Some are calling him “Mighty Mouse.” He is a genetically designed mouse, who, according to CNN.com, is “capable of enduring rigorous exercise for extended periods of time.” He is a transgenic mouse, that is, a lab animal who has had his genes changed to produce special muscles which are a combination of strength and endurance muscle tissue rich in oxygen. In laboratory tests the mouse was able to perform two and a half times longer than a mouse with regular muscle fibers.
I thought as I read that story how wonderful it would be if God could just change our genes to give us supernatural ability to endure spiritual rigors for extended periods of time — a spiritual endurance gene. Most anyone can run a short distance race, but it is the exceptional person who is able to run a marathon. I watched Lance Armstrong being interviewed after he won his fourth Tour de France. Armstrong is a cancer survivor who came back from this life threatening disease to conquer the mountains of France in the toughest bike race in the world. Called “Superman” by Sports Illustrated, he actually started out as a short distance speed racer. But after his bout with cancer, he knew that the race that counted was the one that required endurance. He knew it was not whether you could go around a track a few times, but whether you could keep up a grueling ride for weeks through rugged mountain terrain. The Tour de France is a race of over 2,000 miles, taking nearly a month. The demands of personal physical endurance are enormous. Armstrong is strongest in the mountains where many of the others fall behind or even quit the race.
Endurance is important because not everyone who begins well finishes well. Not everyone who starts the race finishes the race. Not everyone who lines up at the starting line is able to endure to the finish line. The Bible says, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever” (1 Corinthians 9:24-25).
In the Scripture reading this morning we read about a man named Solomon. He was the son of the most famous king of Israel, King David. When Solomon first became king, he went to the temple to worship God. That night the Lord revealed himself to Solomon in a dream, and said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” Solomon answered, “Now, Lord God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?” (2 Chronicles 1:9-10). And because Solomon asked for wisdom rather than riches or the death of his enemies, God granted not only his request for wisdom, but gave him enormous wealth and blessings besides. You could not have had a better beginning than Solomon had. His heart was in the right place and he was God’s man for the hour.
But as Solomon grew in wisdom, he also grew in pride. He multiplied his wealth. He had great military conquests. He tried everything and never denied himself any pleasure. In his great wisdom, he wrote much of the book of Proverbs found in our Bible. Proverbs are wise sayings and advise about life. Solomon’s proverbs are good and true, the only thing is, he did not follow his own advise. Solomon began his life with great wisdom. Kings of other lands came to hear what came to be known as “The wisdom of Solomon.” But he ended his life as a fool. In his pride he drifted away from God. The Bible says, “The Lord became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice. Although he had forbidden Solomon to follow other gods, Solomon did not keep the Lord’s command” (1 Kings 11:9-10). When you stop following the true God almost any god will do. In effect, you become your own god.
What do we mean by finishing well? It means that you end up at a better place than where you started. It means that you grew and matured personally and spiritually over the span of your life. You got better as your life went on. You endured to the end in your walk with God and did not quit.
How is it that we can endure? The first thing you must have in order to finish well in life is: You must have humility. Part of Solomon’s problem was pride. God made him wise, and then Solomon became proud of his wisdom. Pride moves us away from God. Humility keeps us at God’s feet. It helps us to remember where we have come from and how we got where we are. It helps us to remember that it was God who gave us what we have, so that we do not try to take credit and act as though we accomplished everything on our own. It keeps us from saying, “Look at what I did,” and makes us say, “Look at what God did.” We stop trying to take the credit and give God the credit. We stop trying to impress other people, because we are secure in who we are. We are not trying to be somebody else, because we are happy the way God has made us.
At first Solomon was quite humble before God. He said, “Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties” (1 Kings 3:7). But in the end, Solomon had supreme confidence in his own ability and his life ended in disaster. Once you lose that sense of dependence on God you are losing ground spiritually. You are going backwards instead of forwards. The Bible says, “So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). We have to be humble and realize how much we need God and that we are always vulnerable to spiritual attack. We never reach the place where we are not susceptible to temptation. We can never look at someone who has fallen and say, “I would never do that.” We are capable of almost anything if we are not constantly throwing ourselves at the feet of Jesus and asking for his help and grace. The moment we think we can make it on our own is the moment before disaster strikes. We are not better than others. We are sinners who are in the process of being redeemed by the Spirit of God, but we can only progress in the faith as we humbly stay in his hands. If we try to run from him thinking we can do it on our own, we will end up like Solomon.
Just because you have begun well does not mean you will finish well. The Bible says, “One who puts on his armor should not boast like one who takes it off” (1 Kings 20:11). If you do not stay humble before God and others, you will not finish well. Humility is important to pray for when you begin to think you can do this without God. Or perhaps you think you will be okay with just a little bit of God. You think you would rather live life on your own, or live with your pet sin for awhile longer. You may think that God isn’t going to do anything, so now it is up to you. You say, “I know that the Bible says it is wrong, but I think God wants me to be happy.” You haven’t really made a total surrender to God. You are keeping part of your life for yourself. Perhaps pride is in your way. Remember that the Bible says, “But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6). My own experience is that when I get too busy for God, and leave him somewhere, my life does not work and I am defeated at every turn. But when I keep on my face before God, aware of my need of him, my life works in wonderful ways. We prove by experience the truth of Scripture that says, “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:10).
The second thing you must have if your are to finish well in life is: You must have Honesty. Honesty is much more than just not telling a lie or having integrity in your financial dealings. The kind of honesty I am talking about is much harder than those things. It is being honest with yourself. Honesty is actually a part of humility. The hard part of real honesty is that you stop hiding the truth from yourself. It means that you stop pretending. It means that you stop projecting one image and living another. It means that you finally face the truth you have been hiding from yourself. Living in a fallen world we are all broken. None of us escapes unscathed. We need to be honest about our own brokenness.
To be honest you have to be willing to look inside. You have to see your sin and admit it. You have to turn from it. You have to admit you are wrong. If you are not honest about who your are, you can never grow. If you think you are better than others. If you can’t admit that you have been wrong. If you can see the faults of others clearly and have difficulty seeing your own. Then you will be stunted spiritually. You will not finish well.
In his book Lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein II illustrates this important truth. He writes, “A year or so ago, on the cover of the New York Herald Tribune Sunday magazine, I saw a picture of the Statue of Liberty. . . taken from a helicopter and it showed the top of the statue’s head. I was amazed at the detail there. The sculptor had done a painstaking job with the lady’s coiffure, and yet he must have been pretty sure that the only eyes that ‘Would ever see this detail would be the uncritical eyes of sea gulls.’ He could not have dreamt that any man would ever fly over this head. He was artist enough, however, to finish off this part of the statue with as much care as he had devoted to her face and her arms and the torch and everything that people can see as they sail up the bay. . . . When you are creating a work of art, or any other kind of work, finish the job off perfectly. You never know when a helicopter, or some other instrument not at the moment invented, may come along and find you out.”
The point is that we have to be honest enough as Christians to work on the parts of our lives that nobody sees — at least not at the present time. It may be hidden from others, but not to you and certainly not from God. We are honest enough to have integrity in the areas of our lives that nobody else sees. We are the same person when nobody is watching as we are when we are surrounded by others.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the third thing you must have in order to finish well in life is: You must have forgiveness. The reason for this is that life is full of injustices, hurts and injuries, and perhaps the greatest number of people I have known who have not finished well have carried unresolved resentments against God and other people. Here is the reality: we live in an imperfect, fallen world. By fallen, I mean that when the human family invited sin into the world, the world fell away from God. It is not what it was in the beginning, and it is not what it should be now. What that means is that life is often unfair, unequal and even irrational. Life doesn’t always make sense. And people are imperfect. They say things and do things, both intentionally and unintentionally, which can hurt and wound us. The temptation is to let bitterness and unforgiveness have a foothold in our lives.
One of the greatest Christians in the history of the world nearly let this keep him from completing his course well. Elijah was a man of God and one of the greatest prophets the world has ever known. But he was a loner. He saw God do miraculous things through his ministry, but after one of his greatest miracles he ran into a woman named Jezebel who threatened to undo all he had done for the Lord, and then kill him. At that point he sank into a great depression, for he was angry. He was angry at the people who were opposing the work of God. He was angry at the people who were supposed to be the people of God, and truly believed that he was the only true believer left. And finally, he was angry at God. Why didn’t God take out this evil woman? Why did he allow her to continue to live? Why did God allow it to appear that he was losing when he had the power to win and wipe out all his enemies?
Someone has said that harboring unforgiveness in our hearts is like drinking poison and hoping the other person will die. That is really the way it is. The Bible calls resentment the “root of bitterness” (Hebrews 12:15). If you have a hurt and nurse that hurt, your spiritual growth will come to a halt. Let go of it all and let God handle it. Trust him to work out the injustices in your life and in the world. Put down your grievances against him, because it is impossible to grow near to God when you haven’t forgiven God — or someone else.
Someone has said: “A lot of people give up when hurts and disappointments come. But every hardship calls us to endure and keep trusting in God’s good care. And God rewards those who do endure. No matter what happens, stay faithful to God.” Jesus said, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:22).
Paul was a man who endured many difficulties. Life could have made him bitter. There were rejections, beatings and imprisonments. People opposed him as he tried to preach the Gospel, but he wrote toward the end of his life while in prison: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:7-8).
May we be able to say the same as we draw near the close of our lives. May we finish well. I say to you, as Paul said to the Philippians: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:3-6).
A Haitian pastor once told this parable, which if you have been to Haiti, you can imagine happening there: “A certain man wanted to sell his house for $2,000. Another man wanted very badly to buy it, but because he was poor, he couldn’t afford the full price. After much bargaining, the owner agreed to sell the house for half the original price with just one stipulation: he would retain ownership of one small nail protruding from just over the door. After several years, the original owner wanted the house back, but the new owner was unwilling to sell. So first the owner went out, found the carcass of a dead dog, and hung it from the nail he still owned over the door. Soon the house became unlivable and the family was forced to sell the house to the owner of the nail.” The point of his parable was that if we leave even one small nail outside the ownership of God in our lives, it will not be long until the devil comes along to claim his ownership and hang many unpleasant things upon it. One little nail will seem small and insignificant, but in the end it will bring many unpleasant experiences into our lives.
Let’s learn to finish well. Let’s be people who are humble, honest and forgiving. Let’s make God the owner of our whole house — every room, every board, every nail.
Rodney J. Buchanan
August 18, 2002
Mulberry St. UMC
Mt. Vernon, OH
www.MulberryUMC.org
Rod.Buchanan@MulberryUMC.org
