It's a good thing to start your walk with God well. It's a better thing to finish it well. Scripture gives us one man who lived out both halves of that sentence in a single lifetime — Solomon, son of David, the wisest king who ever lived.

God appeared to Solomon in a dream at Gibeon and said, "Ask for whatever you want me to give you." Of everything he could have requested — long life, riches, the defeat of his enemies — Solomon asked for a discerning heart to govern God's people well.

It pleased the Lord so deeply that He gave Solomon wisdom unmatched by any king before or since — plus the wealth and honor he never asked for. All Israel stood in awe of him. It was, by every measure, a slam dunk of a start.

Here's the part of Solomon's story that doesn't make it onto the highlight reel. As he grew old, his many foreign wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was no longer fully devoted to the Lord. He built high places for false gods, right there in the land God had given him.

The same man who once asked for wisdom to distinguish right from wrong was now bowing to idols. The Lord became angry with Solomon for it, and the kingdom itself was torn away because of his drift. Solomon didn't lose his faith in one dramatic moment — he let it erode, one quiet compromise at a time.

Most of us don't walk away from God all at once either. We drift quietly, one unaddressed compromise at a time, while still looking, on the outside, like people who started strong. That's why Solomon later wrote, from hard-won experience, that "the end of a matter is better than its beginning."

God isn't asking you for a perfect beginning. He's asking you to keep walking with Him all the way to the end. He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion — but that promise is meant to be lived, not just believed. Every day is a chance to close the gap between how you started and how you're finishing.