And await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love. (Jude 1:21 NLT)

The pages of the Bible are filled with the stories of those who had such tremendous potential and started out well, but they ended miserably. They didn’t cross the finish line.

You may know people who started out with great promise in the Christian life. They made a profession of faith in Christ, but they haven’t followed through. They’ve become casualties in the race of life.

The Bible pulls no punches in this regard. It tells us story after story of men and women who initially flourished spiritually. But then they withered.

For example, Saul, the first king of Israel, was someone who had all the right stuff. In fact, if we were going to look for a candidate today to run for office, this would have been our person. He was charismatic, handsome, tall, and sharp. Most importantly, God’s Spirit had come upon him and anointed him for the task at hand.

For a relatively short time, everything was going well. But Saul allowed himself to give way to pride, paranoia, and jealousy. It consumed him. And he met an untimely end on the battlefield. Essentially, he wrote his own epitaph when he said, “I have been a fool and very, very wrong” (1 Samuel 26:21 NLT). How true that was. He threw it all away.

We think of the mighty Samson, whom God supernaturally blessed with an incredible strength to vanquish his enemies with relative ease. On one occasion he killed one thousand Philistines with a bone he picked up off the ground. As a he-man with a she weakness, Samson squandered his incredible potential. He allowed his lust to consume him and ultimately lost his strength, dying an unnecessary death.

Gideon, a man with humble beginnings, was plucked from obscurity when the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, “Mighty hero, the Lord is with you!” (Judges 6:12 NLT). God raised him up to courageously lead the armies of Israel into battle. But as he came to the end of his life, he lowered his standards and fell into immorality and pride.

The Bible tells us, “And through your faith, God is protecting you by his power until you receive this salvation, which is ready to be revealed on the last day for all to see” (1 Peter 1:5 NLT).

Jude 1:21 says, “Await the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will bring you eternal life. In this way, you will keep yourselves safe in God’s love” (NLT). And James 1:27 tells us, “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you” (NLT).

In 1 John we read, “Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts” (5:21 NLT).

Yes, God will keep us, but we have our part to do as well. The goal is to run the race He has set before us and to cross the finish line.

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