly what he did with “Work in Progress,” a song that summed up the human condition in three minutes and a fiddle break. In the song, Jackson wasn’t singing about having it all together. He was admitting he didn’t. He acknowledged faults, failures, rough edges and the reality that growth takes time.
That message isn’t just good songwriting. It’s good theology. Every believer in Christ is, quite literally, a work in progress. The doctrine theologians call sanctification describes the ongoing process by which God shapes us into the image of His Son. Justification happens in a moment; sanctification happens over a lifetime. It is the steady, sometimes uncomfortable chiseling of the soul.
God saves us instantly, but He matures us progressively.
Many walk away from faith because they grow discouraged with their imperfections. They expected the transformation to be immediate. Paul reminds us that the One who began a good work will finish it. It is important to know that the issue is not speed; it is certainty.
Some days progress feels invisible. We still stumble and wrestle with the same habits. Old tempers flare. Old doubts whisper. But sanctification is not measured in isolated failures; it is measured in steady obedience, and daily surrender compounds over time.
An unfinished project is not a failed project; it is proof that the work continues. Awareness of your weakness is evidence that God is still shaping you. Perfection is not required; participation is.
So don’t resist the process. Don’t run from conviction. Growth may be slow, humbling, even painful, but it is purposeful.
You are not abandoned in your flaws, nor are you a discarded draft. You are under the construction of a perfect Builder. And He never begins what He does not intend to finish.
So, let Him work. Stay surrendered when conviction comes. Stay teachable when correction stings. Stay patient when the growth feels slow. And remind yourself of the words from the mid-1990s theologian (I mean country singer), “Just be patient, I’m a work in progress.”
