Which do you think is better in life – to start well, or to finish well?  Remember the parable of the two sons in Matthew 21?  The father asked the one son to go work in the vineyard, and he said he wouldn’t, but later he changed his mind and went.  The same father asked his other son to go.  He immediately said he would go, but he never did.  Which one did the will of his father?  The first one, right?  In our relationship with God, what matters most is not what came first, but what came last.  Not what we say, but what we eventually do.  Better to do the right thing later than never at all.  It is how we finish that matters most.

Take King Asa, for example.  He started out great, didn’t he?  He was following in David’s footsteps.  He did what was right.  There were great reforms under his watch.  I really like Asa.  But later during his reign he began to have some issues.  God had been very faithful to him, but when his back was against the wall yet again, he relied on the support of another nation rather than placing his trust in God.  When confronted about this he became angry and bitter.  Even when he developed a disease in his feet, he refused to turn to God.  And then he died.  He started out strong, but didn’t finish well.

Contrast this with Nebuchadnezzar.   Nebuchadnezzar was filled with pride.  He saw himself as a great ruler and went about proclaiming that his good fortune was his own doing.  The Lord humbled him greatly, after which he declared the greatness and wonder of God.  He didn’t start out on the right foot, but he certainly finished well.

The world is filled with people who start out really strong but end up finishing very poorly.  We are seldom impressed with such people.  What impresses me is someone who messed up, got off to a rough start, made some serious mistakes, but was able, by the transformative power of God, to pull it together and finish well.

So, if you are like me, and have some baggage in your past that you’d like to forget, take courage.  It is not how we started, but how we finish that matters most.  Let’s endeavor to finish well.