Finishing Strong

 

Monday, June 7 will mark 46 years in ministry for me. I walked into the office of First Baptist Church in Archer City, Texas and began a journey that took me to south Louisiana and to four areas in the state of New Mexico. It has been an adventurous journey, at times filled with great joy and other times great sadness. No, I am not retiring tomorrow or next week or next month, but it is closer and I think about it more now than in June of 1975. So, as we grow older and life changes, what should be our goal?

 

In 2011 Billy Graham wrote a book called Nearing Home: Life, Faith, and Finishing Well. The last of those caught my attention. My goal is to finish well, to finish as strong as I started this journey.

 

I love God’s Word and believe that the Bible is God’s Word. I believe that we are to look to the Bible as the authority for all that we believe and do. So, I looked to the Bible to enable me to know how to finish strong. I found in the Bible a model for how I want to finish.

 

Joshua 14:6-12

Then the people of Judah came to Joshua at Gilgal. And Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite said to him, “You know what the Lord said to Moses the man of God in Kadesh-Barnea concerning you and me. I was forty years old when Moses the servant of the Lord sent me from Kadesh-Barnea to spy out the land, and I brought him word again as it was in my heart. But my brothers who went up with me made the heart of the people melt; yet I wholly followed the Lord my God. And Moses swore on that day, saying, ‘Surely the land on which your foot has trodden shall be an inheritance for you and your children forever, because you have wholly followed the Lord your God.’ And now, behold, the Lord has kept me alive, just as He said, these forty-five years since the time that the Lord spoke this word to Moses, while Israel walked in the wilderness. And now, behold, I am this day eighty-five years old. I am still as strong today as I was in the day that Moses sent me; my strength now is as my strength was then, for war and for going and coming. So now give me this hill country of which the Lord spoke on that day, for you heard on that day how the Anakim were there, with great fortified cities. It may be that the Lord will be with me, and I shall drive them out just as the Lord said.”

 

I believe that is what finishing strong looks like.

 

Remaining strong in believing God’s Word.

I want to believe God and obey Him till I go be with Him. I want the Bible to determine what I do, not feelings or circumstances but what God says.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is believing and doing God’s Word.

 

Remaining strong in my passion for God’s will.

 

I want to continue to have a passion to share Jesus with others. I don’t want to win an argument or win a debate or force what I believe on others. I want to show others who Jesus is and to show His love for them and have them come to love and follow Him.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is doing God’s will

 

Remaining strong to be in a spiritual battle.

 

I believe that the strongest spiritual weapon we have is prayer. I want to be a prayer warrior. I know there will come a time when physically I won’t have the energy to do what I have done ministry wise in the past, but prayer is power and I can continue to join with Jesus through prayer.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is knowing you are in a spiritual battle and using the spiritual weapons that God has given us.

 

Remaining strong in letting God direct me to new things.

 

Our walk with Jesus is not to be reckless, but is to be risky. God talks a lot in His Word about new. I never want to rest in my comfort zone but always be open for God to do a new thing in me and through me.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is letting God move us into new things.

 

Remaining strong in being young.

 

I know that chronologically I will age. I know that my body with lose strength and vigor, but I never want to grow old in my spirit or old in my mind or old in my desire for God.

 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is being renewed in our spirits every day.  

 

I started with a passion and a faith that Jesus is the answer for my life and the lives of broken and hurting people everywhere, and I want to finish with that same passion and faith.

 

Remaining Strong by Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                              Joe