Dear People Who Keep Company With God,
Another year older and I think I am getting back some of the capacity for wonder that I had as a child. I am seeing more and more things that as a younger man that I looked at as common, but now they stir in me a sense of intrigue. So the older I get the more I realize how little I really know. This applies especially to God and His kingdom and it is so liberating. God just keeps getting bigger and bigger. In this life we get to age and I think the way we age is important.
God has set eternity in the heart of man (Eccl. 3:11), so in terms of our inner man we are eternally young. Our physical body does not necessarily cooperate with our inner youth, and we do have to make adjustments for our body, but we must be careful to not become old in our souls. We can’t just retire in place, but rather, be renewed in our inward man (2 Cor. 4:16).
Man’s tendency is to always prefer the old wine, the old moves of God, over the new moves of God (Luke 5:39). So it is vital that older generations dive head first into what God is currently doing because it births the dreams of God in our heart (Acts 2:19), and those dreams empower us to stay young at heart.
C.S. Lewis hit on this when he said, “The most important difference between Christianity and all other religions (is that) in Christianity God is not a static thing… but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life…”
A sign of growing old in your heart is your experience in God is becoming more and more static. All your glory stories are from years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I love the glory stories of years ago, but if that is all I have then I have drifted from the “dynamic, pulsating activity” of life in the Spirit.
One of Jesus’ parables addresses the fact that in the kingdom there is both the old and new. Jesus tells us that those who have been trained for the kingdom are able to bring forth treasures both new and old (Matt. 13:52). We are supposed to have both new and old treasures, but that only happens if we are currently following Him. It is those who are currently and actively involved with life in the kingdom that can bring forth new treasures along with the old. Those who WERE at one time involved with life in the kingdom are only able to bring forth the old treasures.
The bottom line is we can’t depend upon past experiences for our present standing with the Lord. Just because we have experience in the Lord and He has moved through us in the past is not enough to equip us for the present day.
The moves of God connect the generations and this also enables us to stay young at heart. The Promise of the Father ignites the heart of the older generation to dream dreams and the younger generation to have visions (Acts 2:19). In other words, it is a shared experience where the generations have a common understanding and thus shared testimony and mission.
The song writer and poet Ani DiFranco gave some great advice on aging that I will leave with you:
“Every day is a door leading back to the core
Yes, old age will distill you
And if you’re this full of bitterness now
Some day it will just fill you
When you sit right down in the middle of yourself
You’re gonna wanna have a comfortable chair
So renovate your soul before you get too old
Cuz you’re gonna be housebound there”
Many Blessings, BW