Pastor Bryan Grant | I AM A FINISHER | December 27th, 2020

Welcome to church at home.

My name is Brian.

I'm one of the pastoral team here.

You may notice that we're shooting from a different location today.

We are at our Lake Country campus location.

It's an honor to be out here.

I spent the last few months getting to know this church.

They love God, they're passionate, they love to worship, they're praying.

So when you're praying for church, I want you to pray for Lake Country as well as KCC.

And so today is December.

It's the last message of the year before we roll into January.

And so I want to start with our anchor scripture.

Today it's Hebrews chapter 13, verse 8.

Hebrews 13:8

It says this Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And I saw something in Facebook that kind of went along with that.

It says, remember the same God that made a way last time is going to make a way this time.

And so my message today is actually about finishing strong.

Yes, you heard me right.

It's about finishing strong.

You're probably looking at your phone or your laptop or your TV thinking, did he really just say that in the year that we're in?

And I wanted to say this.

This is what Philippians says.

It says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I know this year has been a bit of a challenge, and how are you doing with that?

I know this time is tough.

It's been a real challenge for a lot of people.

Christmas looked different, the year looked different, didn't plan out the way we wanted it to, but God has a plan and he's moving forward.

And you may be struggling with hearing what God is saying, or maybe you're having all the feelings.

My sister always says this to me whenever we're in a big discussion, she has all the feelings.

Or maybe you're just feeling numb and that's that's valid.

Or maybe you're just feeling like you're not hearing God at all.

And just because he's silent doesn't mean that he's absent.

I want you to hear that.

Now, I want you to say something to whoever you're with.

Maybe you go to the bathroom or wherever your mirror is and look in the mirror and say, I am a finisher.

Maybe you need to convince yourself that you're a finisher.

But God built us in such a way that we are finishers.

With him, we can do anything, and that means finishing this year strong.

Now the truth is, anyone can quit.

You're probably thinking, that's true.

How many times have you quit something in your life?

You've quit a job, you've quit something that was really good for you.

But anyone can quit.

And so the truth is that finishing anything, finishing this year is going to be a marathon.

It has been a marathon.

And I do believe very strongly that God built us the way his children, the way he loves us, he gives us good gifts.

I believe that he built us to be finishers and to depend on him wholly for these things.

So today I want us to use the example of Paul the Apostle.

And so this is what he says in 2 Timothy chapter 4, verse 7.

2 Timothy 4:7

It says, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

This is Paul speaking near the end of his apostle career, if that's what you want to call it.

He's been around the block, he's traveled, he's done all kinds of things.

But when he said these words, it didn't mean that he wasn't tired, that he wasn't physically exhausted, that he wasn't mentally fatigued, he wasn't emotionally drained.

All of those things that we're feeling through this year, Paul said this.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Paul, in his career, had been beaten, shipwrecked, constantly facing death, been whooped, beating with rods.

So many things went wrong for him.

And what does he say?

I have fought the good fight.

I have fought the good fight.

He wrote this analogy in the way of uh Greek sports.

Now, if you when he was doing this, it was about like wrestling or long-distance running or discus or pentathlon and a few other I couldn't even pronounce Greek sports.

He ran this.

He realized that the Christian walk, he compared it to running a long-distance race.

Now, recently I had read a book by a Navy SEAL named David Goggins.

He is an ultra-marathon runner.

He spent 20 years in the special forces in the Navy SEALs.

He had been to Iraq.

He'd been all over the place in some place.

He just said classified in the book, so we don't know where he'd been.

But in that time, he decided to push himself really, really hard and he became what was known as it's called an ultra-marathon runner.

These guys are a next level breed of people.

So I'm just going to read three of the descriptions of the races that he ran.

The first one was called the Moab 240.

That's 240 miles that he ran.

He did 238 of those miles in 62 hours, and he plays second place, which means someone beat him in that.

The next race is called the Badwater 135, 135 miles.

And I believe that one's in the Nevada Desert, in the hottest place in the United States.

He did that one in 32 hours and finished 18th.

He did another one called McNaughton Park, 150 miles in 33 hours, is what he did.

Now these ultra marathon runners, as as David Goggins was running, he would have broken feet.

He had would break the small bones in his feet because of the distance.

He would have kidney problems, hallucinations with it when he was running.

In the Moab 240, he actually was lost for 12 hours before he found his way back.

So I read up a little bit on ultra marathon runners, the long distance that they would do.

When they run, they did months and months of training.

David Goggins spent 10 months training before he went to the Moab 240.

He's the one that he's run, he's run 60 ultra marathons.

He's got the highest record for amount of people who've run the ultra marathons.

So when they run, they have the best food, the best protein, the best water, the best shoes, the lightest clothes.

They shake off everything that hinders them in their focus for that race.

Paul's mindset was very much like David Goggins, or vice versa.

David Goggins was much like Paul's.

He didn't quit.

Something that he said, he's I don't stop when I'm tired, I stop when I'm done.

Many times when these super athletes are racing, they're racing to finish.

They're not racing to beat the other person, they're racing to finish the race.

They want to beat the other competitors because they're competitors and they want to do the best that they possibly can and they want to beat the next guy beside them for sure.

But they're racing for their personal best.

They're racing to finish that race.

This is what Paul is saying.

They set aside all other things, all focus, anything that's going on, anything that's happening during that day, just to focus on the mission that's ahead of them.

They'll fight it off, they'll push it off, they'll do whatever.

The process that David Goggin had to actually clear his mind before he was erased was like sometimes hours before he got there.

This is how Paul is encouraging us.

He's saying, When I get knocked down, when you get knocked down, you're going to get up again because Christ is in you, and he gives you the strength to do that.

This is what Hebrews chapter 12 says.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Philippians 3 says this I press onward toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

These are amazing words.

So I want to go back to what Paul said.

The first thing he said in verse 7 is, I have fought the good fight.

He knew what he was fighting for.

This is a reminder for us that what we struggle against is sin.

We struggle against the evil of this world.

We struggle against all those other things.

This is what Corinthians says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

This pandemic is as much a spiritual battle as it is a physical one.

We are going to thrive in this pandemic if we focus on Jesus and depend on him, if we go to our knees and we pray and we hear the word of God.

That's when we're going to thrive.

This is where we can carry the same perspective as Paul.

He never gave up, he never surrendered, he always fought.

So if you're thinking today, as you're going into 2021, that man, you just want to give up.

My encouragement is don't give up.

On the other side of your not quitting is where God has the best thing for you.

Paul knew what he was fighting.

The next part of this thing is I have fought the good fight.

The next one is I have finished the race.

In his letter to Timothy, he's not patting himself on the back.

He's not saying, Oh, look, I ran the full distance.

Look at me.

That's not what he's doing.

Rather, he's saying that he could do it because of the grace of God in his life, that God gave him the strength to do those things.

In the book of Acts, he says this: I consider my life worth nothing to me.

If only I may finish the race and complete the task that Jesus had given me, the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace.

His only focus was Jesus.

He didn't look left, he didn't look right, he looked at Jesus all the way through.

So we know that I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race.

And the next thing that he says in that scripture is I have kept the faith.

What does that even mean?

I have kept the faith.

That isn't easy when you're when it's all around you.

You're watching this right now, and I can guarantee you that your phone dinged, that the news email popped up, that Twitter said something, Instagram said something, Facebook is popping up, Pinterest, TikTok, whatever it is, all of those things are keeping you from focusing everywhere but on Christ.

But on Christ.

There's something that I had read, distraction sometimes equals destruction.

When we're distracted, it's like when you're driving in a car.

If you get distracted, there's a possibility that it's going to end badly.

When we're not focused on what Christ has for us and who he is in our life, there's a chance that it's going to end in destruction.

This is what Corinthians chapter 4, 2 Corinthians 4.8 says.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

This is an excellent part.

I love this.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.

We are perplexed, but not driven to despair.

We're persecuted, but not forsaken.

Struck down but not destroyed.

The jars of clay, that's a treasure inside us.

The Jewish people would build these jars all different sizes, all different shapes, and inside them they would put scrolls and scraps of things that were important to them.

We are all different.

We have different lives.

We have different shapes.

We're different people entirely, but we are designed by God to complete a purpose that He has given to us.

And I can tell you that our purpose isn't just to survive the pandemic, our purpose is to thrive in the pandemic.

Our purpose is to know God, to grow, to mature, to know more of who he is, and to build character.

Keeping the faith isn't just living the life of a believer or standing on the promises of God and not wavering left or right or up or down.

We want to focus on everything.

Who God made you, and I believe this with all my heart, who God made you isn't just to lie over and die.

Who God made you is to step forward with strength and boldness and move to what he's called us.

To depend on him, we grow.

When we depend on him, we can move forward.

When we depend on him, untrust becomes trust.

When we depend on him, hopelessness can become hope.

When we depend on him, hate can become love.

When we depend on him, bondage or chains equal freedom.

There is hope, and that person is Jesus Christ.

He is the Savior, He is the life, He is the way, the truth, and the life that's going to bring us towards what He has called us to do and to fill us with joy and hope.

There are some things that are built in these last few months that maybe you haven't even seen or recognized in this pandemic.

The pandemic gives us this opportunity to persevere and move forward.

Struggle in general is a life that can build perseverance in us.

The pandemic has given us an opportunity to refocus.

Are you distracted?

I can tell you sometimes that I'm distracted by what's gonna I'm gonna swipe over and see what Bonnie Henry is saying next.

I can tell you that it's been a tough time to actually focus on the things that are ahead of me that God has designed for me.

But this gives us an opportunity to refocus.

Are you distracted from the Word of God?

Are you distracted from your prayer time?

Are you distracted from knowing Him more?

This pandemic has given us an opportunity to build.

Never before has there been such opportunity for us to build relationships or rebuild relationships with our wife, with our children, with maybe friends and family around us, to work on our marriages, to maybe start new things with our kids.

Maybe you're looking at starting that online business that you always wanted to start, or do that podcast that you always wanted to do.

This is what Paul said.

I have fought the good fight.

I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

So the good news is that Jesus is here for us.

He has given us the strength to move forward in all those things that God has called us to, to move into 2021 with hope and joy and peace and strength and to do what He has said.

So church may look different.

We may not be able to meet an in-person church.

And you know that.

It looks a little bit different.

So we can say that maybe things have uh shifted and that church isn't the way that we thought, but I can tell you for certainty, and I'm gonna I'm gonna read some stuff to you.

I want to I want to go into some testimonies of people and and things that have happened in this church in the last few months.

But I can tell you that just because we're not able to meet in person, in fact, the gospel has gone out in unprecedented ways before.

We may be silenced in person, but I can tell you that the gospel of Jesus is going out further and farther than ever before.

I want to look at just our KCC over the last eight months.

This is gonna give you some hope.

In KCC, last in this last eight months, since March of this year, we have estimated reached 27,000 different people that have come and seen our page, seen our video on Facebook only.

That's not including anything on our website, Instagram, or YouTube.

That's just Facebook.

The gospel is going out.

In Lake Country, in the last four or five months, we've seen four people give their life to Jesus and ask to be baptized.

KCC, we may not be able to meet.

We have people reaching out to us on Facebook or Instagram.

There's a young guy named Brian who's been watching our stream for the last few months.

He gave his life to Jesus, connected with us on Facebook, and then the next two or three weeks later, he was at church with his family because he wanted to know more about God.

He wanted to.

This is what happened during the pandemic.

I want to read this.

So this is this is how far our gospel has gone out as a church over the last few months.

We've gone to Canada, obviously.

But the U.S., our live stream has gone to 11 different states: Finland, Mexico, Netherlands, Australia, Australia, England, Scotland, Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Ukraine, Austria, Wales, South Africa, Larry and Francine.

If you're praying for our missionaries, pray for Larry Francine.

They are in and not been able to come back like they usually do to be able to raise the money, money they need for their missionary work.

So pray for them, bless them.

They've gone out to India, United Arab Emirates, Fiji, Iraq, Malta, Philippines, Thailand, Iceland, Puerto Rico, all those countries have tuned in to hear the gospel, hear our worship, and hear the word our gospel of Jesus Christ is going out farther than ever before.

It may look like the church has been silenced, but if anything, it's given us a greater voice in this world.

That's hope.

A few weeks ago at KCC, we had uh a lady come in.

She had just moved from Alaska into KCC or into uh Kelowna.

Her name is Doris.

Hello, Doris, if you're watching.

She had been with us for three months, watched online only.

For three months, she watched online.

She said she considered this church her home.

She was coming in.

The first time in three months, she stepped uh church or stepped foot in our church.

She was coming to pay tithe to her home church.

She walks in, she's talking with Teresa, our receptionist.

She notices uh me from the stream, and then she saw Talay.

She's like, I know you guys, I've been watching you every week.

This is someone who's been watching us online.

That's hope.

The gospel is going out.

What we've seen this year is there's couples that have been struggling with infertility that now are pregnant and having babies.

Couples that couldn't buy a home before but now have homes.

Cars that have failed that now have people have different cars, newer cars.

God is blessing people and filling people with hope.

And so just to bring that home onto a different level, I want to read some testimonies of people from our church.

So the first one is from Nikki.

She said, The biggest thing that God has done for me this year is He's opened up my eyes to the truth, His Word.

In a world of information overload and chaos, God really impressed upon me to seek truth and to not just believe everything that has put in front of me.

He challenged me to seek truth in all my ways, acknowledging him.

For a few years now, God impressed on my heart to get out of debt and owe nothing.

I have tried on my own accord for the last few years, but something happened or came up, and she could never do it.

I could never get rid of unwanted debt no matter what.

This year, God took care of my debt, and now I am debt-free.

That's hope.

This is Robert.

Robert is from our Lake Country campus.

This year, he had a really tough year.

See, he had to fire four employees, broke up with his girlfriend of seven years, almost went bankrupt, couldn't decide between God and the world.

He had his identity stolen, he changed his medication and almost committed suicide.

His cat broke his leg, had some contracts, good jobs go sideways, cost a lot of money, family struggles.

Um, through all of this, he didn't smoke, he didn't start watching pornography, drink, or use drugs at all.

He did not abandon Christ.

And this is what he says in the toughest year that he possibly ever had.

My heart belongs, longs to be pure and have clean hands before the Lord, and that's how I am finishing strong.

Nothing will distract my eyes from my creator who gave me new life.

That's Robert.

That's hope.

This is from Ashley, also from our Lake Country campus.

The biggest thing God has done in my life this year is shown up.

God has picked me up out of some of the darkest days I have ever seen, that I've ever been through, and has proven to me that his love is all that I need.

He has spoken exact scriptures to me to show me why I am worth his love.

He has proven to me time and again, this year he will never leave my side and he will fight for me when I can't fight anymore.

His love is real and even bigger than I can ever imagine.

God has so much more for you than just to survive.

He wants you to thrive in this time.

And I want to say this: we with God we don't live to just survive, we live to thrive.

He's designed us to thrive, he's designed us to depend on him and to be strong finishers.

Say this again.

I am a finisher.

I am a finisher.

Say it, God give me the strength to finish.

God has given you the strength to finish.

This is what I want to do.

I want you just to close your eyes with me wherever you are, and I'm gonna pray for you.

Wherever you are, I want to pray for you and pray that God touches you, that gives you strength, that gives you hope, that gives you peace, that you can say, I have fought the good fight, I have kept the faith, and you're gonna move forward in all those things that that have that God wants for you.

So close your eyes with me, Lord.

Bless this pe these people.

Wherever they are, Lord, that you give them strength, you give them wisdom, you give them grace and mercy to do the things that you've called them to do.

When things look bleak, Lord, that you would show them peace.

Lord, when things look hopeless, Lord, that you show them hope.

Lord, and in this time that they know you deeper, that we're moving into 2021, finishing strong, doing the things that you've called us to do, to stand tall, to not look left or right, but to keep our focus on you.

We know that you're a good God, and we're so excited to hear the testimony of all the things that you're gonna do in people.

Lord, bless them, give them peace, give them strength, give them ideas, give them creative ideas, Lord, and to just move things forward in their life.

Bless them in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, we love you, we miss you, can't wait till we can come back and meet you and see you in in person church.

But if you at any time need prayer, you need anything like that, reach out through Instagram, through Facebook.

We love the opportunity to get to know you, to pray for you, and to support you however we can.

Bless you.