The End of an Era
Acts 20:24 – But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
A few years ago Pastor Christian, one of the pastors at the church I attend, preached a sermon on “finishing well.” At the end of it he sent the trustees around the sanctuary with baskets filled with little finishing washers to remind us to finish well.
I immediately put that on my key ring to remind me every single day that I need to finish this life well.
But it isn’t just with life.
In everything we need to prepare for our final curtain call.
When I left the grocery chain I worked for almost 10 years at to start a franchise, I stared long and hard at that little finishing washer. I wanted to leave my region in a better state that it was started in.
That is called a legacy.
Every job, every ministry, and aspect of our personal lives we should strive to leave a positive lasting legacy.
The legacy I want everyone to see when I step away from this life and move into my time with God face to face is Jesus. When people think of me, I want them to think of Jesus.
2 Timothy 4:7 – I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.
That brings me to my point for this blog. It is time to step away from blogging for a while. I need to begin to simplify my life so that Christ can shine through the simplicity.
I don’t want Christ to return only to find me busy to be busy. I want Him to find me busy creating that lasting legacy that will have people saying, “I have no clue what his name was, but I remember him always talking about Jesus.”
Over the life of this blog, I have posted 218 times. I tried to post weekly, but realized that as the blog became more mature, it was difficult to find inspiration to write so I had some weeks where I posted nothing. I also had some weeks where I posted daily.
My very first post was on May 13, 2012. At that time my Twitter was sitting at 218 followers, mostly friends. Also at that time I labeled myself a “Christian apologist.” The dictionary defines an apologist as someone who “offers an argument in defense of something controversial.” In Christian terms, an apologist is someone who gives a reason for the faith which they have.
Today, my Twitter account sits at 1,858 followers and my blog is in front of potentially 2,800 people weekly. I am sure my Twitter numbers will drop now that I am not blogging any more, that seems to be how this game of social media works. The more you are on it, the more people want to know about you and scope you out. When you step away, you fall back into the mists of commonality.
Hebrews 12:1 – Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us
I have covered topics on this blog that were very important to my journey at the time I posted them. I spoke a lot about divorce, seeing as how I got a divorce not long before I started blogging. I wrote about the image of God, predestination and election, farting, missions, tears, politics, masturbation, my late dog Mocha, the mission journeys I took to Peru, Christmas, single parenting, strippers, gay marriage, heresy in the church, being a dad, and many many other topics.
Some of my favorites (and also some of my readers’ favorites) included:
- Building Lego Towers to Heaven
- When a Soldier Falls
- They Will Know We are Christians by the Way We Get a Speeding Ticket
- Powdered Donut Approach to Missions
- Predestination and Election Parts 1 and 2
- 5 Stories from Peru
- 100 More Stories from Peru
- Reaching the City for Christ
- Spiritual Farting
- From a Stage in the Dark
- Dads are Stupid
- As American as Baseball, Apple Pie and…Mormonism?!?
- Mimi Baker will you Marry Me?
- I Wanna Puke
- Ferguson 2.0: Baltimore
- Many Regrets, One Hope
I also made a few mistakes along the way. In the post “Minding your P’s & Q’s,” I was discussing some of the original Biblical texts and throughout the post I kept saying the P75 and Codex Vaticanus were one in the same. They are very far from being the same thing. There is a matter of about 1,000 year difference. But if you really want to know where your Bible came from, start researching those 2 documents.
Next, I ranted about some poor customer service I had at Comcast. Now I believe everyone allowed to get frustrated and go on a rant from time to time. But those rants should never be on social media. The next post I apologized to Comcast for my poor choice of words about them.
I am sure my theology was not always lining up with the top theologists out there. I bet if Pastor Brit (one of the pastors at the church I attend and also THE toughest theologian I know) read my posts he would have a laundry list of theological fixes I need to make.
But that is the thing about theology. We need to internalize it and make it our own. Yes, we need accountability to make sure we are learning it properly. Theology is not some nebulous thing. It needs to be learned to be properly used. But we do need to make theology our own.
Philippians 1:6 – I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
I have completely filled my schedule with an abundance of tasks. Everything from buying a house to starting a business to leading several ministries to (in the near future) potentially planting a church.
In order to perform well at the important ones, I need to remove the ones which are simply there as either an ego boost or to be busy, including this blog.
So I thank you for reading this blog over the years and I pray we can stay in touch. The site will remain open, it just won’t have any new posts on it.
God bless.
boyradd 