Finishing Well, part 1

You may think that the title for this week’s devotional seems odd considering that today is January 1 and we’re talking about finishing instead of beginning. But the truth is that if we don’t determine to finish well today, we may not finish well at all, especially since none of us know when our end, our finish line, will appear in front of us. So we must make the choice now and begin living out the plan today, right now. 

Have you ever been in a race of any kind? There are marathon races, in which runners exert extreme amounts of energy and training. In my younger days, I was taken up with cars (especially German cars) and I dreamt of being a racecar driver (maybe that’s why I was awarded several speeding tickets). Some of you may remember my friend, Pastor Ron Auch (now at home with Jesus). He told the story about how, a couple of years before Ron was saved, his older brother built a VW drag racer. Pastor Ron said, “We would trailer it to several of the tracks in our region and race it. It was great fun, especially when we won, because we always beat cars with much bigger engines than ours.” Regardless of what kind of race it is, the ultimate objective of any race is to finish well.

Reading through one of my devotional Bible reading plans for this past week, I came to Proverbs 5, and was struck with the importance of finishing well. The beginning of the chapter warns young men to stay away from women who would entice them into immorality, then goes on to show what may result in failure to follow good wisdom.

Proverb 5:11-14 “At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent. 12 You will say, “How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! 13 I would not obey my teachers or turn my ear to my instructors. 14 And I was soon in serious trouble in the assembly of God’s people.” As I read that, I said to myself, “I want to finish well. I don’t want to say, I would not obey my teachers, and that I hated discipline.” 

I used to love watching drag races, like the ones up at Brainerd. Those races only last about 8 – 13 seconds, but countless hours are invested in the cars to get them to go as fast as they do. Drag racing is a lot like wedding ceremonies. In both cases you have, thousands of hours invested into something that’s over shortly after it starts. But without the thousands of hours invested, before the event, you wouldn’t have the desired outcome. In racing, sometimes forgetting to do the littlest of things will make a huge difference in the outcome. 

When it comes to finishing our lives, have you ever given any serious thought to how you are going to finish? I’m not asking whether or not you are thinking about dying, but rather, have you ever thought about whether or not you will finish well? Have you ever said to God, “I don’t want to die with this thing (whatever that is) in my life? I want to finish my life in a way that brings glory to You.” 
 

In one of the devotionals I read last year, it looked at the difference between a saved soul and a devoted soul. It’s one thing to be saved; it’s another thing to be devoted to the Lord. I’m not talking about our salvation. I’m not talking about whether or not we are going to heaven. I’m talking about how we feel about our relationship with Jesus. Do you feel like you are going to end well or do you feel defeated? 

In my experience as a pastor, I have found that most people don’t feel like they are going to finish in the way that they hoped they would. The battle for our souls is so strong, and we are under such powerful persuasions from the enemy, that sometimes it’s hard to imagine ourselves finishing our lives in the way we would like

Continued tomorrow