It’s often a lot easier to start something than to finish it. We get road weary, distracted by detours, and often we get just plain worn out and want to quit. But God’s love helps us stand firm and stay strong.

The apostle John knew that so well. As an old man, he picked up his pen with his wrinkled hand and wrote to “the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not only I, but also all who know the truth” (2 John v. 1 NASB), to instruct and encourage them to hang in there and stay faithful. He called himself “the elder,” and he may have actually been writing to an upstanding woman and her children, but more likely he was writing to a persecuted church and was using “chosen lady” as a code to help protect them. Either way the truths in the thirteen verses of John’s second letter are for us and remind us how God loves us. He loves us enough to boost us when the race is long and the finish line feels far away. What you started with faith, you can complete with faithfulness because God shows you how to finish well.

You can finish well because of the truth, “which lives in us and will be with us forever” (v. 2).

You can finish well because you “walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love” (v. 6).

You can finish well because God carries you when you’re weary, carries on what He started, and carries the weight of the world when you feel you may crumble beneath it.

The hardest things you face usually turn out to be the best things. So don’t miss out because you give up or give in. Keep walking by faith, because you will one day walk across that finish line. Until then, thank God, for “grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love” (v. 3).