fbpx

Beware of False Finish Lines

*This is an excerpt from Kevin Peck’s main session talk at The Austin Stone Worship Conference. Click here to download audio and video from the conference.

You need to live like there’s only one finish line. Paul says, “I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”  Paul knows, and sees, in his dying day, that there is but one finish line, and I promise you it’s not a mega-church.

I promise you, it’s not a record deal.

I promise you, it’s not 10,000 Twitter followers.

I promise you, it’s not people claiming your name.

I promise you, those are not finish lines. They’re false finish lines.

Tweet This: There is but one finish line, and I promise you it’s not a mega-church or a record deal.  @_kpeck_ @asworship #preach

You know how you feel when you’re watching a football game, and some guy’s running, and he gets to about the three yard line, and he starts slowing up, to start celebrating, and someone strips him from behind, you think, “What an idiot.” All those things I mentioned are false finish lines. Don’t pull up. You don’t pull up when all of a sudden some of your wildest ministry dreams come true. You don’t pull up, that’s not the finish line.

The finish line, for you, is finishing the race. Keeping the faith. Exalting Jesus with your last dying breath so that when your heart is finding it’s last couple of ounces of blood being pressed through it, you’re saying, “To you alone, Jesus, be all the glory, and all the honor, and all the praise, and all the dominion. To you, Jesus.”

That’s finishing. That’s the line, nothing short of it will do. That’s what death can do for you. It can remind you that you keep serving, as a humble servant of God, because your finish line is nothing short of your finishing the faith, in death. Or Jesus returning, whichever comes first.

Tweet This: Your finish line is nothing short of finishing the faith in death or Jesus returning. @_kpeck_ @asworship

Paul also says this, “I fought the fight.” I don’t think there’s anything like knowing that you’re about to die to realize that faith is a fight. I don’t think there’s anything else like it. But you need to remember that it is indeed, a fight. We’re not trifling with sin, we do not have an enemy who is simply just trying to wound you. He’s trying to kill you. He wants to murder you. And the minute you start living like it’s peace time, he will take you out.

Tweet This: You do not have an enemy trying to wound you. He is trying to kill you. Faith is a fight. @_kpeck_ @asworship

I assure you, that it would be unwise for your safety to walk around in places in Afghanistan and pretend as if it’s a time of peace there. That would be unwise and imprudent, because you would find yourself in harm’s way quickly.

Leader, when we begin to trifle with sin, when we begin to make light of situations in our lives, and we start thinking, “Man, it’s not that big of a deal that I’m talking about myself a little bit more than I used to. I mean, I used to judge guys like this, but now I’m doing it. I was just young and foolish, this is what you have to do to build a platform. It’s just the way it goes.” That’s a slippery slope, my friend, and at the bottom of it is an enemy who wants to kill you.