It’s Not Over Yet – Part 1

I don't know if you're a runner. Are you a runner?

this brutal, brutal course. The gunshot he took off with many other athletes running this marathon of 26 miles. He was doing pretty well until mile 12 and mile 12. Some of the runners started jostling a little bit, moving, pushing each other, and atwari fell. It was a bad fall. He messed up his knee. He skinned his leg. He dislocated his shoulder. Many thought that he was out of the race. But when he got up, he started to limp and run again. But he was running very slow.

The doctors on the sidelines said, hey, just. Just quit the race. You're injured. You don't have to finish. But to their amazement and surprise, Atwari kept running. He had 14 miles yet to go and he kept running, half running, half limping, half walking. All of the other marathon runners completed the race. They marched. They ran into the stadium at the applause of thousands and thousands of people that

applauded them. Atwari was an hour later. By that time, the stadium had cleared out only for a couple thousand people. Dusk was falling. It was getting dark already. The crowd had dispersed for the most part. And then suddenly someone said, hey, look at him! And there he was. A marine entered into the stadium, limping, walking, trying to run. The crowd got up, looked at him, this injured athlete as he made one last round around the stadium and passed right

through the finish line. He was the last by far of 57 marathon athletes that finished the race. When the reporter was able to talk to Atwari, he put a microphone in his in his face and he said, Atwari, why didn't you quit? I mean, you were way, way, way late. Why don't you just get. Why don't you just give up? Atwari said my country did not send me 10,000 miles just to start the race. They sent me to finish the race. Every person in this auditorium is in a race. We in the church are in

a race. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon. We may have sprints within the marathon, but it's a long term race. And there's some of you that are in a season that you're racing, that some of you have gotten to a place that's difficult, that's hard, and you've just quit. You stop trying, you stop running. You set down on the side. You said it's just too hard. Oh, you're still alive. You're still breathing. But you're not running.

You're not racing. There's no vision of the future. There's no vision for the finish line you've You just set out. And I believe that God has called me here today because I believe that God has called me to stir. Some of you up to finish what God has started. Yeah. Because I believe this, that some of you are in a race that even though you may have set out, God wants you to know it's not over yet. Tap the person beside you and say it's not over yet.

Tap the person on the other side. Hey, I think some of you are going to speak this prophetically into someone's life. Look at the person beside you in the eye and say it's not over yet.

It's not over yet. And I want to tell you a little bit about this message, and I want to I want us to understand and learn from Haggai three vital principles that we need to learn and grasp and understand if we are going to finish what we started. If you're jotting notes today, I want you to write this down. I believe that we move to the finish line when we decide to stop postponing and determine to

complete what we've started. Some of us are major procrastinators. Manana, manana. Later. Later. Hey, can you take out the garbage? Yeah, later. Hey, can you take the car for an oil change? I'm getting to it later. Can you do your homework later? Later? It's easy to procrastinate in little things, but it's a major problem when we start procrastinating in our God given destiny. And so I want you to know what was happening with the people of Israel when Haggai came up to

them and said, stop procrastinating. So what had happened was that in the year 586 BC, so 586 years before Christ was born, a long time ago, 2500 years ago, the people of Israel had been called by God a set aside nation. They had built Jerusalem. They had built the temple. Solomon had built a magnificent temple in the center of town that had become the place of worship. If you turn on the television and they're talking about the Middle East. There's a wall that remains from Solomon's

Temple in Jerusalem. That's called the Wailing Wall. I've been there. Uh, Jewish people still believe that that's the closest gate to heaven. And they take little prayers, and they put it in the wall, and you'll see people going back and forth and praying at that wall. Because it's the original from

Solomon's Wall. Well, because the people of Israel did not follow God and turned to other idols and turned their back on God and drifted away from God, God decided that he would let Israel be devastated by their enemy. So the Babylonians came and they conquered Jerusalem. They conquered Israel. They ransacked the city. They tore down the walls, they burned the houses, and they took all of the gold from the temple, all of the holy artifacts. And they

destroyed the temple. Brick after brick knocked it down. So it was left in ruins. True. And they were taken as slaves back to Babylon. You remember the story of Daniel, who was one of the young leaders that was taken as a slave. They were there for 70 years. Jerusalem was in ruins. The people of Israel were devastated. Now, sometimes what happens when we turn our back on God?

Sometimes what happens when we start going our own way is God has to lead us through a season of devastation in order to take us back to a season of restoration. Some of you are here today because you had to have some devastation in your life that woke you up and have brought you to a place of restoration.

what Jerusalem can be again. We have a dream that this city can be rebuilt and this will be a place of peace and a place where God reigns. The temple will be rebuilt. We will worship again like we used to worship. We will. Their children will dance in the streets and laugh and play like they used to. We will follow God and as we follow God, we will rebuild this city. They had gone back to do so, but something happened. You know, when God gives us a

big task, it's not always easy. When God gives us a big vision, it gets interrupted by opposition Position. By criticism, by obstacles, by discouragement. And here's what I've discovered that there's two twins that tend to derail us. Discouragement and distraction. When we become discouraged and distracted, we typically stop doing what God has called us to do, and we start putting our energies into other things because discouragement and distraction work hand in hand to take us away from the

destiny that God has called us to. Some of you right now are not finishing what God called you to do, because you've been discouraged and distracted. You got discouraged because someone hurt you. You got discouraged because it was too long. You got discouraged because it felt like it wasn't making progress. And when you got discouraged, you started looking around. And

when you got discouraged, you started getting distracted. And you figured, if I can't win this, I'll win it something else until you've thrown yourself into something else and the very call that God has on your life, the very destiny that God has had you for you have abandoned it because of discouragement and distraction. I believe that God has called me to wake some of you up today, to get you out of discouragement and distraction, to say, hey, hey,

you're you're sidetracked. God is not done with you yet. Don't bail out of the marathon. It's not over yet. You're still in the race. Get off the bench! Get off the sideline! Get into the game that God has called you to because you are wasting a lot of your precious energy, time, faith, gifting talents when you live in the world of discouragement and distraction.

By the way, at the website Bold Steps. Org. Feel free to share any pressing questions you might have for Mark by simply clicking on the tab labeled Ask a Question, and then we often find time in the program to respond to some of those questions. And Mark, I've got one for you right here today if it's okay.

for example, in Ephesians chapter five. Um, it says, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart. So I believe that as we lead in worship, there is no restriction, whether male or female, to lead the congregation in worship. There is one thing I would encourage, however. They need to be able to sing. Okay. That would be it.

Sometimes God will have to raise a friend that speaks prophetically into our life, challenging us. And Haggai came to the people of Israel. They had started to build the temple. They had laid a foundation. They had built the altar. So they were still having services there. But because of the opposition of a group called the Samaritans, they had left, they got discouraged. And then they got distracted. You know what they got distracted with? They got distracted with good stuff,

not God stuff. They got distracted because God had told them, build up the temple, but because they got discouraged. It took a lot of work. There was opposition, they got discouraged, and so they started rebuilding the city. They got discouraged with their stuff. They started building up their houses, building their yards, finishing their the roofs, paneling, the inside doing their floors, improving their homes. They kept saying, yeah, we'll get back to the temple. Yeah, yeah, we're going to

finish it. Yeah, we're going to get back to it. It's just not the right time yet. It's not the proper season, you know, that you can get distracted with good things from the God things not they're not bad. They're not evil, they're good, but they're not the God things. And so 14 years later, they still had not done what God had called them to do rebuild the temple. 14 years later, the temple was still in ruins. 14 years later, the walls hadn't been built. 14 years later,

they were still procrastinating. They kind of got used to the way it was. You know, you live so long in a certain way, you start getting used to something that is not the best. You live long enough in a certain way and you start getting used to substandard living. You live with something long enough and you start forgetting that it's a problem. You live with abuse long enough and you think that abuse is normal. It's the standard. It's the way life is. It's been that way for

a long time. It'll probably never change. And you just accept verbal abuse. Physical abuse, and you believe that that's just the way it is. If you live with it long enough, you live in a house full of strife and chaos and criticism and doubt and anger. You live that way long enough and you just start to assume that's the way it'll always be. That's the way it's

always been. I expect it, anticipate it, believe it. You live in poverty and indebtedness This where you can barely pay your bills and you always have creditors calling you up, and you just believe that that's the way life is. It's always barely, barely surviving, barely living. It's always one paycheck to another. It's moving apart. And it's while creditors chase after you and follow after you. It's just the lifestyle that you've become used to. You live there. You

accept it. You make it your culture. You think it's normal because when you procrastinate on something long enough, long enough, you start getting used to a culture of procrastination, even though it's not what God has called you to.

Thank you, Heather for writing this book. This, I think, is going to be a great resource for people that are seeking to bridge the gap of meaningful conversations with their loved ones.

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the Moody Publishers discount code at 50%. This will give you half off every purchase at the Moody Publishers website. Sign up to become a bold partner today. At Bold steps.org or call us at 800 Moody. Well, Mark, here we are on a Friday. But there's something coming up on the weekend that we want our listeners to know about. That's a whole new program, our sister program, Bold Steps Weekend.

is increasingly hostile to Christianity. And, um, you know, oftentimes we are labeled by others and, uh, in first Peter and second Peter. There's a lot that's spoken about a group of people that's in a hostile environment, but we are called chosen people. We have an identity given to us by God, not by the culture. And we need to live and walk and breathe that identity. So that message, I think, is going to encourage some people, and.