Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | 2001

Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2006

Grace Church of Burlington July 16, 2006  “We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt.”             In 2003 just before his team left the locker room to play for the national championship of college football at the Fiesta Bowl that January, Jim Tressel, head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, gathered his team for one final talk. After going over the game plan, he asked his team one simple question, “How do you want to be remembered?” It must have worked because when the game was over, the Buckeyes had pulled off one of the great upsets in recent memory. They defeated the University of Miami, and in the process ended the Hurricanes 34-game winning streak to take home the national championship.             So how do you want to be remembered? What do you hope people will say about you after you are gone? How will the people who knew you best summarize the years of your life?             Outside of Florence, Alabama, there is an old graveyard way out in the country. It’s the family cemetery for the owners of a 19th-century plantation. Most of the gravestones are now over 150 years old. The markers have the typical phrases like, “Loving father,” “Beloved mother,” “Darling son,” “Rest in Peace,” “Asleep in Jesus,” and so on. But in that cemetery you will also find the grave of the man who had owned the plantation for many years. Under his name there is the date of his birth and the date of his death. Then there was a five-word statement that summed up his whole life, “A man of unquestioned integrity.” Just five words. Nothing more, nothing less. But suppose it was your tombstone. What five words would your friends choose? How do you want to be remembered?             Writing from a Roman jail, with the certain knowledge that he would soon be dead, the Apostle Paul looked back at his journey with Christ, and then he looked forward to what would happen after he died. And then he wrote his own epitaph: “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Timothy 4:6-8).             After an exhaustive study of the men and women of the Bible, Howard Hendricks of Dallas Theological Seminary, concluded that there are approximately 100 detailed biographies in the Bible. He notes that approximately two-thirds of those men and women ended poorly. Either they turned to immorality or they drifted away from the faith or they ended their life in a backslidden condition. The Apostle Paul was not among them. He finished well. Once when John Wesley was asked to explain the spiritual strength of the early Methodists, he replied, “Our people die well.” But in order to die well, you have to finish well.             Both today and next Sunday, we have the privilege of having Dr. Don Wise filling our pulpit. Dr. Wise has been faithful and done something that is increasingly unusual today...he has finished well. He is one of my heroes and truly one of the heroes of the faith. During the early 1950's Don pastored Union Grove Baptist Church and for three decades taught Bible and New Testament Greek at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago.             If you are going to miss a Sunday, don’t miss these two. You are in for a special treat. Don is a gifted Bible teacher and has forgotten more theology than most pastors (including this one) will ever know. Please be sure and give both he and his wife, Margaret, a warm Grace welcome!