When You Keep Starting Things and Not Finishing Them

Every summer, new cadets arrive at West Point for

a training so brutal, they simply call it beast barracks.

Some of the most talented young people in the country walk in,

and a lot of them do not make it to the end. A psychologist,

Angela Duckworth, wanted to know why. She had the cadets' test

scores and their fitness numbers in front of her. She figured the

strongest and smartest would be the one still standing when it

was over.

she had measured told her who would finish. The answer turned

out to be something she almost missed. We'll come back to what

she found, but first,

welcome to Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. I'm Bart Leger. I

know a little bit about from my own life. I went to college

right out of high school, and I didn't go back for the second

year. Quit is the word for A few years went by before I went back,

and that time was different. I put everything I had into it,

and I kept going. Grad school after that, then a Ph. D. What

made the difference? What changed was that the second time,

I meant it. Some Christians have noticed a pattern in themselves.

They start with excitement, a new project, or a new commitment

at church. For a few weeks, it's the best thing going. Then

somewhere, maybe around week six, the momentum runs out. It stops

being fun, and the thing stays half done while you're already

getting interested in something else. What wears on you is the

accumulation. One unfinished thing is nothing. Eleven of them

start to feel like a character flaw. Solomon knew all about

this. Here's Ecclesiastes 7, verse 8. Finishing is better

than starting. Patience is better than pride. Look at what

he says. Finishing is all about patience. Starting? Mostly about

pride. The second sometimes stings a little. Solomon sets

starting next to pride. And there's something to that, I

believe. The start is where you get to picture yourself finished.

You see the completing thing in your head, and you get a little

of the feeling of having done it before you've done any of it.

Starts are cheap. A start costs you an afternoon, maybe in a

trip to the store. A finish costs you the 90 days in the

middle when nobody's watching, and it stopped being interesting

a long time ago. So ask God for two things, and understand that

there are two different requests. The first is the grace to finish

what you start. That's endurance. The willingness to keep going

after the feeling that got you started is long gone. Nobody

finishes anything on the strength of the excitement they

had in week one. The second request gets less attention, and

it may be the one you need more. Ask for the wisdom to know

what's important enough to start in the first place. Here's why

that's important. Some of your unfinished things were never

yours to begin. You started them because somebody asked you, or

because starting felt productive that week. A man who starts six

things and finishes one has a discernment problem as much as

an endurance problem. Fewer better chosen. Then stay with

them until they're done. What predicted who would make it came

down to one quality Duckworth called Grit, a blend of passion

and sheer endurance. The willingness to keep going long

after the excitement wore off. The cadets who finished were the

ones who refused to quit when it stopped being fun, gifted or not.

Duckworth spent the rest of her career showing the same thing in

classrooms and workplaces. Starting takes a spark.

Finishing takes grit. Look at what she had been measuring.

Test scores and fitness numbers, the things you would put on an

application. Those tell you what a person is able to do. They

tell you nothing about whether he will still be standing on day

39. That difference is where most of our half-finished things

live. Here's the encouraging part. Grit gets built the same

way every time by finishing something small, then finishing

the next thing after it, and so on and so on. Here's today's

challenge. Pick the smallest, unfinished thing you have, the

one that would take you maybe an hour. Finish it today before you

go to bed. Then look at the rest of that list and pick one thing

to quit on purpose. Take it off your list. is a different act

from letting it die of neglect, and it clears room for what

matters. And pray the second prayer. God, show me what you

would have me start and what you would have me leave alone.

Father, finish what you began. Everything you have ever started,

you have brought all the way to completion. We are not built

that way, and you know it better than we do. For everybody

listening who is looking at a pile of things they started and

walked away from, give them the endurance to finish the next one,

and give them the wisdom to start fewer things and to start

the right ones. In Jesus' name, amen. If this episode encouraged

you today, would you share it with someone who might need to

hear it? Just go to DailyDevotionsForBusyLives.com

slash 339 and copy the link. It only takes a second, and it

might make a real difference in someone's day. Thanks for

joining me on Daily Devotions for Busy Lives. Remember,

finishing is better than starting, and Solomon set

patience right next to it on purpose. Finish one small thing

today and quit one on purpose. Come back next time for more

encouragement to help you live grounded in God's truth. Until

then, God bless and have a great day.