Finishing Strong – Part 2.

Finishing strong is important – but how do we do this? Stephanie says we do need Him to fill us with love and wisdom.

An Important Question

Jesus was asked a question,

“‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets’” (Matthew 22:36-40 ESV).

“Wait until you’re thirty,” they said.

I hit this milestone without fanfare. I felt the same as I did when I was twenty-nine—and even younger.

And forty. Same thing.

And fifty. Not much different.

But sixty?

The Aging Thing

This aging thing finally caught up with me. In one sense, I didn’t mind getting older. But since I’ve always been eclectically interested and eclectically involved, it hit me that I would have to narrow my focus. After all, I couldn’t hope to accomplish all the things on my One Day I Would Like To… list.

So, what do we do when this realization strikes?

First of all, as in all things, wisdom teaches us to seek the Lord in prayer. We make our plans, but He directs our steps, His Word says. (See Proverbs 16:9.)

While it’s unlikely that He will provide us with a daily schedule, He does give us a plethora of principles and commands in the Scriptures.

Two that can be used as a litmus test for every decision we make are found in Matthew 22.

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus said it was to love the Lord with our entire being, everything we have and everything we are. He went on to say that the second greatest commandment was to love others as we do ourselves.

A Sidenote

Just a quick sidenote…

By loving ourselves, He wasn’t promoting what secular society refers to as self-love. He explained elsewhere that the fact that we take care of our basic needs is evidence that we love ourselves. And Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 25 that meeting others’ needs is the same as doing these things for our Saviour Himself is evidence of this.

So, when we’re faced with a decision, we can ask ourselves the following questions: 1) does this action express my love for God, and 2) does it express my love for others?

We may need to think things through a little to discover how these questions apply to the decisions we have to make, but if we can say yes to one or both of these questions, we’re almost certainly on the right track.

God Offers Wisdom

Plus, our great God offers to give wisdom to us when we ask. (See James 1:5.) This wisdom may come directly from His Word. It may come from the wise counsel of the godly men and women He has brought into our lives. It may come from a knowing deep in our spirit. (True wisdom always lines up with the Scriptures, of course.)

So, we don’t have to know exactly what He would have us do each day. But we do need Him to fill us with love and wisdom. And we need to see love as the test.

Recommended Reading: The Next Right Thing by Emily P. Freeman

Do you think you are finishing strong? How? We would love to hear from you. Share your comment below or contact us at HopeStreamRadio.

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