Life & Wisdom Quote by Edwin Louis Cole

Cole’s line trades in a bracing kind of spiritual accountability: comfort, yes, but only for the work God can legitimately claim as His own. The first half is reassurance in the language of craftsmanship. “Finish” and “authors” cast God as a writer who doesn’t abandon a manuscript mid-draft. It echoes a familiar evangelical cadence: if God starts something in you, He’ll bring it to completion. The phrase works because it borrows the reliability we associate with art done by a serious professional - a maker who signs his name and stands by the product.

Then the second half snaps the warm blanket into a boundary. “Not obligated” is almost contractual, the coldest word in the sentence, and that’s the point. Cole is smuggling in a critique of religious entitlement: the habit of baptizing personal ambitions, sloppy decisions, or ego projects and then demanding divine rescue when they collapse. The subtext is: stop calling your plan God’s plan. If you’re improvising and slapping a holy label on it, don’t be shocked when heaven doesn’t underwrite the consequences.

Contextually, Cole was a prominent figure in late-20th-century men’s ministry, where “finish what God started” often functions as motivation for discipline, integrity, and responsibility. This quote is that message with teeth. It doesn’t just promise perseverance; it polices the line between vocation and vanity, surrender and self-authorization. The rhetorical power is in the pivot: assurance becomes interrogation. What, exactly, has God authored in your life - and what did you draft to avoid admitting you simply wanted it?