Finish Well Order Printed Copy

Author: Greg Laurie
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About the Book

"Finish Well" by Greg Laurie is a Christian book that encourages readers to live their lives in a way that honors God and finishes well. Laurie provides practical advice and biblical teachings to help readers navigate life's challenges and make wise choices that lead to a fulfilling and purposeful existence. The book emphasizes the importance of faith, perseverance, and staying focused on God's plan in order to finish well in life.

John Knox

"The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." He was a minister of the Christian gospel who advocated violent revolution. He was considered one of the most powerful preachers of his day, but only two of the hundreds of sermons he preached were ever published. He is a key figure in the formation of modern Scotland, yet there is only one monument erected to him in Scotland, and his grave lies beneath a parking lot. John Knox was indeed a man of many paradoxes, a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil. In a relentless campaign of fiery oratory, he sought to destroy what he felt was idolatry and to purify Scotland's religion. Taking up the cause John Knox was born around 1514, at Haddington, a small town south of Edinburgh. Around 1529 he entered the University of St. Andrews and went on to study theology. He was ordained in 1536, but became a notary, then a tutor to the sons of local lairds (lower ranking Scottish nobility). Dramatic events were unfolding in Scotland during Knox's youth. Many were angry with the Catholic church, which owned more than half the real estate and gathered an annual income of nearly 18 times that of the crown. Bishops and priests were often mere political appointments, and many never hid their immoral lives: the archbishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton, openly consorted with concubines and sired 10 children. The constant sea traffic between Scotland and Europe allowed Lutheran literature to be smuggled into the country. Church authorities were alarmed by this "heresy" and tried to suppress it. Patrick Hamilton, an outspoken Protestant convert, was burned at the stake in 1528. In the early 1540s, Knox came under the influence of converted reformers, and under the preaching of Thomas Guilliame, he joined them. Knox then became a bodyguard for the fiery Protestant preacher George Wishart, who was speaking throughout Scotland. In 1546, however, Beaton had Wishart arrested, tried, strangled, and burned. In response, a party of 16 Protestant nobles stormed the castle, assassinated Beaton, and mutilated his body. The castle was immediately put to siege by a fleet of French ships (Catholic France was an ally to Scotland). Though Knox was not privy to the murder, he did approve of it, and during a break in the siege, he joined the besieged party in the castle. During a Protestant service one Sunday, preacher John Rough spoke on the election of ministers, and publicly asked Knox to undertake the office of preacher. When the congregation confirmed the call, Knox was shaken and reduced to tears. He declined at first, but eventually submitted to what he felt was a divine call. It was a short-lived ministry. In 1547, after St. Andrews Castle had again been put under siege, it finally capitulated. Some of the occupants were imprisoned. Others, like Knox, were sent to the galleys as slaves. Traveling preacher Nineteen months passed before he and others were released. Knox spent the next five years in England, and his reputation for preaching quickly blossomed. But when Catholic Mary Tudor took the throne, Knox was forced to flee to France. He made his way to Geneva, where he met John Calvin. The French reformer described Knox as a "brother … laboring energetically for the faith." Knox for his part, was so impressed with Calvin's Geneva, he called it, "the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the apostles." Knox traveled on to Frankfurt am Main, where he joined other Protestant refugees—and quickly became embroiled in controversy. The Protestants could not agree on an order of worship. Arguments became so heated that one group stormed out of a church one Sunday, refusing to worship in the same building as Knox. Back in Scotland, Protestants were redoubling their efforts, and congregations were forming all over the country. A group that came to be called "The Lords of the Congregation" vowed to make Protestantism the religion of the land. In 1555, they invited Knox to return to Scotland to inspire the reforming task. Knox spent nine months preaching extensively and persuasively in Scotland before he was forced to return to Geneva. Fiery blasts of the pen Away from his homeland again, he published some of his most controversial tracts: In his Admonition to England he virulently attacked the leaders who allowed Catholicism back in England. In The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women he argued that a female ruler (like English Queen Mary Tudor) was "most odious in the presence of God" and that she was "a traitoress and rebel against God." In his Appellations to the Nobility and Commonality of Scotland, he extended to ordinary people the right—indeed the duty—to rebel against unjust rulers. As he told Queen Mary of Scotland later, "The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and he again deployed his formidable preaching skills to increase Protestant militancy. Within days of his arrival, he preached a violent sermon at Perth against Catholic "idolatry," causing a riot. Altars were demolished, images smashed, and religious houses destroyed. In June, Knox was elected the minister of the Edinburgh church, where he continued to exhort and inspire. In his sermons, Knox typically spent half an hour calmly exegeting a biblical passage. Then as he applied the text to the Scottish situation, he became "active and vigorous" and would violently pound the pulpit. Said one note taker, "he made me so to grew [quake] and tremble, that I could not hold pen to write." The Lords of the Congregation militarily occupied more and more cities, so that finally, in the 1560 Treaty of Berwick, the English and French agreed to leave Scotland. (The English, now under Protestant Elizabeth I, had come to the aid of the Protestant Scots; the French were aiding the Catholic party). The future of Protestantism in Scotland was assured. The Parliament ordered Knox and five colleagues to write a Confession of Faith, the First Book of Discipline, and The Book of Common Order—all of which cast the Protestant faith of Scotland in a distinctly Calvinist and Presbyterian mode. Knox finished out his years as preacher of the Edinburgh church, helping shape the developing Protestantism in Scotland. During this time, he wrote his History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland. Though he remains a paradox to many, Knox was clearly a man of great courage: one man standing before Knox's open grave said, "Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh." Knox's legacy is large: his spiritual progeny includes some 750,000 Presbyterians in Scotland, 3 million in the United States, and many millions more worldwide.

God So Loved the World, He Sent You

Long before he made the world, God the Father prepared to send his one and only Son to earth. He loved him “before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24), and yet even then he knew how much the baby born in Bethlehem would suffer. We know the Father knew because our names were “written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 13:8). Before God planted the first pine tree, the Christmas story had already been planned. Before he lit the sun with fire, he had already begun digging the ground where the cross would one day stand. He always knew that Jesus would one day take on flesh and, eventually, shed his own blood. Can you imagine the all-wise, all-powerful author of life and history preparing his Son to live as one of us — and to die a uniquely horrible death? Even our wildest dreams would look like scratch drawings on a napkin compared with the intimacy they shared in divinity for an eternity before history — before there was even time to count. God So Loved His Son But the sent one himself gives us stunning glimpses into how the Father had prepared him: “I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. . . . For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” (John 10:15–18) When the Son came to earth, he came covered in his Father’s love. When the Father set his love on us, at the excruciating expense of his Son, he did not love his Son less. He loved him more for his sacrifice. Jesus says, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again” (John 10:17). God’s love for his Son didn’t keep him from sending his Son to save us. Love for his Son prompted God to send him. The Father sent Jesus with unparalleled love, and with unrivaled authority. Jesus says, “No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again” (John 10:18). The Father harnessed all the power of heaven for this mission, and entrusted it to the humble child from Nazareth. He held nothing back. Jesus, who was human in every way that we are, could say the scandalous and unfathomable: “All that the Father has is mine” (John 16:15). As much as he suffered as man, he did not come to earth empty-handed; he came bearing the universe. He came as God. But with the limitless love and unassailable authority of his Father, he was sent to die. Feel the awful heaviness of the full meaning of Christmas in his words: “I lay down my life for the sheep. . . . I lay down my life. . . . This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:15, 17–18). The Father did not merely send Jesus to take on flesh, but to lay it down. The Spirit conceived a Christ to be crucified. For lost and wandering and helpless sheep — for you and me. Jesus was sent to lose everything that we might gain everything. He became poor — in birth, in life, and in death — that we might inherit his heavenly wealth (2 Corinthians 8:9). Sent in love, sent with authority, sent to die — and to save. As the Father Sent Me The wonder and weight of Christmas — a sending conceived in the mind of God before the foundation of the world, a sending on which every event in history turns and hangs — fills one sentence from Jesus with staggering significance. He prays to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18) Nothing compares to the Creator of the universe sending the radiance of his own glory, the exact imprint of his nature into his creation. Until Jesus sends you. After he rises from the dead, he says it again, before he ascends into heaven, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (John 20:21). As the Father sent the Son — planned before the foundation of the world, demonstrating God’s infinite beauty, strength, and worth, paying for the sins of people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, with billions and billions of destinies hanging in the balance — so the Son now sends us. As the Father sent his Son on a specific and spectacular mission, so the Son has set us loose on a world in need of hope (John 17:21, 23). As the Father sent his Son with precious words to proclaim, so the Son has given us something to say, a Lord to adore, and a commission to obey (John 17:14; Matthew 28:19–20). As the Father sent the Son to suffer for love, so the Son sends his sheep into the wolf pack (Matthew 10:16). As the Father set joy before his Son, so the Son has promised us his very own joy (John 17:13), now in part, forever in full. As the Father sent his Son with love, so the Son has loved us (John 15:13). And so he has sent us into the world. God So Loved the World We have not descended from heaven, but in Christ we are not of this world. Jesus says of you and me, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:16). But while neither he nor we are of this world, he has stationed us here for now. Jesus prays, “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world” (John 17:11). He is not in the world anymore, but we are. Instead of staying to bring in by himself all the sheep who are not yet of this fold, he ascended to mission control — the throne of the universe — and sent us in after him. Having completed his once-for-all mission of securing redemption — the work only he could do — he entrusted us with telling the whole world what he had done. He says to his disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19). As he had heard the Father say, “Go,” he now sends us into the world — with his authority, his words, his help, his joy, and his own presence: “Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). To whom has God sent you? The people in your family, on your street, near your office are not the offspring of chance. God lovingly placed them within arm’s reach of forgiveness, hope, and joy — by placing you near them. They were not alive a hundred years ago, but they are now. They will not live where they do in a hundred years, but they do now. God arranged and orchestrated every person in your life for his glory (Acts 17:26–27), just as he guided all of human history for thousands of years before Christ came — and then he sent you precisely where you are — with words and joy, in love, to suffer and say and save. As you celebrate the greatest sending again this Christmas, remember God so loved the world, that he also sent you. Article by Marshall Segal