The Finish Well Test

We're wrapping up a series this week that we're uh been calling the master's degree.

We're looking at how Jesus developed his disciples as leaders.

Okay, it's worth noting Jesus came to earth.

He spent a lot of time with people that needed problems solved.

He spent time with people who were down and out.

Uh he healed people physically, he dealt with emotional things.

Um there was a lot that he just gave out with no desire for reciprocity.

But then we also need to note that he spent a lot of time doing leadership development with the disciples that would ultimately take the book of Acts and that whole historical narrative that we have of the Acts of the Apostles were ultimately the leaders that Jesus had developed to take his work beyond his physical life.

And he had a finite period of time he was working on, so he really didn't waste a lot of time.

He got down to it.

And so what we've been doing is looking at how he did that so that we can not only become better followers, but also we can become better leaders.

Uh I've been using on this, uh I had a blackboard over here throughout the series, and I was drawing up a chart.

Uh, and and I'm gonna blow your mind.

You ready?

Watch this.

Boom! Come on, put it up there.

Come on, come on.

Boom! Look at that.

Digital.

It's digital now.

All right, we're gonna be putting it online.

You can copy and paste this, you can have it forever, okay?

Um, but I this is what I've been drawing up, and of course the team did it better than I can physically draw, but here's what it is this is this is the uh chart that represents change.

Okay, change.

Change is inevitable, change is a big part of development, is iterations of change.

Healthy things grow, growing things change.

Okay, how what's change like?

Well, you start out, you're going about what you think is your normal life, and something is added or subtracted.

When that happens, there's disorientation.

When you're in that disorientation, it doesn't feel like development, so we tend to want an off-ramp.

I want out of here.

All right, well, so how would you do that?

Well, you might quit if you can, or if you can't quit, you might try denial, pretend like it's not happening.

But that's the wrong plan.

The right plan is to lean into the disorientation.

Recognize it as a necessary part of change and growth.

Well, how do I get out of disorientation?

I don't want to live there forever.

Here's what you do pray, process, persevere.

Pray, process, persevere.

And if I'll keep praying, processing, and persevering, eventually I'll get to some orientation.

Some good questions, some good answers.

I'll come to peace with some things.

I'll develop strength and toughness, I'll develop some maturity and some wisdom.

It's not bliss, but it's a new normal.

Of course, once I get in that new normal, some changes come in, and we go right back through the process.

And this is what Jesus did over and over with the disciples, and then they kept doing after he left.

And of course, it's part of our lives too.

What I want to do today is I want to tackle this final lesson, and this is the um the finish well test.

How do we finish well?

How do we run through the finish line?

Um, observation.

I I've got a lot of friends and people in my life, and I was thinking about this, preparing this message.

I think pretty much everybody I know, if not everybody I know, is working really hard to be good and do good.

Like even if they're not winning, even if it's not going so well, even if it feels like all they do is fail.

I I just personally, and maybe it's just my my circle, but I I've surrounded myself with people, regardless of the scoreboard, that are trying really, really hard to be good and do good.

Another way to say it is they're trying real bad to do good.

You know, they want to do good real bad.

And that's what I've observed.

And you know, I think that's probably true of probably everybody here, probably all of you.

Like when it comes to your immediate family, you're trying to be a really good son and daughter, a really good mother or father or brother or sister.

And it's just probably why when it comes to our immediate family, we are prone to guilt and shame, right?

Like parents, you tend to have that mom guilt or that dad guilt.

Why?

Well, because you want to do good so bad.

So bad, I want to do good.

I don't want to mess this person up.

I don't want to do irreparable damage.

And so it's this deep sense of responsibility, it's this deep sense of priority.

I want to do good.

It's probably true of your career.

Whatever you've set out to do, you're trying to do really good.

Obviously, you know you've got to make ends meet for you and your family, but you want to help other people make ends meet also.

It's just in you.

You want to do good.

When you're young, you tend to focus on building things.

You're building.

Because even though you know cognitively you're gonna live forever, or you're not gonna live forever on this earth, right?

You're fine, I well, somewhere you'll live forever.

That's another message, but you will live somewhere.

Okay, um, you know your body is perishing, you know you're not going to physically live forever, but there's something about a young person that just lives in a bit of denial of that.

You just sort of think you're gonna be there forever.

I I uh in my 30s, I got real serious about my retirement, like investing in retirement.

So I met with a financial planner and counselor, and he's like, Greg, you know, honestly, I'll just be honest with you, he goes, most people don't grow a retirement brain until they're 50.

He said, I'm surprised you're here this early, but it's good that you're doing this now because of the time value of money.

Let's get these things in order.

He said, What usually happens is people all of a sudden they wake up in their 50 and their energy's starting to go down, and they're like, you know, I need someone to do the math, you know, to find out if I'm actually going to be able to retire at a certain point, so they go find a pro to do the math and then figure out how do we need to reorient because they're I'm not going to be bounding with energy the rest of my life.

But of course, if we play it beyond that, even if you did grow a retirement brain in the appropriate time and make the proper investment, and now you can retire.

If you talk to folks of retirement age, now they're starting to think about how am I gonna end?

I want to end well, I want to do this right.

It's not time for me to go yet.

How do we end well?

Today I'm gonna give you five keys for ending well.

By the way, here's here's a couple scriptures for you to just ruminate on.

Ecclesiastes 7 and 4 says, a wise person thinks a lot about death while a fool only thinks about having a good time.

I was talking to uh to two mentors in my life, two men, very different men, who took different paths, um, but both respectable uh men who are in their retirement age.

And I asked each of them, what does finishing well mean to you?

What does it mean for you to finish well?

And one of them said, you know, um, finishing well for me is I don't want to fail in some kind of way at the end of my life that somehow would be subversive or would undermine my life's work.

I've spent my life developing a good reputation.

Uh it says in Proverbs 22 and 1, a good reputation, uh, choose a good reputation over great riches.

Being held in high esteem is better than silver or gold.

And so his attitude toward this was like, man, I've spent my life developing a good reputation, having a good impact on people's lives.

And what I don't want to do is at the end of my life, do something that would cost me all that life's work and watch it crumble, embarrass and humiliate the people I love the most.

The other guy, and of course, this is indicative of their different personalities.

The other guy was like, uh, he's like, you know, finishing well for me, he goes, I think I got one more home run in me.

I want to swing for the fence, I want to go out swinging.

Okay, and so in his mind, he's still playing offense.

One thinking defense, I want to protect what I've done and be wise.

The other one's going, you know what?

I don't ever want to stop taking risks.

One risk averse, the other is I got one more good risk left in me.

And so when we think about finishing well, I think it's probably a little bit of both.

Obviously, man, we want to be wise and protect what God has done in and through our lives.

But at the same time, we're not done living.

I'm gonna give you five keys to finishing well.

Uh, we're gonna be primarily in the book of 2 Timothy, and we're gonna kind of ping pong between the first and fourth chapter in 2 Timothy, which it makes sense because it's a four-chapter book.

Let me give you a little bit of context about this.

2 Timothy is written by the Apostle Paul.

He writes it, uh, the date of the book is A.D.

67, which was the same year that he died.

This is the last book that Paul wrote.

Um, just for a point of clarity, if you keep reading in the Bible, there's another book after 2 Timothy, Titus, which is also written by the Apostle Paul, but it was written before 2 Timothy.

Um, this is during a time in history, AD 64, Nero, you remember the whole Rome burning, half of Rome burnt to the ground?

Nero is the emperor, and so Nero is losing major credibility, he's losing major faith.

And so, in order to divert uh people from criticizing him, he uses Christians as a scapegoat.

It's because of these guys.

And so he begins persecuting and killing Christians.

And it was ultimately in this movement of killing Christians that Paul, the Apostle Paul, would be beheaded, is what church history says.

He died uh from being decapitated.

So Paul, who's in his second Roman imprisonment, knows that this one's different.

I'm probably not going to get out of here.

In fact, in um uh 2 Timothy 4 and verse 6, he says, as for me, my life has been poured out as an offering to God.

And another version it says it's been poured out like a drink offering, is an act of worship.

He said, The time of my death is near, so he knows that it's not going to be long and he's gonna die.

He's writing now to Timothy, and he identifies Timothy in verse 2 as Timothy, my dear son.

I'm writing to my dear son.

May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace.

I think this is worth thinking about that Paul spent the, we'll say his prime years, like in the middle of his career, writing to cities.

Writing to the Corinthians, right?

If you read your Bible, you read Romans, it's written by Paul to the church in Rome.

1, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians.

These are all books written to churches, Christians in a city.

And so he spent his life's work doing that.

But at the end of his life, he didn't write to cities and he didn't write to churches, he wrote to individuals.

He wrote to Timothy and Titus.

And he, it's interesting in his salutation to each of the churches, he says, Grace and peace, Corinthians.

Grace and peace, Ephesians.

But when he writes to Timothy and Titus at the end of his life, he says, Grace, mercy, and peace.

Oh, there's just something about when you take it from just the Colossians or the Ephesians to Timothy, my dear son, that he adds this dimension of mercy.

When you look at the relationship between Paul and Timothy, uh, it's familial, even though it's not biological.

Paul's not his biological father, but we actually see how they ended up meeting up.

Um, if you read in the historic narrative of Acts, Paul goes to Timothy's hometown and he heals a lame man.

And when he heals a lame man, everybody in the town thinks that Paul is a Greek god.

So they they start, they think he's from Olympus and they start worshiping him, and Paul's like corrects him.

He's like, won't let them do that.

No, I'm not a God, I'm a human.

It's God is God.

And he's so now he starts to proclaim the gospel, and now they go from wanting to worship him to dragging him outside the city and killing him, or think try to kill him, they try to stone him to death.

But Paul, when Paul's personality, he is a type A alpha, he's intense, he's passionate, intense.

He was intense before he met Jesus, he was intense for the wrong stuff, then he met Jesus, he got intense for the right stuff.

And so he now goes in.

And and and Timothy, by the way, his personality and temperament is he's timid.

He's a bit shy.

And so, Paul, you see in in 2 Timothy 1, this last letter he's writing to Timothy, he's trying to fan into flame the lion heart inside of him.

Isn't it amazing how God will bring people into your life that will sort of round you out?

You know, you got your nature and your nurture.

And so God will bring nurture into your life to round out your nature.

Be careful you don't reject nurture that's opposed from your nature.

Often we reject nurture that's opposite our nature because it feels unnatural.

I reject it because it doesn't feel natural.

Just because it feels unnatural doesn't mean it's not good for you.

And so he's he doesn't push Paul away, and Paul doesn't push Timothy away.

Paul's intensity and his fervor and his focus and his passion, he's saying to Timothy, Timothy, don't let anybody look down on you because you're young.

He said, God's not giving you a spirit of fear and timidity, but power, love, sound might try to pull that lion out of that timid Timothy because God's got a big plan for you, and you're gonna have to reach into that dimension.

It's in there, I see it, and I'm gonna pull it out.

And yet Timothy's tender heart, his tenderness, pulled out a layer of Paul, who would have a tendency to run people over and to be so focused on a goal.

And there was something about Timothy that hit the tender spot in his heart.

He traveled together and took him with him, and so at the end of his life, he writes about how much he loves him, and you're like a tender son to me.

And so Paul's giving us really in some ways, I feel like I'm watching somebody's FaceTime video of kind of at the end of their life, and he's giving them these keys on on how to finish well.

Let's look at these five five keys.

The first one is found in verse seven of chapter four.

So my life's been poured out like a drink offering.

The type of my time of my death is near.

Now look at this verse seven.

I fought the good fight, I finished the race, and I have remained faithful.

The first key is this don't undervalue faithfulness.

Don't undervalue faithfulness.

I told you about the sequence, right, that we tend to have from trying to build something to thinking, well, at some point I'm gonna have to retire and to thinking beyond retirement, how am I gonna end well?

We tend to have these different perspectives.

Well, throughout our lives, we tend to value so much fruitfulness over faithfulness.

Fruitfulness.

We're counting the fruit, we're counting the productivity, we're doing the math.

Why?

Because metrics and math give me some sort of clue as to how I'm doing.

Are we winning or losing?

I don't want to play ball without keeping score.

I've never done that in my life.

We're not keeping score there.

I ain't got time for this.

Now we start keeping score, it's worth my time.

Why?

I want to I want to know if I'm winning.

I want to know how we're doing.

What's the point?

Well, faithfulness, faithfulness at the end of Paul's life all of a sudden takes precedent over fruitfulness.

I want to encourage you to give yourself a win for your faithfulness.

By the way, in a different portion of scripture, Galatians 5, Paul says, Hey, one of the fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness.

It's love, joy, peace.

We know about those.

Faithfulness is it's in the list.

It made the list also.

He said, I've been faithful.

And I just know I'm talking to somebody today, you're in a season of life that you are primarily frustrated by your lack of productivity, by your lack of fruitfulness.

You want more fruit, you want more evidence of success, you want more metric.

And yet, in the middle of that, God wants to say to you, hey, look, one of the keys to a life well lived and to finishing well is being faithful.

There's something to be said for being faithful.

And so he says, I've run the good race, I fought the good fight, all this, but I have remained faithful.

Uh, the second is is he says in 2 Timothy 1 and 3, he says, Timothy, I thank God for you.

The God I serve with a clear conscience.

The God I serve with a clear conscience, just as my ancestors did.

The second thing is, don't undervalue a clear conscience.

How do you get to a clear conscience?

Okay, because here's here's kind of how we tend to think, or I think is I hear this a lot.

You hear people say, I have no regrets.

I have no regrets because all my failures and everything I've done, you know, it all led to who I am today.

And that's good.

That's a good attitude.

I I I I encourage you to be there.

I tend to think that way as well.

But the reality is when you get deep down, even into how you feel about your life, the reality is there are some things you did that you wouldn't do again.

You do feel bad about.

There may be some people in your wake.

There may be some decisions.

You're like, man, I really hurt some people.

I really did something that I really do regret.

Like, yes, I know Romans 8.28, God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him, called according to his purpose.

So God worked it out.

And I know the last chapter wasn't written, and it was a rebirth and a uh um a resurrection and new life and new opportunity, and his mercies are new every morning.

And I saw waves of his grace that I had never seen before, and that's all true and that's all in play, but there is something about the accusation that you can have, like the accuser of the brethren, the person that just kind of like, yeah, but you know, it just something doesn't sit well.

I just still regret that.

I wish I hadn't done this.

Paul, who is far from perfect, Paul, who had made a lot of mistakes in his life, said at the end, I have a clear conscience.

How do you have a clear conscience?

It's because you take everything you have to God and you trust his grace.

Like everything I'm conscious of, I've repented of.

I've brought it to the Lord.

I've got nothing that I've swept under the rug.

I know I'm talking to somebody today who maybe you are sweeping something under the rug.

You're sweeping it there, you're trying to act like it's not there because of the shame, because of the guilt.

And because of that, you're when you look in the mirror, your conscience is not clear.

Paul says, No, I got plenty of junk in my past, but I've dealt with all of it.

I've repented for all of it, I've brought it all to the Lord.

And instead of carrying it with me in the future, I have a clear conscience.

I did a bunch of dumb stuff, but I brought all the stupidity to God.

And I trusted his grace, and I learned deeper about his grace.

So when I look in the mirror, I go, you know, I did everything I could do.

I I have nothing I haven't dealt with.

So there's something to be said for a clear conscience.

I believe it's a key to finishing well.

If you got something swept under the rug, pull it back out and give it to the Lord.

2 Timothy 4.

This is the last chapter.

There's this action-packed few verses.

I want to start in verse 9.

Paul says to Timothy, Timothy, please come as soon as you can.

Come visit me as soon as you can.

Now look at this.

Verse 10 says, Demas has deserted me because he loves the things of this life.

He's gone to Thessalonica, and Crescens has gone to Galatia, and Titus has gone to Dalmatia, and Luke is with me.

Only Luke.

Only Luke is with me.

Bring Mark with you when you come, for he'll be helpful to me in my ministry.

In verse 12, I sent Tychicus to Ephesus.

Okay, I don't want to lose steam here.

Hang with me.

He mentions a bunch of names, which is the the third part of a key to finishing well, which is do everything you can to put your relationships in order.

With all these names he mentions, he mentions a bunch of different people who have come and gone out of his life, some for good reason and some for bad reasons.

And so he's he starts with notice first thing is he says, Timothy, come visit me as soon as you can.

Because there's something about when you know your time is limited, when you know your time is short, there's something there that causes you to value just the presence of someone you love.

I I did a funeral, the first funeral I ever did was for a young girl.

She was three years old.

She died in terrible circumstances, died very quickly.

And I remember being at the viewing hours with her father.

I was standing there and they were playing a slideshow, pictures of from her life, and which is like an emotional roller coaster, but it's soothing as you've come into grips with reality.

And anyway, we're sitting there watching it, and what I'll never forget a picture came up, and it was a picture where he was focused on something other than her.

He was preoccupied with something, and she is trying to get his attention, and he is totally locked in, and she's trying to get his attention, and the picture came up, and it was just like boom, like it hit me, and like I looked at him and I could see him, and I mean he didn't have to say anything.

Like I knew what was going on in his mind.

Like he wanted to jump in the picture, like he wanted to go back in time, he wanted to stop looking at whatever he was looking at, you know, because through the lens of that season of time where he was at in that moment, whatever seemed important then wasn't important.

I mean, he wanted one more chance to just square up with her.

And and and I I say that to you.

Hear my heart, please.

Not to heap guilt and shame on you for having a hobby, not to heap guilt and shame on you for working hard.

And you know, this isn't one of those, you know, uh don't ever take work home with you, and blah, blah, blah.

I'm Not saying that.

I hope you hear this, hear my heart on this.

Um, what what what I what I want to encourage you to do is to value, don't wait to the end of your life to value the moments.

Like value them as as much as you can.

And I know it's not realistic, we can't spend 24-7 just looking in each other's eyes.

Like you have a job to do, you have deadlines, you got stuff you gotta do, like you gotta make hay.

I get it.

Like, so I'm not saying that, but what what but I do think, friends, and hear me.

In this world, we have so many distractions.

We get sucked into the algorithms, we get sucked into the things that aren't that important.

All of a sudden you look up, time's gone.

And this person is in the other, we're in the same place at the same time, but we're not together.

And so you have Paul at the end of his life that's going, Timothy, man, just just come to my jail cell and hang out.

Come to my jail cell and just be present.

Can I be present with you?

I don't know what you need to do to put to to discipline yourself or to put reminders around your mind.

Do what you gotta do.

Like do your thing, like do your mission, but don't miss.

Don't wait to the end of your life to all of a sudden start valuing the presence of the important people in your life.

So at the end, Paul's not writing anything to the Colossians or the Ephesians.

He's like, Timothy, come come to me as soon as you can.

Then he goes through and he names names, you know.

It's interesting, he names names of different people who kind of did him wrong.

And we're we're gonna talk about that in just a moment, but he he he names uh that.

Then he also talks about Tychicus and he talks about Titus and some of these guys that he goes, he sent them out to do work, right?

Shared influence.

He had spent his life building influence in Ephesus and these different places, and now he's handing that influence off, and so so there's a whole message in shared influence.

And then, oh, don't miss this.

You see, he calls for Mark.

Bring Mark with you.

Who's Mark?

Mark's the guy who wrote Mark.

Who's no, he did he the book of Mark?

This is Mark here.

But who what else is he known as?

He's known in the book of Acts as John Mark.

And if you go read the narrative in Acts 15, John Mark and Paul unfriended each other.

Paul was on a missionary journey, and John Mark wanted to go home.

He missed mama's cookies.

And Paul's like, if you leave, I'm not taking you the second time.

Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

I'm telling you, walk out that door, I'm gonna go again.

You're not going.

John Mark's like, but you don't know.

They're chocolate chip.

And he goes home.

On the second missionary journey, Paul's mentor, Barnabas, is like, you know, John Mark's really grown up, says, I know he ticked you off, I know he did whatever, but you're the grace guy, Paul.

We need to give him a second chance.

And Paul's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Absolutely not.

And they get in such a fight.

Paul not only unfriends John Mark, he unfriends Barnabas.

You guys go your way, I'll go mine.

I don't need you.

And he he he just he just fractures a relationship.

And yet we see here at the end of his life, the same guy he fractured a relationship, he's calling to himself.

I want to see John Mark one more time.

He's made amends.

A lot of people in life are really good at the front end of a relationship.

You got the gift of woo.

And so you're wooing this person until they get to know the real you and you get to know the real them, and you now we have a big fight, and now forget you, I'm gonna go woo somebody else.

And you're always selling a new person, and you go relationship to relationship, wooing new people, burning a bridge, go, that's all right, there's eight billion people in the world, I'll go woo somebody else.

And and so, but Paul, in his maturity, you see, anybody will make a new friend, everybody mature person to mend offense, to restore a relationship.

And so Paul's making sure he's gonna do all that he can, all that he can to put his relationships in order.

Look what he said in the book of Romans, chapter 12, verse 17.

Romans 12:17

He said, Never pay back evil with more evil.

Do things in such a way that everyone can see that you're honorable.

Now look at this, verse 18.

Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.

By the way, sometimes you do all that you can to live in peace with everyone, and sometimes everyone won't live in peace with you.

So, what I'm not gonna do is spend my life trying to do more.

No, I did all that I can.

And if you don't want to have peace, then we won't have peace.

This is why Paul goes through and names hey, this guy did this, this guy did this.

If you want to have a fun little study, look up a guy named Hymenaus in 1st and 2 Timothy.

Paul names them in both books.

First book he says, stay away from Hymeneus.

He's like cancer, he spreads like cancer.

He mentions him again in 2 Timothy, poor Hymenaeus.

He's getting, Paul's just getting, you know, he he's telling him, stay away.

Why?

He's not trying to drag, um, it's not about being vindictive, it's not about throwing shade, it's about warning Timothy.

Got to be careful.

Do all that you can to live in peace.

But some of these people oppose everything.

These people, they're not peaceful people, they don't want peace.

You can't have peace with somebody that doesn't want peace.

They've already predetermined that they're not going to be peaceful.

And so he said, instead of killing yourself, trying to make peace with somebody who doesn't want peace, do all that you can.

Once you haven't, then he's like, I'm warning you, be careful of this guy.

In fact, look, we see it here in 2 Timothy 4, 14 through 18.

He says, Alexander, the metal worker, some of you in your Bibles, it says the coppersmith, he did me a great deal of harm.

And the Lord will repay him for what he's done.

Verse 15, you should be on your guard against him.

Again, what he's not saying, uh, you know, go scorch the earth.

He's saying, be careful, be on your guard.

Because he strongly opposed our message.

He was not a peaceful, he didn't want peace.

Now watch this.

Okay, so hold on, real quick.

How do you put relationships in order?

What about the guy that won't make peace?

What about Alexander the coppersmith, who just tried to make your life a living hell?

Everywhere you went, you try to make peace, he made you hell.

You try to give him heaven, he gives you hell.

You tried over and over again at some point I gotta I gotta move on.

How do you move on without dying a bitter person at Alexander the Coppersmith?

Watch this, verse 16.

He said, At my defense, no one came to my support, and everyone deserted me.

But may it not be held against them.

Verse 17 But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed, that all the Gentiles might hear it, and I was delivered from the lion's mouth, and the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safe safely into his heavenly kingdom.

To him be the glory forever and ever.

Amen.

This is the last chapter he's writing to Timothy.

The stories that you tell at the end of your life are telling.

And he's telling this to Timothy because he wants, he knows that Timothy at some point will encounter an Alexander the copper smith, somebody who had it out for him.

And he'll encounter a moment where he's standing up in a lonely place.

He's telling him a story.

Hey, I remember that one time.

I stood up to defend in my defense.

I was being attacked.

I had to defend myself, and I thought for sure this guy would be there.

I thought for sure that person.

I thought I would be surrounded by friends.

I thought that my loved ones, I thought the people who had sworn allegiance, I thought the people we'd been through thick and thin.

I thought that they would be there when I needed them.

He said, and in my defense, I got up there and no one was there.

I was completely alone.

But he doesn't say, you know, and I hope they feel bad about it.

Hope, hope, yeah, they get, you know, God smites them for it.

No, he says this.

He goes, May it not be held against them.

May it not be held against them.

Why?

He said, Because in the moment I thought I was totally alone.

God showed up, and I realized I wasn't alone.

I saw a dimension of God when I was defending myself by myself when I realized He was with me the whole time.

You learn that God is all you need when God is all you have.

He's saying this because it's inevitable, Timothy.

You're trying to be a good friend, you're trying to be a good son, you're trying to do it all.

At some point, you're gonna have to stand there all by yourself.

He said, When you get there, don't let your heart despair.

Don't grow cold and angry, don't become bitter at everybody.

He said, No, start looking for God.

God's gonna show up for you just like he did for me.

Put your relationships in order the best that you can.

All right, I gotta go quick.

Number four is this value physical and emotional durability.

Look what he says in verse 13.

He said, When you come, be sure to bring the coat that I left with Carpis at Troaz.

Bring the coat.

Okay, this is a verse you just could easily quickly read past, but if you read in verse 21, so eight verses later, he says, Do your best to get here before winter.

Bring my coat before winter.

Bring my coat before winter.

Paul is in a cold, dank, dark prison cell in Rome on death row.

He's getting cold.

And here's what he knows if Nero cuts my head off, there's nothing I can do about that, but I'm not going to self-destruct.

I loaned my coat out in one season.

He mentions the guy, you know, in Troas.

I was in Troas, probably where he got arrested, and he said, you know, uh I loaned my coat out, but I need my coat now.

Paul makes a decision that he's going to do everything he can to stay as warm as he can because if they kill me, they kill me.

But it's not going to be because I didn't put my coat on and I self-destruct it.

I've got to make it through winter.

And what I'm going to tell you is leaders have to learn how to make it through winter.

You've got to make it through winter physically, you got to be able to make it through winter emotionally.

A key to leadership is being physically and emotionally durable.

Don't be the type of person that spends your whole life developing your mind and your character only to have your body fall apart when you could have done something about it.

Paul says, if I die, it's not gonna be with my coat off.

I have a mentor in my life.

He's a when he was a young man, he made a life goal to read a million pages.

And he started tracking it.

He's telling me about this.

He was he literally, when I when I met him, he'd writ he'd read hundreds of thousands of pages.

You ask him, like, what's your favorite book?

He's pulling it out.

I mean, this guy's retention was incredible.

And so I was just blown away.

I was highly inspired.

It was one of those goals.

I'm like, that's so cool for him.

And um like a million pages, that's a lot.

And and so we were we were getting ready to we were getting ready to wrap up the day.

He's like, Where are you going?

I was like, I'm going to the gym, I'm going to work out.

You want to come with me?

He's like, oh no.

No, I don't do that.

I was like, wait a second.

Let's think about this.

You're gonna read a million pages, and you're gonna do all that with your mind and not take care of your body?

Like, how how how terrible would that be?

If in your mind you're in your prime, in your wisdom, you're in your prime, you you're in your best position you've ever been in to be able to help somebody, but you didn't take care of your body, you just didn't put your coat on.

You gotta put your coat on, you gotta put the right stuff in your mouth.

You you have to do what you can control.

I can't control what Nero does.

If Nero comes in here and and wants to take me out, he's gonna take me out, but I'm not gonna take me out.

Don't you take you out.

If Nero gets you, whatever.

To live is Christ, to die is gain, I'll go to heaven.

But don't you take you out because you didn't put your coat on.

You gotta make it through winter physically and emotionally.

And then the last thing is this the last key to finishing well is to never stop learning.

Look what it says, look what he says.

Um, he says, When when you come, bring my coat, which I left with with carpis at Troas.

Look, but he also said, Bring my books, especially my papers.

Bring my when you come, bring my books with you.

And he says, especially the parchments.

And the parchments were um excerpts from the Old Testament.

So now when you think about this in context, he's less than a year before he's gonna die.

He's already said, I've been poured out like a drink offering.

The time of my death is near, and yet he's like, Bring me the word.

Bring me that word.

I mean, I he doesn't know how much time he's got left.

I know the end is near, but he's ooh, I just found one.

Ooh, I got a new nugget.

Ooh, God may give me one more revelation I may be able to give as I'm going out.

I'm just never gonna stop learning.

Paul recognized up to the very last breath, you are still a work in progress.

You are still a work in progress to your last breath, you are a work in progress.

So I'm never gonna stop progressing.

So how do we finish well?

Five keys.

Five keys to finishing well.

One, don't undervalue faithfulness, two, don't undervalue a clear conscience.

Three, do your best to put your relationships in order.

Do the best you can.

Four, value physical and emotional durability, and five, never stop learning.

I end with this.

This week I would encourage you, make some time.

Don't delay this because it's very easy to walk out of a service like this and go, yeah, man, I want to finish well.

You know, I want I want to think about you know the end and all of that, and to just walk out and get lunch and totally forget about this.

I want to encourage you, make a note to yourself to bring this to the Lord and create some definition in your life of what it means to end well.

You're like, but Pastor, I'm only 20 years old.

Perfect time now to begin thinking about it.

But Pastor, I don't have much time left.

That's all right.

It's not too late.

You're still a work in progress.

Articulate it, sit down, pray it through.

Maybe for you it has something to do with protecting and defending something, and for you, it may be to swing for the fence or somewhere in the middle.

Let the Lord speak to you to create some definition of what it would mean for you to end well so you have a bullseye to shoot for, you have something to calibrate to, you have something to come back to when you don't feel as fruitful as you could be, you don't feel as successful as you want to be, but to come and say, here's what it means to pass the finish line test.