The Caleb Legacy—Starting Strong, Finishing Well
with Jamie Holden

-As Men of God we need to not only Start Strong, but Finish Well.

-We cannot let our passion for God wane. We need to keep the Eye Of The Tiger!

-We must be grateful to God for our freedom. Out of that gratitude, we must be willing to serve God wholeheartedly. Our life’s mission, a legacy we should be pursuing, is to serve God wholeheartedly and not going back to our old life.

Question: Why, when 12 men left on the same mission, saw the same thing, went to the same places, and encountered the same events, did ten of them cause a total rebellion and two of them totally believe God? What was the difference?
They all came from the same place--Egypt.
They all lived in the same circumstances.
They all witnessed the same miracles as they went toward the Promised Land.
They all saw the Red Sea split.
Every one of them ate the manna.

Answer:
And My servant Caleb, because there is another spirit in him, and he is fully following Me, I shall bring him into the land into which he has gone, and his seed shall possess it.

Caleb had a personal relationship with God. He was attentive to the things of God. The other men had a surface relationship with God. God met their needs and that was all they really wanted from Him. They didn’t take the initiative to develop and mature in God. They weren’t grateful to God for His blessings. They thought they deserved everything God did for them because they were God’s chosen people. Caleb saw it as God being merciful.

-Caleb isn’t mentioned in the Bible for over 40 years of time. However, even as an 85 year old man, he was on fire for God. He started strong as a young man, and he finished well!

1. Caleb refused to return to his old life.
We must commit to never return to our life of sin.

2. Caleb learned how to stop living like a slave and to live like a free man.
We need to learn how to live free of our sins and the slavery of bondages in our lives. We need to live as God’s son’s, not Egypt’s slaves.

3. Caleb defeated the enemies keeping him from his Promised Land.
At the Age of 85, Caleb strapped on his sword an took what was rightfully his. We need to do the same. This will be a lifelong pursuit. The closer we get to God, the more we will see our sinful tendencies. As we see these tendencies and properly destroy them, we will be one step further from our old life of captivity to sin. Like Caleb, we do not have to return to our old life again.

4. Caleb provided spiritually for his family, ensuring their ownership of their inheritance.

He took care of his family and he left his daughter a land that was free from enemies.

Caleb’s life should inspire all of us to completely destroy the enemies and sin in our life. If we do this in our lives, our children will have a better understanding of what to be aware of in their lives and what pitfalls to avoid since the generational tendencies are inherited.

Conclusion:
We can all be known as men of wholehearted devotion to God. With wholehearted devotion, we will never go back to our former bondage. We won’t desire sin. We will leave the past and press on to what God has for each of us. We will completely drive out our enemies and defeat them. We will allow God to make us the men He wants us to be for our time in history. That is the Caleb legacy, becoming men wholeheartedly devoted to God, men who will NEVER return to our old way of life! We need to start strong, and finish well as we wholeheartedly serve God.