Your Most Important Accomplishment (and an Announcement)

We will fight many battles in this life and, with God’s help, win many victories, both for ourselves and for others. But the most important victory we will ever achieve is to finish our race well. This is about our character and learning to depend upon Jesus.

There will be those who accomplish mighty feats — prophecies which accurately come to pass, healings, deliverances, and miracles. These are rightfully impressive, but we must never forget what Jesus said:

Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, “Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name? And in Your name have cast out devils? And in Your name done many wonderful works?” And then will I profess to them, “I never knew you: depart from Me, You who work iniquity.” — Matthew 7:21-23

In Matthew 24:13, Jesus also said, “But he who endures to the end, the same shall be saved.” Not, “He who does the most miracles,” not, “He who prophesies the best,” and not even, “He who wins the most souls.” Just, he who endures: staying faithful to the Lord, obeying Him, acting like Jesus would, and not denying Him when things get tough. To Jesus, enduring while keeping His testimony is far more important than anything else we do.

As the days we live in continue to darken, it is excellent to press in for miracles, to heal the sick, to set the captive free, to participate with Jesus in destroying the works of the devil (1 John 3:8). But to faithfully confess His name right up until the end, testifying well of Him through a life of pure, Christ-like behavior — that is priority.

Don’t stop. Don’t grow weary in well-doing, including the well-doing of prayer. Keep your eyes always on Jesus, Who waits for you at the finish line, cheering you on. Finish well, with Jesus’ character so much a part of your inner fabric that, as you run your race, you leave His distinct aroma in your wake.

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UPDATE: After a two-year break, I am working on two new books. One is a Bible promise book, with all the promises from Genesis through Revelation. (This is something I have wanted for myself for a long time, but couldn’t find one done the way I had in mind.)

The plan is to do it in both the KJV and a modernized KJV (the same text without the thees and thous, with modern spellings and punctuation, but still completely faithful to the KJV, my favorite translation). I’m currently in the Psalms, which will take a while, I think. Just working on this book has been drawing me into the Lord’s Presence, and I hope it will do that for you, too!

The second project is a Christian dream interpretation book. If you are a regular reader at Out of the Fire, you know I write a lot about dreams and how God speaks to us through them. In the past year, Paul and I have presented several extensive dream workshops.

This new book will be much more detailed than the article series and even than the workshop materials. It will include a dream dictionary, which particularly emphasizes symbolic imagery found in the Bible. The dictionary will no doubt be the hardest part of the book to accomplish.

With the Lord’s help, I hope to have both projects completed sometime in 2020 or early 2021.

 

If you want to learn a lot more about understanding your dreams now, we still offer our audio dream workshop, Hearing God Through Your Dreams, in mp3 or CD form at our website. I think you will enjoy it!