Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Friday, December 29th.

It's not how you begin that matters, but how you run the race God has planned for you.

Today's podcast expands on that thought and helps you leave the past behind. for you How do you want to leave this life? What do you want to leave behind? Well certainly if you really and truly believe what oftentimes we say we believe the word of God, then as a believer you have no reason to fear death.

If you're living in sin, then you've got some reasons to be thinking seriously about your lifestyle and meeting the Lord.

If you are an unbeliever, that's the last thing that you want to happen to you,

and that is to die without Christ.

So I want to ask you this question.

If God were to call you die, I don't get into that preacher trying to scare me.

If I thought I could scare you into heaven, I would do it.

But I can't. But I can't but I can tell you the truth to say this you

need to take your life seriously you likewise need to take death seriously because you do not know when it's

going to happen and your fuzzy beliefs about God and death will not make a

bit of difference. It's crystal clear in the word of God that every single

one of us will give an account for the life that we've lived. And to live your life without

God, to be caught up in mere pleasure and materialism ends up by simply saying this.

God calls that kind of person a fool for living that kind of life.

So none of us want to end our life that way. So the question is,

how can we end our life well? So I want you to turn, if you will, to 2nd Timothy, and so if you will,

notice beginning in the sixth verse of this fourth chapter, Paul says,

for I am already being poured out as a drink offering and the time of my departure has come.

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, and I have kept the faith.

In the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me

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