Finish Well

The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.” And Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, wrote, “The end of a thing is better than its beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8 NKJV).

Starting strong is overrated. Take sports, for example. Few baseball statisticians keep track of which team was ahead after the first inning. What matters is the final score. Likewise, starting strong is overrated in our spiritual journey. The Bible gives us examples of people who started strong in their service to the Lord, only to falter later. Scripture doesn’t celebrate these early successes; instead, it uses the people’s experiences as cautionary tales for other believers. One of the most memorable of these cautionary tales is that of Samson.

Samson had a great beginning. He was blessed with superhuman qualities. Physically, there was no one stronger. We get a sense of his power in Judges 14:5–6: “As Samson and his parents were going down to Timnah, a young lion suddenly attacked Samson near the vineyards of Timnah. At that moment the Spirit of the LORD came powerfully upon him, and he ripped the lion’s jaws apart with his bare hands. He did it as easily as if it were a young goat” (NLT).

Samson was a one-man army, a judge chosen by God to make a difference on behalf of His people. On one occasion Samson killed thirty Philistines—the enemies of the Israelites—to settle a bet. On another occasion he killed 1,000 Philistine warriors on the battlefield with a bone that he picked up from the ground. He wasn’t a fictitious superhero; he was the real deal.

For a time, Samson was a mighty man of God. And for a time, he was even a true world changer. Eventually, however, the world began to change him. Samson turned his back on God. He had an amazing beginning but a tragic ending.

One day your life will be summed up in a paragraph or two on a bulletin that will be handed out at your memorial service. No one will care about how much money you made or how much stuff you owned. No one will care how high you climbed in your profession. Instead, they’ll talk about what kind of person you were.

We don’t decide the day of our death any more than we decided the day of our birth. But we do determine the spiritual state we’ll be in when we die. God wants us to be close to Him. God wants us in friendship and fellowship and intimacy with Him. But it’s our choice whether to have a relationship with the Lord or not to have a relationship with Him. We must choose wisely so that we finish well.

Reflection Question: How do you want to finish your walk with the Lord? Discuss this with believers like you on Harvest Discipleship!

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