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      • 6. Reflections on an Election
      • 7. For Me to Live is Maintenance
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      • 8. From Common Sense to nonsense
      • 9. Left Behind
      • 10. Owners or Guardians?
      • 11. From Honeymoon Harmony to Divorce
      • 12. For Goodness Sake
      • 13. A Perfect Prayer
      • 14. No is not a Negative
      • 15. What My Shoes have Taught Me
      • 16. For Mercy Sake
      • 17. The Attack on America
      • 18. The Motivation of a Sucide Terrorest
      • 19. The Message of the Terorist
      • 20. The Anthrax Scare
      • 21. Real Thanksgiving
      • 22. I have been Robbed!
    • 2002 Articles 23-39 >
      • 23. A Tribute to George
      • 24. Church Math
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      • 26. How Sad
      • 27. The Anatomy of an Affair
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      • 36. Who Ministers to the Minister?
      • 37. The Whiner
      • 38. Reckoned Righteous by Works
      • 39. Are New Year's Resolutions Biblical?
    • 2003 Articles 40-53 >
      • 40. One of the Greatest Need America
      • 41. Your Memorial Table
      • 42. George W. Bush Verses Saddam Hussein
      • 43. Learning to Listen
      • 44. The Problem with Gambling
      • 45. Memorial Day
      • 46. My Ecounter with an Orthhodox Jew
      • 47. Scott Free
      • 48. What My Auto Accident Taught Me
      • 49. The Decline in Family Living
      • 50. Give Me a Problem
      • 51. Decoding the Da Vinci Code
      • 52. Thanksgiving is not a Holiday
      • 53. What a Christmas Present!
    • 2004 Articles 54-67 >
      • 54. What Do You Mean by that?
      • 55. What are Parents to Do?
      • 56. "The Passion of Christ"
      • 57. Martha Stewart's Greatest Lesson
      • 58. Same Sex Marriage
      • 59. A Tribute to a Servant
      • 60. Happy Marriages
      • 61. Independence
      • 62. Kerry's Logic
      • 63. The Olympic Spirit
      • 64. Playing Cards
      • 65. Cardinal Virtures
      • 66. Now that the Election is over
      • 67. Tribute to My Mother
    • 2005 Articles 68-79 >
      • 68. Real Spiritual Growth
      • 69. No Time to Think
      • 70. The Ten Commandments Controversy
      • 71. Do We Need a Pope?
      • 72. Everybody Loves Raymond
      • 73. Examples Worthy of Note
      • 74. How Two Different People Learned to Get Along
      • 75. "The God who Wasn't"
      • 76. Katrina and Now Rita!
      • 77. Would You Say "No" to $4 Million?
      • 78. "In God We Trust"
      • 79. The Redemption of Tookie Willaims
    • 2006 Articles 80-91 >
      • 80. Is Religion a Problem?
      • 81. The Rights of the Born
      • 82. Did You Hear What She Said about Muslims?
      • 83. Judas: Betrayer or Best Friend?
      • 84. Weekend or Week--Beginning?
      • 85. A Tribute to My (Spiritual) Father
      • 86. Your Relationship to the Word of God
      • 87. What an Opportunity!
      • 88. America's Four Gods
      • 89. How to Deal with Your Enemies
      • 90. The Case for Systematic Exposition
      • 91. Don't Miss the Message
    • 2007 Articles 92-104 >
      • 92. I can Afford it!
      • 93. The Gospel according to Patricia
      • 94. The Functional Church
      • 95. Who wants to Deal with a Taxman?
      • 96. Vital Virtures
      • 97. Have You Grown up Yet?
      • 98. A July 4th Reminder
      • 99. The Volume of Silence
      • 100. Biblical Illiteracy
      • 101. A Modest Political Propospal
      • 102. How to Handle Credit Cards
      • 103. When it is Tough to be Thankful
      • 104. Romney's Religion
    • 2008 Articles 105-114 >
      • 105. Continue
      • 106. A Tribute to Jack
      • 107. Why Good Ftiday?
      • 108. Happy Birthday
      • 109. The Most Important Room in the House
      • 110. The 80-20 Rule
      • 111. Be Sensible
      • 112. To Be Like Christ
      • 113. Sweet Reasonableness
      • 114. The Other Benefit of Christmas
    • 2009 Articles 115-126 >
      • 115. What Determines who Obtains Eternal Life?
      • 116. The Healing Touch
      • 117. The Function of Dysfunction
      • 118. When Your World Falls Apart
      • 119. 24-7-365
      • 120. To Complain or not to Complain
      • 121. "Suggestions"
      • 122. Making a Mark
      • 123. God's Timing
      • 124. Jesus Wept
      • 125. Andrew
      • 126. The Cost of Service
    • 2010 Articles 127-138 >
      • 127. Don't Ask; Don't Tell
      • 128. A Forest Dark
      • 129. The Rule of Law
      • 130. The Hits and Miss of Grace
      • 131. People Need the Lord
      • 132. Examples Worthy of Notes
      • 133. A Hassle Reduction Strategy
      • 134. Gossip
      • 135. My Favorite Poem
      • 136. Let's Put the Cross in its Place
      • 137. "Don't Spare Me"
      • 138 The Unseen Message of Christmas
    • 2011 Articles 139-147 >
      • 139. What Parents Should Teach their Children
      • 140. How to Avoid Having to Serve
      • 141. What Happen to Mike?
      • 142. An Atheist Recommends God
      • 143. Surprise
      • 144. Socialism
      • 145. Union, Unity, and Uniformity
      • 146. Get in the Way
      • 147. "Let George do it."
    • 2012 Articles 148-160 >
      • 148. Truth or Consequences
      • 149. Don't Leave Home without it
      • 150. Take a Break
      • 151. The Worth of an Individual
      • 152. A Tribute to Nana
      • 153. Jesus Crossed the Line
      • 154. Thomas Jefferson
      • 155. Taxes
      • 156. You Must be Present to Win
      • 157. A Grandfather's Wish
      • 158. Trials. Temptations, and Tests
      • 159. Is There a Santa Claus?
      • 160. A Tribute to Sumner Wemp
    • 2013 Articles 161-172 >
      • 161. How to Finish Well
      • 162. Rewards
      • 163. Spiritual Binging
      • 164. There is no way out of this one
      • 165. Half Empty or Half Full
      • 166. Nones
      • 167. Greet One Another with a Holy Kiss
      • 168. God's Answer to Atheism
      • 169. Obedience
      • 170. The Problem of Fellowship with God
      • 171. Character Development
      • 172. For Mercy's Sake
    • 2014 Articles 173-180 >
      • 173. Lies
      • 174. Endure to the End
      • 175. Teaching Children How Money Grows
      • 176. The Principle of Delay
      • 177. By Their Fruit
      • 178. Sermons that Changed My Life
      • 179. If Paul Harvey were the Devil
      • 180. The Principle of Practice
    • 2015 Articles 181- >
      • 181. In Wrath Remember Mercy
      • 182. Choosing the Right Shepherd
      • 183. The Lord's Requirements
      • 184. Your Ear Lobe. Thumb, and Big Toe
      • More articles will be added as they are written
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How to Finish Well

 Well When David Mumby, a member of my church, retired from the Navy after 27 years of serving his country, he asked me to speak for five minutes at his military retirement service. Here is what I said:

“When David asked me to say a few words, he requested that I mention a verse in the Bible that he felt appropriately described his military career. Paul said, ‘I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith’ (2 Tim. 4:7). It is immediately obvious how appropriate that is. Dave, you have fought the good fight. You have finished the race. You have kept the faith. The last sentence explains the first two sentences. In order to fight the good fight and finish the course, you must have faith.

“You need to trust yourself. Someone has said, ‘If you really put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price.’ Michael Jordan said, ‘You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.’ Martin Luther King, Jr. said, ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ Lauren Becall said, ‘I am not a has-been. I am a will be.’ Samuel Johnson said, ‘Knock the ‘t’ off the ‘can’t.’’

“Dave, that’s what you did. At the beginning of your military career you expected things of yourself, you took the first step, you said, ‘I am a will be.’ You knocked the ‘t’ off of can’t.

“While trusting yourself is absolutely essential, if all you have is faith in yourself, you will be like the basketball player who wants to take all the shots. When one man on the team does that you can be sure the team will lose the game. You need more than faith in yourself; you need faith in the team.

“You need to trust the team. Vince Lombardi stated, ‘Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work.’ A lesser-known coach named John Cook remarked, ‘Trust. Without it, there is no team. Of the teams I’ve coached that have been successful, all have had an unbelievable amount of trust in each other.’

“Dave, you’ve done that. You’ve been part of the team. You have trusted the team. While trusting yourself and the team are absolutely indispensable, that is not all there is to faith.

“You need faith in God. There are those moments in life when just faith in yourself and faith in the team is not sufficient. In those situations, you need faith in God. General Omar Bradley said, ‘We need to learn to set our course by the stars, not by the lights of every passing ship.’ People who set their course by a passing ship will find they are off course. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.’

“Years ago there was a professor at Cambridge University who was an atheist. One day that professor, C. S. Lewis, said, ‘I gave in and admitted that God was God.’ After writing a commentary on every book in the New Testament, scholar William Barclay wrote, ‘For Paul faith is always faith in a person. Faith is not the intellectual acceptance of a body of doctrine; faith is faith in a person.’ In the New Testament, of course, the person is Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died for the sins of the world and arose from the dead. “Dave, you have done that. You have trusted Jesus Christ.

“In order to fight the good fight, in order to finish the race, you must have faith in yourself, in your team, and in the Lord. Admittedly, to fight the fight, to run the race, there must be more than faith; there must be effort, hard work, and discipline, but if there is no faith, there will be no fight or hard-run race.

“Augustine said, ‘Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.’ Dave, you have worked hard and you have kept the faith. Now you can look back on your military career and see the fruit of your faith.”

                                                   © G. Michael Cocoris, 1/14/2013

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