Finish Well

Sep 17, 2010

(The fol­low­ing arti­cle comes from notes taken dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion I was priv­i­leged to have with Jerry Leach­man, cor­po­rate coach, and for­mer Chap­lain Wash­ing­ton Redskins)

1 Corinthi­ans 9:24… “Do you not know that in a race all the run­ners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.”


If you run, run to win!  That sounds pretty sim­ple, doesn’t it.  What else would you do once you decide to enter a race?  As a col­lege track ath­lete I never once heard one per­son get excited about com­ing in any­thing less than first place.

But if you think about it for a while, it’s impor­tant to under­stand the race you’re about to run…  to know how to train so that you can “Run in such a way as to get the prize.”  Some­one who runs the 100 meter and 200 meter dash has to train very dif­fer­ently from some­one who runs the 400 meter, 800 meter, 1600 meter and so on.  An just because you can run one race, say the 100 meter, doesn’t mean you can effec­tively run the 4x100 which requires coor­di­na­tion and tim­ing between teammates.

Not train­ing appro­pri­ately for the race you’ll be run­ning can also bring pain and exhaus­tion, pulled mus­cles or worse.  The same can be said for our race in life, in busi­ness, in rais­ing chil­dren and so on.

If we fol­low the lives of char­ac­ters in the Bible we see that only 30% of them “fin­ish well” at the end of their life, mean­ing that they are actu­ally pick­ing up speed when they cross the fin­ish line. Exam­ples of that can be seen in the lives of Peter, Paul, and Jesus himself.

Another 30% of them fin­ish, but they “fin­ish limp­ing”, mean­ing that they started off well, fin­ished the race but some­thing hap­pened that caused a seri­ous injury or had a seri­ous neg­a­tive affect on their race. A great exam­ple of that can be seen in the life of David. Here’s a man whose race was going well; as a Shep­herd he killed lions and bears single-handedly, as a young man he killed Goliath with just a sin­gle stone as an entire army watched trem­bling in their armor. But after becom­ing king David sinned with Bathsheba, and that act of sin resulted in more than one death and left David’s fam­ily life dys­func­tional despite God’s forgiveness.

The remain­ing 40% either dis­ap­peared com­pletely or didn’t fin­ish the race.

5 Stages of Life

When you look at a man’s life there are really five (5) stages that can be iden­ti­fied. The first three of these stages are guar­an­teed in everyone’s life but the remain­ing two (2) are not. Fin­ish­ing well in life is deter­mined by how far you make it through these life stages.

The stages are not nec­es­sar­ily a lin­ear pro­gres­sion from a man’s birth to his death, but rather stages that we go through through­out our lives. As an exam­ple, we will always find our­selves com­par­ing our­selves or our sit­u­a­tion to oth­ers but it is whether or not we can over­come or tran­scend the stage we find our­selves in to move on and grow.

  

Dis­cov­ery — In the first stage, dis­cov­ery, a man is still find­ing won­der and amaze­ment at the things in and around his life. The beauty and won­der of a sun­rise or a sun­set, and the cool­ness of uncov­er­ing a new skill or way of doing something.

Com­par­ing — In the sec­ond stage, com­par­ing, a man is com­par­ing him­self to other… see­ing how he mea­sures up against those around him. When we ramp this up a man sets him­self out to com­pete against those around him.

Wounded — In the third stage, wounded, a man has a trau­matic event hap­pen in his life that cre­ates some emo­tional wound. Child­hood abuse, divorce, death of a loved one and many oth­ers can cause this emo­tional wound­ing. If not dealt with, the wound or wounds can have severe neg­a­tive impact on growth and maturity.

Unfor­tu­nately most men die trapped in stage three, never able to over­come pre­vi­ous wounds. They are still func­tion­ing in soci­ety but he lives his life always limp­ing because of his wounds.

Heal­ing — In the fourth stage, heal­ing, a man deals with his past wounds, for­giv­ing those who may have hurt them and mak­ing peace with their past. Unfor­tu­nately most men never get to the heal­ing stage because they either:

1. Fear uncov­er­ing the past hurts and the idea of hav­ing to face them again
2. Are unwill­ing to “give up” the anger and hurt they’ve been car­ry­ing around most of their life. Often uncon­sciously using the anger and hurt as a sort of secu­rity blanket.
3. Refuse to give up their per­sonal view of being a “Vic­tim”, because once they give up the excuse of “I am this way because of what some­one else did” then they have to take respon­si­bil­ity for who they are.

In order for a man to be suc­cess­ful at heal­ing three (3) things must take place:

1. There has to be a touch from God. True heal­ing can­not take place with­out God’s involvement.
2. A man must begin to take back lost ground in his life. For­giv­ing a father who walked out or abused him or some­one else in the fam­ily, or mend­ing a bro­ken mar­riage would both be examples.
3. A man must begin to gain a “Mas­tery” of his life to a degree. Step­ping up to be the hus­band and father mod­eled in the Bible, tak­ing con­trol of an addic­tion in his life, or con­trol­ling anger issues would all be examples.

Sage / Men­tor — In the fifth stage, Sage/Mentor, a man seeks to be a pos­i­tive impact in the lives of young men and women, help­ing to lead and guide them in “Fin­ish­ing Well” in their lives.

Proverbs 24:16 tells us “for though a right­eous man falls seven times, he rises again, but the wicked are brought down by calamity.” The true mea­sure of a man’s spir­i­tual matu­rity can be summed up this way:

MATURITY = “RECOVERY TIME”

We will never come to a point this side of the grave where we will stop sin­ning and stop get­ting knocked down. The time it takes us to recover from inci­dents in our lives depends on our level of Spir­i­tual Matu­rity. The more mature we become the quicker we are to get back up, brush our­selves off, learn from the expe­ri­ence and move on. And our abil­ity to do that depends on our rela­tion­ship with Christ, and our under­stand­ing that it is only through His strength that we have the power we need to get back up and move on.

The next time you say some­thing you know you shouldn’t to your wife, your chil­dren or some­one else close to you see how long it takes you to put aside your pride, hum­ble your­self, truly apol­o­gize and to make amends.

Hebrews 12:1… “[ God Dis­ci­plines His Sons ] There­fore, since we are sur­rounded by such a great cloud of wit­nesses, let us throw off every­thing that hin­ders and the sin that so eas­ily entan­gles, and let us run with per­se­ver­ance the race marked out for us.”

You Can Fin­ish Well

Sil­vester Stal­lone, one of the great the­olo­gians of our time, had a very pro­found and inspi­ra­tional line in his 2006 Rocky 6 movie.  This scene impacted me immensely a few months ago when I was feel­ing beaten down and ready to just give in.  It was one of the most chal­leng­ing times in my 43 years, and this mes­sage reminded me of Psalm 139:13–15… that I am a son of the liv­ing God, fear­fully and won­der­fully made for a pur­pose laid out before I was even con­ceived.  I sim­ply needed to believe that God had already given me what I need to succeed.

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