Stay strong, finish strong

In the same passage from Acts 20 where Paul's gathered the church elders at Ephesus, imparting to them, in part, about his ‘serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews,’ he assures:

"But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

“Paul’s saying, ‘I’m not just going to finish the job, I’m going to do it WITH JOY,’ ” explains Richard Jordan. “Those two words changed that verse for me. He’s saying, ‘I’m not just going to endure, I’m going to joy in this.’

“Where do you get the joy? I’ve told people for years a verse of Scripture that changed my whole life and my whole ministry when I was younger was the last verse in II Corinthians 1: [24] Not for that we have dominion over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for by faith ye stand.

“I can remember like it was this morning the Sunday morning at church when that verse changed my life. As a pastor of a ministry, sometime you forget this verse. My job is to help you rejoice in the Lord. How do you do that?

“When you get a gift, do you go, ‘Aghh, rats, I got another gift’? If I can communicate to you the GIFT that grace has provided, it’ll produce the joy. In Colossians 2:7, Paul talks about being ‘rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.’

“Thanksgiving comes as a natural response to being grounded in an understanding of what it means to be rooted and built up in Christ.

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“The Christian life is a lifelong growing and maturity in Christlikeness, where the revealed character of the Lord Jesus Christ reveals itself out through us over a lifetime of spiritual growth.

“Paul says ‘for by faith ye stand.’ Folks, if it isn’t YOUR faith—it has to be that you’re going to walk by faith and not by sight, so when Paul says, ‘I kept the faith,’ that’s what he’s talking about: ‘I finished my course. I took the job God gave me and I finished.’

“I like that thing about finishing the course. In II Corinthians 16:13 is a verse people like to complain about that to me was always kind of helpful. Paul writes, 13] Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong.

“People gripe, ‘Well, what’s it mean to ‘quit you like men’? How does a man quit? A man quits when the job’s done. The race is never through ’til you cross the finish line.

“The Alabama football team wears headbands with the word ‘FINISH’ on them. The philosophy is finish every play, finish every assignment, finish every game. If you just go do your job and finish, win, lose or draw you did what you were supposed to do. Don’t quit with two minutes left in the game. That’s quitting like a girly-man. The man quits at the end.

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“What it means to live in a consciousness of being ‘accepted in the beloved,’ first of all means you have a consciousness of God’s love for you in Christ. It’s the love of Christ that constrains us. It gives you the capacity to have a closeness and an intimacy with Him to bring everything He is into the details of your life. Not like Peter, ‘I’ll do it, Lord,’ and fail, but let it be His life.

“When you live in a consciousness of His love, it gives you an insight. John was the only one who identified Christ’s betrayer. Jesus said, ‘Here, the one I give the sop to,’ but nobody else understood that.

“Now, doctrinally, typically, the Little Flock, represented by John, is the group in the tribulation who will have the Antichrist identified. They will understand who the Antichrist is.

“All those running around, saying, ‘We love you, Lord! We love you,’ and are ‘going about to establish their own righteousness,’ will be blind. But the ones who say, ‘He loves us,’ and live in the consciousness of His love for them, they’ll be the ones who have the truth revealed to them.”

(new article tomorrow)