Our Purpose at Any Age

It's been so long since I've posted. So much has happened in that time but it would take so long to go into all of it. Anyway, I was asked to teach this week and next week at a Bible study I'm currently attending because the usual facilitator is on vacation. The ladies in this group are all older than I am and, most, by 20 years or so. They are darling, precious saints who have walked with Him for a very long time and have been students of His Word for a very long time. So, after praying and seeking Him as to what to teach this week (which is now past), here is what I put together. It's a little lengthy for a post, but our study time is usually about an hour. 

I know our Lord can do anything, yet I sometimes look at my life and feel fruitless. I don’t necessarily want to blame it on age, yet that seems to become a greater factor as I get older. It also causes me to return to an interaction I had with the Lord about four or five years ago.

I had gone with a friend to RavenCrest Chalet which is a Bible school and retreat center in Estes Park, CO. Every year they have a teaching time for women only. (It used to be a week, but they’ve since shortened it to just a weekend). At the beginning of the week, they gave each of us a book with suggested readings for each morning to prepare us for that day’s teaching. As I was reading this one morning, the Lord took me to Romans 12:1 and 2. Now, I had known this verse for years, but always focused on the part that says, “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Now, prior to this week, for quite some time, I’d been asking the Lord to just take me home. I wasn’t in great distress or trial, but just weary of all the sin in this world and in my own life as well. Well, as I reviewed these two verses on that morning, the Lord got His laser pointer out and drew my attention to the part that says, “present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice” and pointed out to me that I couldn’t do that if I wasn’t here! Good point, eh? Then He reminded me of how He prepared John the Baptist 30 years for a six-month ministry. He then asked me, “What if the last six months of your life are the main reason I put you here and you keep asking Me to take you home before then?” Then He quite clearly said to me, “Quit asking.” Wow! It was one of the times in my life when I heard Him so clearly, I never doubted it was Him!

And, interestingly, the most puzzling aspect of John’s ministry was that he had any audience at all. What was it that compelled residents of Jerusalem to leave the comfort of home to venture miles into the Judean desert to hear John? Some may puzzle as to why people brave the traffic and the sweltering afternoon heat to watch the Dallas Cowboys. But these people poured out in multitudes, miles into the wilderness to listen to John preach. It would not be stretching the truth to say that John’s sermons were more scorching than the blistering Judean sun. And let us remember that John is never reported to have performed so much as one miracle. Even Herod himself was strangely attracted to his preaching.

So many things here on earth make no sense to us and old age with its accompanying afflictions and ailments is often one of them. Ezekiel 37:3 says, “”He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.”” In other words, rather than making up a hopefully correct answer to a question to which he clearly did NOT know the answer, Ezekiel humbly gave the right answer…“O Lord God, You know.”

There is a portion of a book I’d like to insert here. The book is “Hinds’ Feet on High Places” by Hannah Hurnard.

Sometimes the Shepherd and Much-Afraid walked over patches of thousands of tiny little pink or mauve blossoms, each minutely small and yet all together forming a brilliant carpet, far richer than any seen in a king’s palace.

Once the Shepherd stooped and touched the flowers gently with his fingers, then said to Much-Afraid with a smile, “Humble yourself, and you will find that Love is spreading a carpet of flowers beneath your feet.”

Much-Afraid looked at him earnestly. “I have often wondered about the wild flowers,” she said. “It does seem strange that such unnumbered multitudes should bloom in the wild places of the earth where perhaps nobody ever sees them and the goats and the cattle can walk over them and crush them to death. They have so much beauty and sweetness to give and no one on whom to lavish it, nor who will even appreciate it.”

The look the Shepherd turned on her was very beautiful. “Nothing my Father and I have made is ever wasted,” he said quietly, “and the little wild flowers have a wonderful lesson to teach. They offer themselves so sweetly and confidently and willingly, even if it seems that there is no one to appreciate them. Just as though they sang a joyous little song to themselves, that it is so happy to love, even though one is not loved in return.

“I must tell you a great truth, Much-Afraid, which only the few understand. All the fairest beauties in the human soul, its greatest victories, and it most splendid achievements are always those which no one else know anything about, or can only dimly guess at. Every inner response of the human heart to Love and every conquest over self-love is a new flower on the tree of Love.

“Many a quiet, ordinary, and hidden life, unknown to the world is a veritable garden in which Love’s flowers and fruits have come to such perfection that it is a place of delight where the King of Love himself walks and rejoices with his friends. Some of my servants have indeed won great visible victories and are rightly loved and reverenced by other men, but always their greatest victories are like the wild flowers, those which no one knows about. Learn this lesson now, down here in the valley, Much-Afraid, and when you get to the steep places of the mountains it will comfort you.”

 I must admit that I’ve often wondered why so many of our brothers and sisters all over the world must endure such deprivation, suffering and torture. What could possibly be the purpose? How does this bring glory to Him? How do they keep the faith in these conditions day after day, week after week, year after year? What about those who suffer with chronic physical ailments for years or those born with severe handicaps?   Let us go back to Ezekiel and say, “O Lord God, You know.” 

Here is another excerpt from a message given by Joni Eareckson Tada in 2008.

When He cometh, when He cometh to make up His jewels,
All His jewels, precious jewels His loved and his own.
Like the stars in the morning His bright crown adorning,
We will shine in His beauty bright gems for His crown.

We used to sing that song—a Sunday school song it was—and the Bible talks about this very thing, glittering, dazzling, glorious. Malachi chapter 3, verse 16 describes how the Lord has a book in which all the names of those who love Him are written down. (Then those who feared the Lord spoke to one another, and the Lord gave attention and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before Him for those who fear the Lord and who esteem His name.) And He calls these people His jewels. So how do we become jewels that glitter, and I mean really shine?

Well, I don’t think you ladies, this group, are into “bling.” But I know if I want a rock, let’s say my diamond wedding ring, to dazzle, I’ll ask my “get-up” girl in the morning to take my toothbrush and scrub my ring.

A real stone like this one can take a good scrubbing. Jewelry is not as delicate as we think. So God gets out His toothbrush and says in Zechariah chapter 13, verse 9, “I will refine them like silver, and I will test them like gold.”

That’s me. What can I say? I long, I desire, I want to be a jewel that does not cringe if God chooses to give my soul a hard scrubbing every now and then.

Now, I’m not glorifying the suffering it takes to polish my faith. But ladies, I am glorifying the God whose image is reflected on the surface of any smile, my smile, that might be hard fought for through pain or problems. If you want God’s glory to be your shine, girls, it will be on His terms. His glory will be the glow of His godliness in your life, His patience, and perseverance.

You know, this whole lesson was brought home to me through a special pair of earrings I have. They were gracing the ears of my girlfriend, Anne, who is one of our board members at Joni and Friends.

Her husband owns a couple of Mercedes dealerships back in Nashville. Anyway, we were at the registration desk of the hotel after the board meeting, and I just looked up at her and said, “Oh, Anne, what beautiful earrings you’re wearing!” To which she immediately began taking them off, and she put them on my ears. I said, “No, no, wait a minute!” I couldn’t protest very hard; my hands don’t work, “Oh, no, no, please don’t give me your earrings.”

Well, to put it shortly here, these earrings became my absolute favorites for one thing. They were precious because my friend, Anne, gave them to me. And oh, my goodness, they were $800 or $900 gold earrings! I couldn’t believe it.

I wore them all the time. In fact, I was wearing them at work, and down the hallway from where we are here is my office. I was leaning up against the telephone receiver. Now, my telephone, because it’s handicap equipped, is hooked to a gooseneck receiver and the receiver rests against my ear.

So I’m leaning against the receiver, talking, and all of a sudden, I feel the earring drop. But I keep talking, because I know when I’m finished, I’ll back up and find the earring on the floor or on my lap. Well, I did just that. I backed up my wheelchair, and it wasn’t on the floor, and so I kept wheeling around looking for it everywhere. I couldn’t see it.

I wheeled toward my office door to yell for my secretary Francie to come and help me find this earring on the floor, and as I wheeled I heard this, “Clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk, clunk-clunk.” I had impaled this gold earring on the tire of my wheelchair. I felt awful. I mean, these were expensive earrings. So Francie got down on her knees and she plucked the earring off of my tire.

It was, ladies, a mangled mess. I was devastated. Well, that weekend I took the set of earrings to a local jeweler at the mall, and I put the set right there on the counter and said to the jeweler, “Sir, can you please make this mangled earring right here look like this really nice earring here?”

And he rubbed his chin, and he looked at them, and he said, “Well, lady, I can’t make that one look like this one, but I can make this one look like that one!” I couldn’t believe it! I said, “Sir, no, I mean, these are good earrings! These are really expensive!” “Sweetheart,” he said, “don’t worry. I’m an expert at doing this.”

So there he goes in the back with my earrings, and I hear this, “Bang, bang, bang, bang.” When he came out, I couldn’t believe it. The earrings were beautiful.

I mean, because they had so many more crinkles and bends and cracks in them now, they really reflected the light so much more beautifully. Those earrings were never the same. Those earrings were changed into a different shape, and believe me, they are all the better for the battering.

In fact, I’m wearing them right here. I usually don’t wear earrings this big, unless I’m in Texas, but I thought I’d wear them today just to show you these earrings are unique. Like I said, they catch the light in a way that they never did before. They are unlike any other piece of jewelry I have, and that makes them all the more precious.

David Jeremiah recently said this quote about Moses:  God spent the first 40 years of his life teaching him he was somebody, the second 40 years of his life teaching him he was nobody and the third 40 years of his life teaching him that God can make a nobody a somebody.

Psalm 57:2 says, “I will cry to God Most High, To God who accomplishes all things for me” and Ps 138:8 says, “The Lord will accomplish what concerns me.” Isn’t it great that it doesn’t say this only applies to those who are young?

Ps 92:14 ~ They will still yield fruit in old age; They shall be full of sap and very green. And you all are!