Finishing Well

There are days when I'd like to be a cat!

It's how you finish that counts—or so they say!

I suppose someone could stretch that saying to mean that as long as you manage to repent and "do the right thing" fifteen minutes before you die, you can live the rest of your life any way you please.

But I think there is something deeper to this phrase.

Take the life of Asa, the King of Judah, described for us in 2 Chronicles 14-16. He started out so well: "Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God" (14:2, NIV). He knew where the secret to his success was: "The land is still ours, because we have sought the Lord our God; we sought him and he has given us rest on every side" (14:7, NIV).

When faced with adversity, Asa did not hesitate to seek the Lord. Facing his enemies, he prayed: "Lord, there is no one like you to help the powerless against the mighty. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this vast army. O Lord, you are our God; do not let man prevail against you" (14:11, NIV).

Asa worked hard at religious reform, spurred on by the messages from God he received through the Lord's prophet, Azariah: "The Lord is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you forsake him, he will forsake you…be strong, and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded" (15:2, 7, NIV). A little later it was said of Asa and the people he ruled: "They sought God eagerly, and he was found by them" (15:15, NIV). For thirty-five years things went well.

Then Asa messed up. He made a treaty with a pagan king who was threatening his borders. The question hangs in the air: Why, after so much evidence of the Lord's faithfulness, did Asa decide that God couldn't handle this situation?

To make things worse, Asa didn't respond well to the rebuke he suffered at the hands of God's prophet. He refused to repent (16:10) and took out his anger against God on his people and stopped seeking the Lord (16:12). Asa was not so much of a hypocrite that he didn't know that if he was unwilling to confess the first sin he couldn't seek the Lord for blessing when other issues, like his final illness, overtook him.

He ended badly.

The Scriptures give us no explanation as to why Asa failed at the end of his reign. We are only given the warning.

Had he become self-satisfied, forgetting who had brought him to this point?

Was he simply too tired to resist anymore?

Over the last few weeks I've had occasion to speak to two missionaries who are getting close to retirement. Their greatest concern is to end well. They still have lots of energy and a world of knowledge to share, but are concerned that once they return home they will not have a place to continue to live out their passion. I understand their feelings. I want to end well too.

But I also know that after all these years, a part of me, perhaps the part that's simply tired, just wants to stop. Perhaps that was Asa's fatal flaw—he stopped when he should have kept going. He forgot what the prophet had said: "…be strong and do not give up, for your work will be rewarded" (15:7, NIV). Worse yet, it would appear that he neglected to keep seeking the Lord.

These are principles that all of us who want to end well need to remember:

    1.    Seek the Lord eagerly.
    2.    Be strong in the Lord.
    3.    Don't give up.

The rest God will take care of personally.