A Birthday Message From A Senior Citizen

Recently I turned 66 years of age, one of the eldest members of the TBL writing team. According to the world’s system I am retired, but God has much more for me to do. I am just getting started on the God-given dream He has for me. My family members have a history of living into their nineties, so I figure that I, too, by God’s grace, could live that long. That is a long time still, another 25 or 30 years, but it will go by faster than I will realize. My life on earth will be over. That’s it! So, I must make the most of the last third of my life. Much can be done in that time to accomplish God’s mission for me.

Several years ago when I was called to a writing and speaking ministry, God gave me a passage of scripture that I believe was meant for me. I mean, in the course of my Bible reading it stuck out like God was saying, “This is my mission for you.” It is found in Psalm 71:17-18, and 78:6-7. “O God, you have taught me from my youth; and I still declare your wondrous deeds. And even when I am old and gray, O God, do not forsake me, until I declare your strength to this generation, your power to all who are to come…that the generation to come might know, even the children yet to be born, that they might arise and tell them to their children, that they should put their confidence in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.”

This is what I plan to be doing the rest of my days unless God changes His plans. I am thinking where the ministry will be in 10, 20, or 30 years! That doesn’t mean that I will not have any adventure or travel. What it does mean is that I will continue to have a vision to get up in the morning. I know my purpose-why I am here. I am not retiring; I am recharging to soar to new heights. My life verse is Ephesians 3:20, “Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us.”

It is my prayer that God will put my life to the best use in the time I have left. He knows how my writing and speaking can do the most good for His glory. He knows the lives it can touch. When I bow before His presence I want to know that what I did on earth was what He designed me to do. I want to finish strong!

As I look back over my 66 years, I have seen God’s love and grace continually in my life. I was born when I was, for a purpose, for such a time as this, and at a time when I get the special treat of seeing end times prophecy unfold before my eyes. My gratitude goes to God, not just for His grace, but for my eternal salvation. I am saved not because of myself, but in spite of myself.

This is my moment in history to give back to God by allowing Him to use my life in the ways He knows best, to not only fulfill His purpose and divinely-directed call upon my life, but to lead others into His grace and love. I will do that until I am taken out of the world through physical death or by supernatural transformation from mortality to immortality “in the twinkling of an eye”(I Corinthians 15:22-23), and am “caught up to meet the Lord in the air”(I Thessalonians 4:17), in what some Christians refer to as the rapture of the Church.

The next 25-30 years(actually, I truly believe Jesus will come back before then), will be spent living out the words of I Corinthians 15:58. “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.”

Retiring? No way! There is much work to be done to build God’s Kingdom on this earth.

What do you believe is God’s special mission for you, that will give you a vision for the remainder of your days?