Have you noticed that just before a life-altering event takes place we have no idea our lives are about to change in a dramatic fashion? Life-transition, loss, natural disasters or an unexpected blessing all have the ability to alter our current reality.

Every human is always living in a “just before” moment. We are offered two ways of interpreting what is happening when something significant and out of our control takes place – dread or expectation. We cannot prevent the events of life, but we can choose how we will respond to them. 

Every marriage will have a time when the “just before” becomes a painful reality. The same is true with children, careers, hopes, and dreams. The only constant in all of this is the love of Jesus. There is no “just before” with Him. He is the great I AM, the One without beginning or end who never leaves us or forsakes us no matter what life throws at us.

When I studied leadership theory, one study filled with trusted and wise research, studied the lives of thousands of people in many different life roles. The results of the research revealed two elements were present in the lives of the people who finished well. Those two things were a growing intimacy with God throughout the span of their life and they were making the ultimate contribution into God’s Kingdom for which they had been created and called to make. 

The people in the study who finished well had their own experiences of joy and sorrow when a “just before” moment entered their life. Those events were never given a place to become strong enough to overpower their will and the love of God. In the tens of thousands who where eventually studied, only 30% finished well. 

Each of us lives in a moment just before something happens. This is part of being a human walking on planet Earth. Never live in a debilitating fear of these arrivals. Cultivate a deepening intimacy with God and choose to re-engage your mission each day no matter what transpires and in the end, you will finish well.