Our Bible verse for today: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. There is reserved for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me, but to all those who have loved his appearing.” 2 Timothy 4:6-8 (CSB)
Our thought for today: “What matters is that you tried.”
When Paul wrote the letter of Second Timothy he was in prison in Rome facing probable execution. During previous imprisonments he always had the expectation and hope of being released, but not this time. Death was close and he knew it.
At that time Paul was an old man nearing the end of his life, the last thirty years of which had been very hard. He had given-up his prestigious life as an up-and-coming Pharisee. He spent it instead as an itinerant evangelist, a church-planter, and as a Pastor helping to establish the new Christian faith. It had been a hard life with no home of his own, no income most of the time, constantly chased and harassed by enemies of the Christian faith, arrested numerous times, jailed, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and more. Now he was old, physically broken, he owned virtually nothing, and he was about to be executed.
Yet in his own estimation his had been a life lived well – it had been spent for a noble purpose and he was confident of his reward in heaven.
Most of us will never be faced with the challenges Paul had to deal with, but we will have to make decisions and choices about how we will invest our own lives. I want to share with you a quote from one of my personal heroes from history, President Teddy Roosevelt. It’s a quote I keep in a picture frame on a bookcase in my office and I review it frequently:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but he who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great devotion; who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails while daring greatly, knows that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
In life all you have to do is try. Just do your best. Even if you seem to come up short by earthly standards, God observed your efforts and He knows your heart. He knows you gave it your best.
I encourage you to be engaged in meaningful endeavors. Dare to try hard things, things that will make a difference. Just give it your best effort, and trust the rest to the Lord.
Oak Hill Baptist Church