Live Life Without a Finish Line

I was recently challenged by these words; The day I stop growing is the day I stop living. For old people, it often happens that they stop growing when they lose their curiosity and no longer ask questions. They can think they know all there is to know.

John Maxwell said, “If experience is the best teacher, we would all be getting better the older we get. I know many people who are getting older but not getting better. It is EVALUATED experience that helps us get better, Reflection turns experience into insight. Don’t tell people what you have learned, make sure you tell them what you are doing with what you have learned.”

Two friends of mine in their mid-eighties will soon be leaving Australia to travel to a difficult region of the world where they will spend some weeks teaching and equipping local Christians who are hungry to learn. One of the couple recently wrote to me, “My history professor pointed out some of the negatives of our overseas trip in 1975. My final response to him was, ‘I am determined, in the will of God, to go.’ I now say again, 50 years later, ‘I am determined, in the will of God, to go.’”

Two other friends of mine, also in their mid-eighties, will be spending much of 2025 travelling to difficult regions of the world, in the middle east and in Europe where they too will spend extended times of equipping Christian leaders living in non-Christian cultures. These 4 leaders are willing to pay a great price, in what will be unfriendly environments where their safety cannot be guaranteed.

My friends are among the few who are living without a finish line for their lives. They are of the order of Caleb, Mister Wholehearted, who said, “‘So here I am today, 85 years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the Lord promised me that day (45 years ago). You have heard then that the Anakites were there and their cities were large and fortified, but, the Lord helping me, I will drive them out just as He said.’ Then Joshua blessed Caleb, son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance. So, Hebron has belonged to Caleb, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite ever since, BECAUSE HE FOLLOWED THE LORD GOD OF ISRAEL WHOLEHEARTEDLY.” Joshua 14:10-14

John Maxwell said, “My growth increased exponentially when I went from ‘goals with a timeline’ to ‘growth without a finish line,’ from asking ‘how long will it take?’ to asking, ‘how far can I go?’”

My four friends, all in their mid-eighties, have challenged me as they have shared their plans for 2025. In a few months, I will join them in the decade of the eighties, and I too am determined to continue living life without a finish line.

For a leader who lives with a finish line is a leader who lives with a used by date and has a date in their timeline when they will stop growing and consequently stop leading and retire…….and stop living. Tupac Shakur said, “Death is not the greatest loss of life. The greatest loss is what happens inside us while we are still alive.”

As I enter a new decade I choose to live:-

• intentionally
• for the things that are eternal
• knowing I always have a heavenly audience of One
• knowing that each new day is a gift from God and what I do with the gift reflects what I think of the Giver
• without a finish line

John Maxwell reminds us that we didn’t come this far just to come this far. You don’t want to get to the finish line because when you get to the finish line, you are finished.

Instead, choose to be like my four friends and join the order of Caleb and live without a finish line.

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