Finishing Strong in Jesus

[Phil 1:6]  For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

            Following Jesus is not for the faint of heart. We constantly battle the flesh and sinful desires that oppose God’s work in our lives. We have to navigate a tumultuous sea of emotions like anger, bitterness, depression, sorrow, and frustrations. On top of this there is the constant barrage of trials and troubles associated with daily life. There are financial pressures, relational problems with family and friends, sickness and disease, and heavy burdens oppressively bowing us to the ground. If that were not enough Christians often are forced to endure persecution  and then there is the never ending assaults of Satan .

            Have you ever been tempted to want to give up? Following Jesus is not the path of least resistance. The path of least resistance can lead to giving in to sin, to rejecting the path of righteousness, and giving up on God and his commandments.

            Church membership rolls are littered with the names of people who used to attend services, labor for the Lord, and love God but who have fallen away. They never darken the door of the church nor crack the dusty pages of a long neglected Bible. There are many reasons why. They all end in the same result. People just give up. They give up on God. They give up on their faith. They also give up on the church.

            There is debate about whether such people are truly saved in the first place. Some argue they were never truly converted in the first place. Others will say they are in a backslidden condition. I will leave that debate for another day.

            What I am most concerned with is the assurance that those followers of Jesus have this assurance. On the day we trusted Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins for salvation, he did not redeem us and then leave us to our selves to do the best we could from then on. He began the work of salvation and continues the work of sanctification until the very end of our lives.

            To put it another way, once we became children of God through faith in Jesus, we were not left to work out our faith in our resources until the end of our lives. Jesus is our strength. He works in us and for us.

            Several years ago when I was just starting out in ministry things were not going well. I felt I had not been treated fairly by the church I served or by God. The frustrations mounted for months. Rather than things getting better they increasingly grew worse. Tensions at the church escalated until one day I found myself without a job. Door after door began to shut on another door of ministry.

            One day I quit. I quit on God. I quit on ministry. I quit on the church. I even quit on my Bible. Though I am ashamed it write this, truth is I took my Bible and flung it across the living room into a corner and shouted to God, “If this is how you treat those that serve you I don’t want to serve you anymore!”

            I did not pray. I quit. I gave up. My Bible remained crumpled in that corner. I sulked for days doubting God’s love for me. This all lasted for three days. After three days I could not stand it. In repentance I went over to pick up my Bible. I cried out to God to forgive me. In that moment God reminded me of his love for me. He restored me and though a door to a new ministry did not open for six months that did not mean God was not at work.

            In fact, now in hindsight, I see God worked to bring me to repentance. God worked to remind me of his love and faithfulness. God worked to restore me and to renew my hope. God worked to get me a job as a newly married man.

            I ended up getting a job as a stock clerk checking in merchandise for a major retail department store. Those six months were frustrating. God worked. Let me give you two examples. I never gave up on my desire to preach. Everyday for six months I cried out to God to open a door. I read books. I dreamed. In those days I new it was time to walk away from student ministry to start the pastoral ministry. I did not get to preach for six months. My desire and dreamed seemed so far out of reach but God was at work. 

            One of my responsibilities at the end of each day included taking out the trash for my job. When I took out the trash one afternoon I got mad. Real mad. Down in the bottom of the wastebasket were cigarette butts, used tissue paper, and spilled coke all stuck to the bottom. I had to reach down to rake out the bottom with my bare hand. In that moment angry thoughts flashed across my mind. I thought of all the hard work to finish college and for what? To be taking out the trash? In that moment I sensed God saying to me, “I am doing this to humble you.”

            Weeks later I was once again taking out the trash. The wind blew hard that day. A single piece of paper fell to the ground while I emptied the trash. When I reached down to pick it up the wind blew it further away. I walked toward it again and the wind blew it further away. I tried a third time and once again the wind blew the trash out of my reach. In frustration I walked away.

            When I returned to my trash container to my surprise the very piece of paper I had chased blew up against my shoe. When I reached down to pick it up once again I sensed God speaking to me, “Just like I brought this paper back to you If you quit chasing and lusting after the ministry and trust me I will bring it back to you.”

            That is exactly what happened months later. God opened a door for me to become a pastor of a small country church near my hometown.

            Don’t ever give up! I see how God used those months working in the stock room of that department store to teach me things I could have never learned in a classroom. He taught me about perseverance, about trust, and about patience. I learned humility and I learned to never take ministry for granted.

            God began his work of salvation in me at a football stadium in October of 1983. He continued to work in me in a stockroom in Weatherford, TX in 1993. He is working in my house in Runaway Bay, TX in 2014 as I write this today.

            God does not quit on us when we most need him. He will be there to our last breath. That is part of that good work he began in us and will be faithful to complete so we can finish strong.

            I often wonder what happens to those who once served God so faithfully but quit. Some were disillusioned by tragedies and the troubles of life. Some lost hope. Some were snared by sin and have been trapped in destructive behavior ever since. Others got mad at God and mad at life because of circumstances. I have this one hope. For those who were truly saved God is still working and will continue to work to the very end.  For that reason I can say don’t ever give up.

            There are incredibly tough stretches in life. There are times when giving up and quitting seems like a better option than finishing strong. God enables his own to finish strong.

            I know me. I know how many times I have felt like giving up in the past and how many times from time to time I still feel like giving up. Praise be to Jesus who does not give up on me or you in those tough seasons in life. By his strength we shall finish strong. I am thinking of a song now, “His love never fails, he never gives up on me.” For that reason I say again don’t ever give up.