Beloved of God and Believers in His Work for our Children,
With the Bible as our guide, we can face every challenge of aging: it’s a strong biblical grip on reality, while giving us His peace and joy in our latter years and God’s reason for keeping us here. We understand “Grace” and “Servanthood” as God’s ultimate joy in us! So God wants us to remember! Grace is God’s love; servanthood is the truecalling of all Christians. A servant will be greatest of all!
“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Ps. 90:12, NIV). Jesus said: “I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2, NIV). It’s been good to look back—to remember! While memory itself fades with our older years, I have discovered that the big events—serving the Lord Jesus Christ—do not fade, but grow stronger instead.
God actually does tell us to remember our life with Him: Deut. 8:2; Rev. 3:3, (NIV); Num. 15-40, (NKJV); Josh 1:13, (NKJV); I Chron. 16:12, (NKJV). Like God’s great servant, King David, we can say: (Ps. 63:6-8, NKJV)—this is our great comfort! Please believe it and above all DO IT, beloved of God. God is offering us peace! Faith that trusts God is true faith, without doubts.
Of course, God is the source of all knowledge, and the Creator/designer of our brain (memory chip, Ps. 103:14, NKJV, Jer. 31:34, NKJV). His Word is a display of His awesome power, in His own Words. God’s Word is alive! Jesus is the living Word: “All power is given unto me,” He said. “Sanctify them [believers] through thy Truth: thy Word is truth” (John 17; 17, KJV). It’s easy to see the “mysterious” power that the Word has—and what it imbues in us—and how it’s connected to Jesus’ other proclamations: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life: …” (John 14: 6, KJV).
The Word is the Truth; and the Word and the Truth are the power, given to us at the miraculous “New Birth” of the fallen human spirit and soul. The power continues to work in us, all our life (John 15:4, 5). These truths from God’s Word (the Bible) continuously reveal the “mystery” of how the “living word” (Jesus Christ)—alone—changes us physically and spiritually and ethereally, the intangible point of Grace (God’s love) and the physical, human (God-created) body. The “mystery” is all illustrated in the “new body” (resurrection) of our Lord Jesus Christ’s body—after our divine salvation from sin—through the living sacrifice of Jesus’ body and blood on the cruel, agonizing cross; His human blood, for life is in the blood: “…for the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:ll, KJV). “For without the shedding of blood there is no remission” (Heb. 9:22, KJV). That is: no casting away of sin, no forgiveness!
The penalty for Adam’s original sin is death, and carnality (inherited depravity). Everything in Scripture is tied back to the creation; the fall of man (Adam); the birth, life and cross of Jesus Christ (who is “the Word”). Every inspiration (to the Prophets and Apostles), was given to them by the third person of the Godhead: the Holy Spirit. Jesus was the creator; He is the living Word, now at the Father’s throne in Heaven, making intercession for our many ugly, selfish, pride-filled sins! “He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for thesins of the whole world” (I John 2:2, KJV).
That incredible man, Jesus Christ, was willing to become both God and man for our ugly sins. He is the one and only God of the universe; and yet He was willing to become a God-Man, a mysterious (to us) morphology of a spiritual Son of God to a material son of man, Jesus! Now remember, beloved, as you contemplate this apparent mystery: Jesus told us: “With men, this is impossible; but with God all things are possible” (Mt. 19:26, KJV).
The mystery of the “immaculate conception”—that is, how did Mary become pregnant without a husband’s seed—turns out to be no mystery at all. God who created in Adam the reproductive “seed” to generate life in his wife’s womb, through husband and wife intimacy, and that seed, we now know, is a special part of the blood of the man.
God, in His Word, told us: (“…God created manin His own image, [body, soul, Spirit], after our likeness [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit]”—The Divine Trinity of God’s Being—each functioning separately yet completely 100% One! “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him…” (Gen 1:26, 27, KJV).
Now, mankind “creates” his own children through the “seed” planting in his wife’s womb—his children are in their own human father’s “image,” much as we were, and are still, in God’s image, through Adam. God, the Creator, merely touched Mary and said “let it be,” and it was: God’s own creative power, a part of Himself (Father) and yielding up His own Son for sinful earthlings’ sins. His
own son, because He is the Father—and Jesus is the heavenly Father’s only begotten Son; begotten, or procreated by God the Father. Jesus, then, on his human side (Mary) can look at God the Father in heaven as his progenitor; while he would be the Father’s descendant (on the human side), or His progeny (offspring).
On Jesus’ “God the Son” side of the triune Godhead, Jesus is as fully God as he was fully man; with His divinity now fully restored, Jesus is once again given “all-power” as God the Son—and ONE with God the Father and God the Holy Ghost (Spirit). It seems certain we will all be very surprised when we “reign with Him in Heaven,” and have our Savior teach us knowledge we cannot know until then, knowledge too great for earthly man to know now (as the Bible puts it).
This we do know: “For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; butthen shall I know even as also I am known” (I Cor. 13:12, KJV). However, for now, many are in their last years—most often characterized “as old age.” They know their limitations and have faced physical loss of memory changes; but have joyously found that in their latter years they have such greatly fulfilling and rewarding lives. They were realistically and emotionally ready for the changes taking place in body and mind—and totally delighted to discover that, while reading their Bible, the spiritual life became a dynamic force in their life, and not only in their life, but in being a helper of other older lonelies and inactives. By establishing a personal Christian ministry of “servanthood,” life took on a new meaning, as never before. It is a gift of hope for others who had no one else. They could then, as brothers and sisters, help their friends.
Scripture is full of God’s recordings for us, many older Old Testament and New Testament lives that were useful, powerful and full of glory. Some were famous men, but most just ordinary people who obeyed God rather than listened to men. You and I can enjoy these ageing years and even do our greatest work on earth. Billy Graham, in his latest book, “Nearing Home,” (Thomas Nelson, 2011), listed many Bible characters whose greatest ministry, or act of ministry were performed in their last days. Moses was 120 years old when God rewarded him, when He told Moses to climb Mt. Pisgah, by Mt. Nebo. Moses’ successor, Joshua, served God until he was 110 years old. Noah was 500 years old when he began building the ark, as God instructed him to do. After Noah, Abraham was born—he was 75 years old when God chose him to serve Him. He was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born: “…in his old age at the very time God had promised him” (Gen. 21:2). These chosen men didn’t let old age and all its ills, pains, sorrows and insecurities that Satan attacked them with, take away the confidence that Godwas their strength, not just youth. “…Oh Lord my strength…” (Ps. 18:1, KJV). “The Lord is the strength of my life…” (Ps. 27:1, KJV). “…God is the strength of my heart…” (Ps. 73:25, KJV).
