One day our race will be over
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
Faith Fitness
Bro. Sam Kaufman
We know that Jesus is the author and finisher of our faith. Because of that, we look to Him while we’re racing.
But we can be encouraged by glimpsing at the end of the books of others who already made it.
One verse that comes to mind is I Peters 1:9, which states, “Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.”
That sounds great. It means that if we continue in the faith – we walk by faith, not by sight – there will come a time when our race is over, and we’ll experience a grand in-person introduction to Jesus. At that point, the faith aspect will be completed.
One day, our race will be over. In the meantime, we face struggles. We lean upon God to get through them.
I Peter 1:13 helps us realize that we can be strong in the Lord to endure until we get to see Him.
“Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
James provides further encouragement along those lines. He tells us to look back in time for prime examples of God’s workings.
“Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example of suffering affliction, and of patience. Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.” –James 5:10,11.
We know the suffering Job endured when God allowed Satan to buffet him in various manners. But what we tend to sometimes forget is that we’ve seen “the end of the Lord,” as well, and that He is full of tender mercy.
Sure, we have to endure hardships while fighting the good fight of faith. But we know what’s at the end of it – an eternal bliss with God and His saints.
The Lord even blessed Job in the here and now following his suffering, though his real reward came after this life.
Let’s look at how God blessed Job after all his pain and grief. James tells us to consider that because it will greatly assist us when we’re in the heat of the battle and don’t have all the answers.
We can simply take it by faith that the “end of the Lord” will be worth it all. Job had plenty of questions while in the midst of his suffering. Eventually, God came on the scene and answered them.
God also abundantly blessed Job’s latter end – it was even greater than the former.
It is interesting to note that God turned Job’s captivity when Job prayed for his friends, also known sarcastically as “Job’s Comforters.”
His friends basically rubbed salt in his wounds during his suffering by falsely stating that Job’s condition was the result of sin in his life. But in reality, Job was a righteous man in God’s sight; he was one who feared God and eschewed evil.
At any rate, when Job prayed for his friends… “the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.”
Job 42:11 states, “Then came there unto him all his brethren, and all his sisters, and all they that had been his acquaintance before, and did eat bread with him in his house: and they bemoaned him and comforted him over all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him: every man also gave him a piece of money, and every one an earring of gold.
Verses 12-17 go on to read, “So the LORD blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had fourteen thousand sheep, and six thousand camels, and a thousand yoke of oxen, and a thousand she asses. He also had seven sons and three daughters. And he called the name of the first, Jemima; and the name of the second, Kezia; and the name of the third, Kerenhappuch. And in all the land there were no women found so fair as the daughters of Job: and their father gave inheritance among their brethren. After this lived Job an hundred and forty years, and saw his sons, and his son’s sons, even four generations. So Job died, being old and full of days.”
His death led to the best part.
Job 19:25-26: “For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”