Finishing Strong - Chapter 2 Summary

Hello, I am happy to be back with more stories from the book ”Finishing Strong”. Before I commence I will strongly recommend this book to any man, in fact one great church leader commented that the books should be a must for all men - 2^nd in importance, the first being the bible.

Having said that let’s go on to summarize chapter 2:

Finishing So-So.

Last time we spent time looking at Steve’s analysis of why it is possible that 1-in-10 will finish strong and that we can finish strong if we keep our eyes on the coxswain – Jesus. Steve devoted the next chapter analysing the various types of finishing.

Types of finishing

Cut off early – those taken out of leadership (assassination, killed in battle, prophetically denounced, overthrown). Examples are Abimelech, Absalom, Samson, John the Baptist and James. Some of them were good leaders others were bad.
Finished poorly – refers to those going downhill in the later part of their lives in terms of relationship with God or their capabilities. Gideon, Eli, Saul, Solomon come to mind.
Finished so-so – means they did not do what they could have done, they did not complete all that God had for them to do. David, Jehosophat and Hezekiah were rated in this group.
Finished well – those that finished strong, they were walking with God personally at the end of their lives and were strong in faith and close to the Lord – Abraham, Job, Joseph, Joshua will make this league. This is where we want to be.

Now the big-time question is this; all these leaders were gifted and had their respective strengths, how come they all did not finish well? AMBUSHES! The bottom line in determining how a man finishes is his ability to navigate the ambushes of life. We can expect to encounter at least 3 major ambushes as we strive to finish strong:

The ambush of another woman
The ambush of money; and
The ambush of neglected family.

“The enemy has been using these 3 ambushes to keep God’s men from finishing strong for thousands of years”, Steve writes.

The ambush of another woman: Risk is a central issue in determining whether you will survive this ambush. Dr Hendricks interviewed each of 246 men in full-time ministry (please remember we are all full time, let’s not just think about pastors here, it applies to us all) and they all admitted to experiencing moral failure within a two-year period of time, i.e within 24months of each other, they got involved in sexual immorality. The interview helped Dr Hendricks draw out 4 points which you need to consider to know whether you are a ‘good risk’.

None of the men were involved in any kind of accountability group
Each had ceased to invest in a daily personal time of prayer, scripture reading and worship
Over 80% of them got sexually involved with other women while counselling them
Without exception, each of the 246 had been convinced that moral failure “will never happen to me”.

There are more details in the book, however to check your exposure to this ambush you need to ask yourself the following questions:

Do I spend time with the Lord…. at least 3 times a week? Correct answer: YES
Are there at least 1 or 2 men in your life whom you have built friendship based on trust, confidentiality, and accountability? Correct answer: YES
Are you currently spending significant time with another attractive woman? Correct answer: NO
Are you absolutely sure that you will finish strong? Correct answer: NO

The more you get wrong the higher your risk, but if you got all four wrong you are ‘dead meat’!

The Ambush of Money: Interesting story here about 2 guys who ripped off insurance companies by making up fire and flood to destroy their ailing business. And when the third guy tells about how hurricane destroyed his business, they wanted to know how hurricane can be made. There is another story about a guy with Ph.D in theology from a leading theological institution in the world who is a convicted felon and serving time for ripping off a number of savings and loans. The lesson in the stories is that these guys just did not wake up one morning and came up with these big scams, they perhaps started fooling around with cutting a few corners and ‘creative financing’ – just like Ananias in the bible. How are you doing with this ambush? Are you shooting straight with people when it comes to money, tax returns, profits etc? If you make money your god, it will plague you like the devil.

The ambush of neglected family: Hot discussion I must say! Steve comments that he has one criticism about evangelical Christianity, and that is this, “we tend sometimes to confuse spirituality with weirdness”. And the weirder the behaviour the more ‘spiritual’ it must be. He tells the story of C.T. Studd – a much revered name in Christianity who gave away his entire inheritance and then wend to mission field in China, served a number of years and then returned to England. Several years after he felt called to go to Africa and … he went. That’s not the issue, he went by himself – didn’t see his wife again for seventeen years. Steve argues that the apostles took their wives with them (i.e. those who have wives took them along). He mentioned other notable names that took their family along to mission fields, even though they knew there would be dangers, it is better to face it as a family than to neglect the family. He looked at 3 biographies of some other great men and observed that these men were successful in reaching hundreds of thousands for Christ, but lost their families. Some can argue that this is sacrifice, but Steve argues that even Jesus took his disciples along for all his engagements and our families are our disciples. This ambush is real and there are all kinds of bullets that can kill a man’s priorities and cause him to neglect his family.