Keith Battle - Finishing Strong

I want to stop there and use the subject of the day: finishing strong. I was reading and meditating on this passage of Scripture, and what jumped out at me was verse 44. After God began to give Jehoshaphat His word, God gives this acclaim to Jehoshaphat and praises him for the type of king he was and how he followed the Lord. He did the will of the Lord and followed in the steps of his father Asa. After God does that, He says, however, in verse 43, that he didn’t stop the idolatry in the nation; he didn’t tear down the high places and the idol worship. Then, in verse 44, something different is stated: he also made peace with the king of Israel. It confused me because that sounds like a good thing. That he made peace with the king of Israel—he is the king of Judah—seemed to be a positive action since the Israelites and the people of Judah were originally one nation before they split into the northern and southern kingdoms. However, the fact that he made peace with the king of Israel is noted not in a good context; it appears in God’s condemnation of him, not His commendation. It comes up in God’s correction of him—not in the things he did well, but in the list of things he did wrong.

I had to do some research because he had a great start. He had great parents; his father Asa was a great man, and his mother was obviously a godly woman. They raised him right. He became king at 35 years old, taking over from his father Asa. He was doing the right things in the sight of the Lord. But you know how you can start well but not finish well? I’d rather do it the other way; I want to finish strong. The thing about him is that, when you look at his life, he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, avoiding evil—that’s what the text tells us. In fact, he accomplished something that his father didn’t finish. In verse 46, it says that he finished—he banished from the land the rest of the male and female shrine prostitutes who continued their practices from the days of his father Asa. He dealt with sexual immorality and cleaned it out of the nation; he banished all the people involved in that, doing what his father didn’t finish. He was doing great things; the Bible even says he was a good king—a good person.

You know it’s possible to be a good person and good at what you do, have a strong start, but not finish well? There are aspects of his finish that concern me. One thing that troubles me is that the Bible says he did not, in verse 43. I don’t just mean to be negative; I don’t want to focus solely on the negatives. Let me tell you what happened to me: I have always thought of Jehoshaphat as the king to look up to, but then I started researching his life more, and I saw that his life ended in compromise. He made one compromising decision after another. For example, in verse 43, it states that he did not remove all the pagan shrines, and the people still offered sacrifices and burned incense. Here’s what I discovered: the reason why it is so important—this is a generational message—whoever this is for, you have to understand that when we neglect handling our spiritual responsibilities, when there is something that God has told us to eradicate and we keep managing it, whatever we fail to kill in our generation, our descendants will have to fight. That is why you can’t play with certain issues that God has placed on your watch. There are issues in our generational and family history—things in your family, the things your family couldn’t overcome. Your family has always struggled financially; they’ve always relied on welfare. I’m not saying this to insult anyone; every family has something that’s not right, and we have to say, «You’re the first one that made it out.» You need to say, «You know what? It stops with me. It’s going to stop right here. We’re going to stop being slick; we’re going to stop pretending we’re sick. We’re going to stop wearing neck braces and acting like we’re hurt. We’re going to do it right; we’re going to have integrity when it comes to our finances. We’re going to stop hustling.»

Somebody say it stops with me! You may have mental health problems that your family has dealt with for generations, and no one is discussing it, but you know you have depression. When you look at your mom and see she was depressed, and remember your grandfather who sat in a room with his lights off, he was depressed too. Nobody talked about it, but someone has to be willing to face that giant and confront that demon, saying, «Whatever I have to go through, I will…»