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St. Paul School of Leadership & Discipleship Lesson 214 - HOW TO GROW OLD SERVING OTHERS (God's Plans and Promises for You from the Book of Isaiah) By Frank Eiklor and the Shalom Team
"Even to your old age, I am He, and even to gray hairs I will carry you! I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you." Isaiah 46:4 To grasp God's love for Israel is to begin to comprehend His love for you and me. How many times Israel broke his heart! Limited Him! Compromised His Word! Made foolish and stupid choices! Just like us! Yet here is our lovely God promising to still be caring into their old age and gray hairs; promising to bear, carry and deliver them. Now here I am—a senior citizen—with gray hairs multiplying and wrinkles deepening— counting on the Lord to keep me faithful to the end and to complete His three-fold promise to bear, carry and deliver me. I wish the same for you; a life where you and I keep stepping out on faith to reach and teach the younger generation to choose only the Lord. If we do our part to obey the Lord, He will do His part to bear us up through every test and temptation, to carry us through every storm and to deliver us from every devious device of the devil. May we grow older serving others, not old serving ourselves. One child wrote of his grandparents: "We always used to spend the holidays with Grandma and Grandpa. They used to live here in a big brick house, but Grandpa got retarded and they moved to Arizona. Now they live in a place with other retarded people. They ride around on big tricycles and wear nametags because they don't know who they are anymore. They go to a building called a wrecked center and play games and do exercises. At their gate, there is a doll house with a little old man watching all day, so nobody can escape. Sometimes they sneak out and go cruising in their golf carts. They just eat out - the same thing every night - early birds. Grandma says Grandpa worked hard to earn his retardment and that someday I can be retarded, too. When I earn my retardment I want to be the man in the doll house. Then I will let people out so that they can visit their grandchildren." Let's be more than "retarded" to the youngest generation. Let's be their examples of how great God is, not how good our golf game is. My prayer: "As the gray hairs and wrinkles will surely deepen, let my life so deepen in You, Lord, that I will be an example of loving You to my last breath." "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ" (I Corinthians 11:1)
Related Articles · More Articles Jesus said many would come in His name and deceive the hearts of the simple, sinful and proud. Eastern mysticism and meditation is a big thing in the gullible West. And one day a “world leader” will appear on the scene with the persuasion of a god and the heart of a devil. Jesus warns His children to know the Scriptures, live in obedience to the Father’s will, and stay alert to the signs of the times. They laugh no more. Now God’s description of how He will destroy the old earth and create a
new one makes perfect sense. The splitting of the atom turned many skeptics into believers.
After all, look what man himself is capable of doing with the atom and hydrogen bombs. Now
the fear is that nuclear weapons are being placed in the hands of madmen who wish to annihilate
their enemies. God has blessed man with incredible genius. We stand in awe as we watch men and women in a room full of computers and high-tech instruments guiding and landing spacecraft on distant planets. At that moment, we appear invincible. But then a mammoth tornado comes—or a terrifying hurricane—or rains that flood whole regions and never listen to our shouts to “Stop!”—or the shake that removes from under our feet any confidence or pride we carry, and leaves us numb with hardly enough breath to even utter the paralyzing word “EARTHQUAKE!”. And man is helpless in the face of it all! |
