Not every competition allows the competitors to actually see the finish
line. A friend of mine used to row in the Oxford crew- You’ve seen those long,
sleek, beautiful shells, filled with sweating and straining men, whose movements are so amazingly synchronised as they pull those longs oars through the water.
Those men have their backs to the finish line! So how can they possibly
finish strong? How do they pace themselves and how do they know when to sprint? If they can’t see the finish line and focus upon it, then how in the world can they row an effective race? The answer is that they focus on the coxswain. He’s the guy with the megaphone sitting at the end of the boat facing the crew. He’s the only one who knows Where the finish line is. So the men at the oars look to him, listen to him, obey his commands, and count
on him to coach them to the finish. He paces them, he encourages them, and
they trust him implicitly to get them across the finish line in the strongest
possible way. They are counting on the coxswain to enable them to finish
strong.
That’s the Christian life, guys. How do we finish strong? We don’t finish
strong by focusing on the finish line because we don’t know where the fin-
ish line is.
We finish strong by fixing our eyes on Jesus,
Steve Farrar
From the book “Finishing strong “