More than once, I’ve had such close calls with death that I felt the thinness of the wall between this world and the next. Those moments on the edge of my mortality — whether underwater or in a war zone — were at first breathtaking with suddenness and then sobering with what-ifs. But I was too busy living to think much about dying, and soon those close calls were in the rearview mirror.

However, my latest death threat is no near-miss. Nor can I outrun it. Successive cancer diagnoses in 2019, 2020, and 2021 have struck hard. My situation, though, is no different from what all of us will face because cancer is just another way to die. And one kindness from God I’ve seen (and I can count many of his kindnesses to me in this stretch of my journey) is that cancer has given me a clearer focus on the finish line.

I want to make every stride count — every day meaningful. I want to finish strong. As Eric Liddell, the Olympic gold-medal sprinter turned missionary, famously said, “I run the first two hundred meters as hard as I can. Then for the second two hundred meters, with God’s help, I run harder.” That’s how I want to run the race I’m in right now.

Still, as I pen these lines, I know I haven’t yet finished my course, and I strongly feel Spurgeon’s warning:

The trumpet still plays the notes of war. You cannot sit down and put the victory wreath on your head. You do not have a crown. You still must wear the helmet and carry the sword. You must watch, pray, and fight. Expect your last battle to be the most difficult, for the enemy’s fiercest charge is reserved for the end of the day. (Beside Still Waters, 2)

I am learning much through this experience, and God is certainly increasing my faith; but I admit it’s an uneven work because I am often a poor student. Thankfully, I have a patient Teacher. So, as I continue to press ahead in my race, there are three things I can tell you.

1. Number Your Days

The prayer of Moses in Psalm 90 is full of breathtaking awe and wonder over the God who is “from everlasting to everlasting” (verse 2). The Rock of Ages does not age. He was God before time, he is God who enters time, and he will be God when all our clocks and calendars, histories and monuments are no more.

But then, in cosmic contrast, there is another kind of breathtaking awe over just how brief our time is. Moses says our lives are “like grass” (verse 5) — here today and gone tomorrow. Even if we are granted a full life with enough birthday candles to set off the smoke alarm, yet the fire is extinguished with a breath, and we soon “fly away” (verse 10). So caught between brevity and eternity, we ask God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (verse 12). Of course, none of us can add up in advance the number of days we will be given. But what we are to remember is that there is a number, and we can’t add a single hour to it (Luke 12:25).

We may imagine finishing well to look like a life full of years, perhaps like Jacob’s. “When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people” (Genesis 49:33). That’s a nice hope but an unlikely scenario, since death rarely operates on our timetable, and we don’t know whether we will be given ninety years or nineteen. Our finish lines often come suddenly, with little or no warning. There may be no home stretch — only Home, as quick as a wink. And so, given the here-today-gone-tomorrow reality of our vapor-like lives, the best way to finish life well is to finish each day well. We need to run with the heart and pace of a marathoner and with a sprinter’s eye for the swift finish.

2. Follow Closely

If life is brief — sometimes shockingly so — then wouldn’t it make sense to be careful and protect it? Certainly you should exercise, eat healthy, and look both ways before crossing the street, but the fact is that you cannot save your life. You can’t keep it. You can only spend it. So, spend it well.

Jesus told us how. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). So, we must fully embrace, fully identify with, fully follow our Cross-bearer — whatever it will cost us and wherever it will take us. And clearly the path to fully following Christ is not found in a fear-driven, risk-averse, comfort-zone life. Risk will always be a basic and costly requirement of following and finishing well.

“The best way to finish life well is to finish each day well.”

This kind of risk isn’t just for missionaries who pursue Christ’s calling to the other side of the world. It’s also for speaking the gospel — with all its damning bad news and saving good news — personally, face to face with a coworker or neighbor in a society where “truth is looking stranger than the lies,” as Josh Garrels puts it in his song “Watchman.” In fact, being risk-averse is the opposite of cross-bearing. The One who carried the cross, died, and rose again says the way to life is to follow him in the fellowship of his sufferings and the power of his rising (Philippians 3:10) — and the fellowship of his sufferings necessarily involves suffering. Or as Elisabeth Elliot puts it,

To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact. (These Strange Ashes, 145)

We want to make sense of suffering, but it rarely makes sense. We want the puzzle to come together and look like something meaningful, but too often there are missing pieces. Our dreams and plans never include chemo or car wrecks or the confusion that comes from deep disappointments and unexpected detours. My pastor often says, “God is calling us to follow him, and he rarely uses his turn signals.” So, we must follow closely and trust the lead and the love of the Shepherd with scars on his hands, who has already gone ahead of us into the darkness to crush Death to death.

3. Remember We Have a Great Savior

Our ultimate and only hope is in our great Savior. Finishing our days well — and our lives — is not about our grit or goodness, the length of our résumé, or the strength of our bodies and abilities. Paul’s letter to the Philippians was written from prison in Rome, and perhaps as his beloved Philippians read the letter, they remembered when Paul first came to their city and his preaching landed him in jail there. What happened in that Philippian cell was one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Paul’s missionary journeys:

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them, and suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken. And immediately all the doors were opened, and everyone’s bonds were unfastened. (Acts 16:25–26)

But as Paul writes this letter, months — perhaps years — have passed behind bars. There are no dramatic conversions, no midnight hymn sings, no earth-shaking, shackle-breaking deliverances. Far from his usual life in motion, Paul is chained and cannot walk out of his door. When darkness fell over that prison cell night after night, what hope could he possibly have that his life still made a difference? Paul tells us he labored on in hope “because Christ Jesus has made me his own.” So, from his four walls, he was still running hard toward Christ — straining, reaching, wanting to know him and make him known more and more, pressing “toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12, 14).

John Newton understood this, imprisoned behind his own bars of failing health. Though he had preached thousands of sermons and wrote hundreds of hymns, as his sight, hearing, and strength were fading, he summed up his situation in a sentence:

My memory is nearly gone; but I remember two things: that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour. (Wise Counsel, 401)

Newton’s body was failing, but his hope wasn’t. It was still as strong as when he penned this hymn in the early years of his ministry.

Rejoice, believer, in the Lord,Who makes your cause His own;The hope that’s built upon His WordCan ne’er be overthrown.

Though many foes beset your road,And feeble is your arm,Your life is hid with Christ in God,Beyond the reach of harm.

Weak as you are, you shall not faint,Or fainting, shall not die;Jesus, the strength of every saint,Will aid you from on high.

Christ is the one through whom and for whom we finish well. He is the one who gives the endurance we need, the joy we have, the cross we bear, and the hope we embrace until faith becomes sight.

The kingdoms and governments of this world have frontiers, which must not be crossed, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ knows no frontier. It never has been kept within bounds.

More than thirty years ago, in the early years of my ministry, I walked from a Berlin train station down a wide chasm that snaked through the city. Until recently, it had been “No Man’s Land.” But now the mines and barbed wire were cleared, and the Berlin Wall lay in heaps. The Iron Curtain was collapsing, mapmakers were busy redrawing borders, and new flags were being stitched.

During these first forays into Eastern Europe, I often laughed in disbelief at the freedom and ironic opportunities for the church. I recall how we published gospel tracts in Moscow using the now-idle presses of the Communist newspaper Pravda (Russian for “Truth”). Pravda had published lies and smeared Soviet Christians for years — but now the presses were turning out the truth of the gospel!

I remember standing in Berlin at what had been the epicenter of the Iron Curtain. Tens of thousands of Christians on both sides of the East-West divide had tried every kind of way to get the gospel over and around and under this wall, but God saw fit to simply tear it down. I fished out a large chunk from the rubble and tucked it into my backpack.

Today, as I pen these lines, the old souvenir sits on a shelf before me. It is a constant reminder of Samuel Zwemer’s words — words that have shaped my thinking, my prayer life, and my expectations in all the years since I stood in the debris of the Wall. Zwemer, a pioneer missionary to Arabia, wrote, “The kingdoms and governments of this world have frontiers, which must not be crossed, but the Gospel of Jesus Christ knows no frontier. It never has been kept within bounds.”

In a few lines, Zwemer captures the power and progress of the gospel and the unmatched authority of our risen King.

No Lines

Most world maps are covered with lines and colors that define country borders — about two hundred countries in the world. The number of nations has quadrupled in the last century. Our maps and our world are filled with lines. But if we could see a map of Christ’s kingdom, there would be no lines, for the citizens of this country are ransomed from every tribe and language and people and nation.

Zwemer captures this power and progress of the gospel to cross every kind of barrier — geographic, ethnic, political, religious. The gospel cannot be contained because it is not a man-made work. It is a Christ-made work. He builds his church in every place to the ends of the world.

“Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus.”

Neither the gates of hell nor the borders of the most God-hating regimes on earth can prevail against Jesus. No countries are closed to Christ. They may be closed to us — either because we can’t get a visa or because our passport is the “kiss-of-death” for gaining entry — but Jesus has never been dependent on our access or resources to accomplish his mission.

Let me give you an example of this border-crossing, gates-of-hell-shattering gospel with what might be the least impressive missionary story you’ve ever read.

Unlikely Missionary

In 1995, a poor farmer named Marah with his wife and child crossed the border of Vietnam into Cambodia. They were driven by hunger and came in search of work. They were Jarai.

Despite being a marginalized minority, the Jarai were a strong and proud people who had long held tenaciously to their hill country lands in central Vietnam. When South Vietnam fell to the Communists, the Jarai lost everything — but the one single thing that Hanoi couldn’t crush or confiscate was the Jarai church. The gospel had first been sown among the Jarai by missionaries during the war. Although numbering just a few hundred believers, after their defeat, God sent a great awakening among the Jarai of Vietnam — and tens of thousands turned to him. One of them was Marah.

This was no easy crossing for this poor family. The Cambodian borderland was known for its minefields and renegade Khmer Rouge soldiers. But hunger and hope are powerful motivators, and Marah knew Jarai people lived in Cambodia. These ethnic cousins, long divided by political and geographic boundaries, shared a common language; so he hoped to find work. But unlike the Jarai of Vietnam, these Jarai had never been reached with the gospel.

Gossip the Gospel

At the village of Som Trawk, Marah looked for work — and he told them about Jesus. Two or three Jarai believed through Marah’s witness. They were the first drops before a downpour. As it was said of first-century Christians, the Jarai of Cambodia “gossiped the gospel” from house to house; and believers numbered over a thousand within a year.

As I said, this is an unimpressive missionary story. No one enacted a grand strategy for reaching the unreached people group: no planning retreats, no funding, no planeloads of short-termers. An unlikely but willing witness simply spoke the name of Jesus to people from an unbroken line of animists and demon worshipers, and the prison bars of their darkness were snapped like a stick by the God who raises the dead. He is the God who “chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Corinthians 1:28–29).

The story doesn’t stop there. Twenty years after Marah walked into Som Trawk, I worshiped there with a thriving church. The Jarai have planted other churches and they have also taken the gospel to other people groups in the region. They even began praying and planning to take this every-tribe gospel across the border into Laos.

King of Impossible Places

Zwemer’s observation that the gospel of Jesus Christ “never has been kept within bounds” is anchored in our Lord’s sovereign rule, for he has “all authority in heaven and on earth” (Matthew 28:18). It is upon this commanding truth that he calls and sends his servants to go and cross cultures and continents to the ends of the earth with his unbound, unhindered gospel.

However, though the gospel is unhindered, its messengers are not. There will be hardships and setbacks. There will be closed doors. But on this point, Zwemer wrote, “Opportunism is not the final word in missions. The open door beckons; the closed door challenges him who has the right to enter.”

“Our King is king over the hard and the impossible places.”

Our King is king over the hard and the impossible places. His saving work is not stopped by borders and bricks and barbed wire. His messengers are to follow him there, too, because in his name they have the right to enter. Whether through a lifetime of faithful ministry or the witness of an untimely grave, the gospel will advance in those places.

Samuel Zwemer’s confidence that the gospel never has been kept within bounds was not crafted in the emotions of a moment but honed in one of the hardest, most neglected places on the planet: Arabia. Today there are still many kingdoms and governments with borders which “must not be crossed.” But no wall made by the hand or heart of man is a match for the King with scars in his hands. His servants, ransomed from many nations, continue to reach the nations with his unbound gospel.