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Aging with Purpose: Discovering God's Perspective on Aging Gracefully
93 Plays2 years ago
In today's episode, titled "Growing Old Gracefully," hosts Ridley Barron and Dan Sanchez dive deep into the topic of aging with grace and purpose. Ridley, drawing from a sermon he recently delivered on the life of Jacob, delves into the factors that contribute to growing old gracefully, such as perspective and priorities. They explore the challenges faced by many as they age, the disappointment from unfulfilled dreams, and the transformative power of aligning one's priorities with God's desires.
Timestamps:
[00:02:29] Jacob's perspective changes as he ages. Even as a child, older church members made a lasting impact.
[00:05:05] Flexible priorities reflect God's hand in life.
[00:09:37] "Aging gracefully, emotions, and church hurt."
[00:12:11] Older people mentoring younger believers in marriage.
[00:15:21] Christian counseling helps sort emotions, maintain relationships. Prayer is important for constant presence of God.
[00:19:47] Community of believers helps achieve first steps.
[00:23:30] Friendships help untangle life; forget the past.
[00:26:23] Corrie ten Boom's inspiring prayer-filled life.
Recommended
Transcript
Harold: A Model of Graceful Aging
00:00:00
Speaker
So I knew a man named Harold a couple of years ago. And he was 95 years old and still working on the college campus that I was also working on. And I had seen him around and he would drive this little shuttle cart around and help other people. It was like a missions organization where a bunch of retired ex-missionaries who had been part of this organization had then just retired there. Now some of them were still piddling around doing some stuff. And Harold was out in the shop.
00:00:29
Speaker
doing who knows what but one time i needed some help with this camera equipment piece this like metal thing you wrap around a camera and i couldn't get in a screw in the right place or something and i'm like man i need someone with that knows how to use a dremel to make this hole bigger on this thing i'm gonna go see harold and harry was 95 year old dude living his whole life for the lord and uh he was back there and he got his dremel out and you know he was a little
00:00:57
Speaker
Little slower, but he got the job done and he was just delightful And I just have this picture of harold in my head now and i've had the privilege of interacting with him in prayer and a few other places now Of a man who made it all the way to 95 and he died a year or two later But I was just a privilege to know him at the end of his life as someone who had grown old
00:01:17
Speaker
gracefully.
Podcast Introduction: Aging Gracefully with Ridley Barron
00:01:19
Speaker
So now I'm like excited as heck to like have this conversation with you Ridley because I'm someone who I'm probably maybe one of the few that actually thinks about this topic we're gonna dive into because I know growing old gracefully starts when you're younger. Yes, right. It starts when you're younger. So I'm thinking ahead of what that might be. So with
00:01:40
Speaker
With that, let's dive into it. I'm Dan Sanchez, and today I'm joined by Ridley Barron for our sermon slice series. This past Sunday, Ridley covered growing old gracefully in the Life of Joseph series about his father, Jacob, actually.
00:02:00
Speaker
And I wanted to dive deeper with Ridley under this topic from the sermon, because I think it's something that we should all be thinking about, even if we're as early as in our 20s.
How Aging Alters Perspectives: Jacob's Story
00:02:09
Speaker
It's something you can think about now, because I've come to some conclusions, but I first wanted to open it up to you to even figure out why you decided to go in this direction. Because there's so many different directions you can go on with the life of Joseph. So many different points to go on. What started you to get into this topic as one of the things you pulled out?
00:02:29
Speaker
So I think what initially as I was doing my study, there was a passing conversation in a commentary I was reading that talked about the change in perspective of Jacob's life as he got older, that you can kind of trace it in those last few chapters of Genesis.
00:02:43
Speaker
And it got me thinking back to my time growing up in the church. You mentioned in your friend Harold at 95 years old.
Aligning Priorities with Divine Desires
00:02:50
Speaker
And I was thinking about some of the older members of congregations that I was a part of, even as a child. Some of them had incredibly long lasting impacts on me just because of the nature of their character, their personality.
00:03:04
Speaker
Just even some of them, as I got older myself and began to recognize what happens to the human body as it changes and stuff like that, I would be more impressed by these older people who just continued to stay in the game, continued to stay engaged with life. Their personality never dropped off. They never checked out. They didn't let the word retirement describe their life.
Coping with Unmet Dreams Through Faith
00:03:30
Speaker
They let it describe their career, but they didn't let it describe their life.
00:03:34
Speaker
And kind of like what you're saying, I've thought about that, thought about that. And then as I came across that, I thought, okay, let's take a closer look at what happened to Jacob that made him who he was at the end of his life.
00:03:45
Speaker
So one of the questions I left the sermon with is what keeps people from actually growing old gracefully? Because we see it happen all the time. Some are graceful and are the kind of elders we want to become. And some, like you said in the sermon, are persnickety. But they don't get that way from nothing. Something's happening in order for them to become that kind of grumpy or maybe just pain-stricken person. Right.
00:04:14
Speaker
To me, it comes down to two words, perspective and priority. I'll start with the latter first. When our priorities come down to what we desire and what we seek for our lives, what happens as we age is those priorities get taken from us.
00:04:34
Speaker
You know, because many of us, if we're honest, our dream is we're going to retire at 45, travel the world, maybe have four kids, 17 grandkids, you know, a nice home to live in, that kind of stuff. Well, life is hard and life is real. And when those things don't line up with what we have said as a priority in our life, there's a, there's this confrontation between reality and dreams, and we get disappointed.
Character and Perspective: Lessons from Rick Warren
00:04:58
Speaker
maybe sometimes at ourselves that we didn't achieve those goals, maybe sometimes just with life in general. I think the difference is when we begin to truly set our priority as what God desires from our life, that's a constantly flexible thing.
00:05:14
Speaker
It's a constantly moving thing. For Jacob, going back to his story, what you see in Jacob's life is early on, he pretty much was that grouch we're talking about. He would be grumpy about, you know, look at what's happened in my life and look at all these things. But there came a point in his life where he was allowed to sit back and reflect, and I think his priority changed to go, okay, I can see how God's hand actually was working in this whole thing for me and for my children, and even for my legacy coming behind me.
00:05:44
Speaker
The first word I mentioned was perspective. And I think the kind of the two go hand in hand. As we live our lives on this planet, whose perspective are we going to take? Ours or gods? You mentioned Rick Warren before we came online here just a minute ago. Rick Warren's book Purpose Driven Life kind of radically changed my perspective on life a lot.
00:06:05
Speaker
It's not perfect, but it's a great book. That famous opening line, right? Yeah. It's not about you. It's not about you. It's kind of like the one thing I remember from that book, and if you only have one thing, it's that one line. I'm glad you said it because I read tons of books every year. That book, probably more than any other, has that phrase, that sentence emblazoned on my brain from where I read that. The second one
00:06:33
Speaker
that really stuck with me. I think it's in a later chapter. It's the beginning of a chapter. It's like chapter three or four though. He starts off by saying, this life is not about your comfort or your convenience. It's about your character. And man, I've thought about that many times.
00:06:49
Speaker
If my perspective is comfort and convenience, then what I'm going to do as a human being is I'm going to scratch and claw and fight to get what I think I deserve. But if it's about my character, then I realize that the only way that I have a character that I really want is by aligning it with the character of God.
00:07:07
Speaker
And so now suddenly I understand trials and tribulations and all the roadblocks of life. I see them as purposeful things that get me closer to the desire I have to be more like Christ Jesus.
Emotional Wounds and Aging: Impact and Healing
00:07:22
Speaker
And that changes our temperament altogether.
00:07:25
Speaker
Yeah, it causes us to be more appreciative and thankful. Or if we don't have the right expectations, and they get broken, and our dreams get dashed, or our perspectives are off, then it creates, I don't know what to call them, but like these wounds in your heart, that left unchecked, causes some of us to be a little bit more persnickety over time.
00:07:46
Speaker
I read an author described it really well once when it came to personality Actually, but I think this this kind of comes off as like something that happens more over time He said let me describe personality like this I once had my son who is playing a game of soccer in the backyard with his friends and Unfortunately, he stepped on a piece of glass
00:08:08
Speaker
So he came to me to help fix it. He's like, Papa Mike, he's like hobbling in like my foot hurts. He's like, well, there's a piece of glass in here. It's got to hurt more to take it out. You know, so he goes in with the tweezers and he flinches and doesn't want to pull it out. So then he's like, well, then don't take it out.
00:08:27
Speaker
He's like, okay, so what is this son goes back to go play soccer, but you got to believe this soccer playing skills went way down, right? He's now hobbling around trying to, you know, protect that wound in his foot.
00:08:40
Speaker
He's like, it's the same thing we do, except we have emotional wounds that happen to us over time, from missed expectations, from mean things people say to us, even from bad things, like things happen to us. We have a story in our head about why it happens to us. It may or may not be true. And then we just believe it. Like these bad beliefs sometimes lie straight from the devil and it causes us to change the way we behave. That change is what we call personality.
00:09:07
Speaker
Yes. Right? We become the way we are because of these hurts in our past and it becomes these like we get over time, it just becomes scar tissue. And I'm like, you know what, I bet that when that happens over decades, over some really big things to you, you know, you got some deaths in the family, some like, some big dreams that didn't happen, some big wounds, internal or from external, like, this is going to cause you to be, well, kind of like some of those bitter old people I've seen sometimes. Dang, how do I not become that?
00:09:37
Speaker
And I think, man, that is a great example, great story you just shared, because it's true. This is why, as you pointed out in the very beginning, this is something you have to start at an early age, because the longer you go on without thinking about aging gracefully, the longer you give your lifetime to build up those scars without dealing with emotions appropriately.
00:10:00
Speaker
I had a conversation with a dear friend of mine recently. They brought up that phrase that's really just driving me crazy these days where people talk about church hurt. And I said, I'm sorry, I don't take that as an excuse because if you're an adult who's growing in Christ, then churches don't hurt you. People hurt you. And as an responsible adult, you have to deal with those emotions.
00:10:23
Speaker
I've been in ministry now almost 39 years, Dan, since I started in as a student pastor. And I cannot tell you how many times people in the church have hurt my feelings because of things they said, things they did, things they didn't do. But God never gave me permission to discard his church and walk away. What he said is, learn from those lessons and just keep following me. Just keep following me. And I think that's one of the things that keeps you from aging gracefully is when you don't.
00:10:51
Speaker
We're just going to get hurt from any person, right? Marriage, kids, family, friends. It's just going to happen. Whenever you're hanging out with people, hurts are going to happen. It happens in church too, because guess what? That's where people are, right? Let's be honest. We've created our share of hurt. We've been the person who's caused it for people sometimes too. That's true.
00:11:13
Speaker
What do we actually do about it? These things happen. Even one other point is like these wounds happen to us and sometimes like we do it to ourselves or sometimes it happens to us. But I actually think there's one more thing and it's worth mentioning is that we have hidden sin in our life. Oh yeah. And I think causes us to become
00:11:31
Speaker
I don't know, closed off in our old age, or we believe things because of that, you know, the, the increase, like we were still in the church. We're still Christians, but we don't act. We don't, we're not faithful anymore in our old age because we've had sin we've been carrying for maybe decades hidden. And it's caused us to be, I don't know, pessimistic. Um, or we don't, we just don't do anything because we feel disqualified.
00:11:57
Speaker
And then sometimes I wonder if more men don't step in because of feeling disqualified for some hidden thing or maybe something big they did that they just never confessed. They don't have anything to do with it now. It hasn't been for decades, but they never confessed that, did they? That thing they did when they were 36, you know. And you bring up a great point from the sermon this past Sunday. We talked about a little bit about older people having a willingness to mentor younger believers.
00:12:20
Speaker
uh, specifically in the area of marriage, but in a whole lot of different ways. And I've had two different people since Sunday say, you know what, I've sought out mentors in my life. And the answer I get all the time is I don't feel qualified to do it. And that's exactly what you're talking about. You know, it's their past sin, their past failure. Maybe it's unconfessed. Maybe it's because they have chosen not to forgive themselves, but for some reason they feel like they're not qualified. And here's the irony of it.
00:12:47
Speaker
Dan Sanchez, who's committed sin and confessed it, he's much more qualified now to talk somebody through life than the one who's not addressed that sin issue. You're much more qualified to take somebody by the hand and say, let me show you where the
Community and Accountability in Healing
00:13:01
Speaker
minefield is. Let me help you avoid these parts in your life.
00:13:06
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm just thinking that these I'm trying to come up with a somewhat of a list of reasons why Why things or why people don't grow old gracefully and there's there's just a bunch of them What would you say we should do about it other than we just talked about confessing but what are some of the other things you should do about these wounds or these these sins or these these things that are
00:13:28
Speaker
Either, let's put it from two perspectives. What should you do about it now if you're in the younger stage? And then what do you do about it if it's already gone by and you're, I don't know, you're 72? I think that there's one really important key to all of this that can help eliminate a lot of these reasons that we've just given. And it's something that we have dismissed in the church, unfortunately, too much today. And it's the idea of accountability.
00:13:57
Speaker
When we have people who have permission in our lives to speak truth to us, they can help us see sin that we don't see. They can help us address bitterness that we haven't dealt with. They can change our perspective on things because they have a fresh perspective. They can help us evaluate priorities in our life.
00:14:18
Speaker
And then sometimes they just need to be the encouragement. The guy who sits, you know, sits you face to face and says, look, let me tell you something. You've got a lot to offer still. You still got life to give to people. Uh, don't, don't check yourself out of this game yet. When God's run done with you, he'll decide that, but you stay in the game until time. Unpack that a little bit more. What are some other things we can do?
00:14:37
Speaker
I feel like every week we come back to the reality of staying in the Word. The Word's always going to be an important encouragement. It's always going to be the checklist for our heart. Am I living a life that's righteous? If I'm not, what am I doing to confess sin and stay clean before God? The reminder that we need Jesus to be more effective in our lives.
00:14:56
Speaker
Coming back to scripture is always very, very important. This is one that most people don't think about today because I think we get intimidated by the thought or the idea. I am a strong supporter of Christian counseling and not necessarily
00:15:12
Speaker
The professional certified counselor always, sometimes it's just a person who can sit in your life and let you talk through emotions and feelings. But Christian counseling plays a great role in helping people keep things sorted out in their life and keep their emotions appropriately stored in the right places. Not letting past hurts come back and kind of blow up in your face as you're trying to have relationships going forward.
00:15:37
Speaker
So I think those things are important. And then, of course, again, something else that comes back constantly in our lives is prayer. I actually had this conversation this morning with our staff and our staff meeting. I think this is a really good reminder to all of us. The psalmist, David, the king, spends a lot of time talking about being in the presence of God forever. At the end of Psalm 23, he says, I'm going to dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
00:16:03
Speaker
over in Psalm 61, which was a Psalm that he wrote while he was on the run away from King Saul, hiding out in caves. He said, you know, I want to be in the presence of God forever. And as I read that again and again before staff this morning, I went to them. I said, you know what? I think the importance that David understood is that
00:16:21
Speaker
A dynamic relationship with God is not a, I'm going to run in and have a 30 minute quiet time and then go on with the rest of my life. It's about abiding in the presence of God forever, every day, every single moment of every day. So I don't just have God over here in my quiet time in my study in the morning, but God is with me in the middle of the junk in the middle of the day, the meeting that doesn't go the right way, the argument I have with my wife, the broken friendship that I'm trying to mend,
00:16:48
Speaker
God's in the middle of all those things with us.
Seeking Guidance: The Role of Church and Counsel
00:16:51
Speaker
And so when we abide in his presence the way we should, coming back to that word, he is the one who allows us to change our perspective.
00:17:01
Speaker
So let's dive. I want to like double click on the counseling part. Um, cause that could be, if you haven't done it before or already have a good counselor, what are some paths people can pursue in order to get counseling? Um, like, cause there's multiple routes and I want to hear specifically on if I want to find someone just from the church, like casually, um, what do I do? What do I do if I want to find a professional and then within the professional route, do you recommend like the online, like better help type vendors?
00:17:32
Speaker
I would say if you are part of a believing Bible teaching church, first thing you wanna do is start with your staff. If they're not qualified, then they should have the ability to point you to someone who is. In my instance, I know full well I am not a qualified counselor, but I'm a pretty good listener. And so I tell people, come in and sit down with me and talk with me and let's have one time together, that may be all you need. And if that's all you need,
00:18:01
Speaker
Praise God, we've got a remedy for you. It may be that after an hour, I go, you know what, this is something beyond what I'm able to help you with. We have a couple of lists of qualified, certified Christian counselors who cover a wide array of topics and themes from sexual abuse to addictions to mental health issues, those kinds of things, depression, self-esteem, post trauma stress disorder.
00:18:28
Speaker
Those are special, qualified areas. I would not just go see any counselor. I would, in fact, I would caution people about seeing Christian counselors. I would say what you need is a biblically-based counselor. Because sadly, the name Christian today can mean anything from a woke progressive left-winger to a fundamentalist, I mean, like, wacko right-hander, you know? So there's a wide range of folks that call themselves Christian these days.
00:18:58
Speaker
So if you're listening to this, don't go find your own counselor, go to church, go to the church staff and ask them for recommendations and they will lead you to the right people. Can I just add this, be very careful about even asking your friends, unless you know your friend very, very well, because just being completely transparent. I've had people in my church who have known for years, who came to me and said, I've been seeing such and such counselor. And when I started to dig into what they had told him, I thought,
00:19:27
Speaker
Whatever you do, run away from that person very fast because their wisdom's not biblical and it's not even healthy for you. Where a lot of people go though. It is. I don't know. I think that's a big part of why community and church is so important. So you surround yourself with a council of advisors, right? Yeah. That's a very good wisdom there, Dan.
00:19:51
Speaker
just being in the community of believers helps you kind of accomplish those first few steps. Cause now I have a D group or a life group or Sunday school class, um, a small group of some kind. They sometimes can be all you need just to have a sounding board for the emotional issues you're dealing with. But then again, kind of accountability, because if you go online and you find Dr. James, who is a Christian counselor and you come back and you share what you're learning from them,
00:20:18
Speaker
then as an accountability in your life, they can go, hey, that's good, solid advice. We can see positive change. We think you're doing great. Or they can say, you know what? That guy's wacko. You need to get away from that and let's go help you find somebody legitimately good for you.
00:20:35
Speaker
I had the opportunity of working at a college campus where all the college students had to work and I was the marketing director and a number of them would come and report directly to me or would be report down the line. I'd meet with a lot of them. You know, it was a funny thing as I found that the kids who asked for help and counsel were usually the kids that didn't need it. And it was often the people who, you know, never asked that probably needed the most. Yes.
00:21:04
Speaker
Well, the reason they don't need it is just because they have it in their life. They're asking multiple people by the time they come to you, they've already maybe talked to a few people and therefore, you know, their heads on straight.
Sailing Through Life: Faith as a Constant
00:21:13
Speaker
Exactly um, or they're just reading and learning aggressively from podcasts or whatever and just They've already thought through all the ones that by the time they're coming to you You're kind of like looks like you've thought through this I confer that you're probably you're heading in the right direction usually Um, so if it's anything like the one thing that i've landed with is like just be the kind of person That asks for help often, um and ask for counsel Just by being that person you're probably going to be okay
00:21:40
Speaker
And if the few times you're off in your thinking or judgment, you'll have the advice and the input in order to have somebody guide you in the right path. There are a lot of great poets and authors throughout the centuries who have compared living life to the selling of a ship. And I think there's a lot of beauty in that because as you and I are selling through life, we encounter the things that
00:22:09
Speaker
the storms, the winds, the rains. But the thing that always kept the old salesman, the old sailors doing what they're supposed to do and doing it the right way was their navigation by the stars. As long as they could find the North Star, a good sailor could find his way in any storm. It's a great reminder for us. At age, you know, 25, we get married. It shakes us up a little bit, throws us off kilter because we have to adjust to having a spouse now that counts on us. Well, keep your North Star aligned.
00:22:37
Speaker
Well, then you have children and you change careers and you move locations and you get hurt by people and you get disappointed by people. Every one of those are storms that require you to keep your navigation on the North Star. And for us as believers, that North Star is Christ and Him crucified and the teachings of His life as a righteous example for us on how to live.
Embracing Change: Future Potential over Past Burdens
00:23:01
Speaker
So as you're a young person trying to grow old gracefully, continue to realign to that North star, continue to bring people around you, continue to bring the wounds out into the open where you can get healing and get help from others. Um, but let's cover the other side of what if you are advanced in years and you have some of these things and honestly, you don't even know which one of those things from back. It is just a knot of stuff. What do you do?
00:23:30
Speaker
I think there's, again, an opportunity there for good friendships or good counseling opportunities to help you to begin to pull the knots out of that ball of twine that your life has become to kind of to pick at things and begin to process things and to understand what is the origin of those feelings. But I also think there's a legitimate argument to forgetting what lies in the past and pressing on to what lies ahead. It's the example that Paul gave us. And when Paul wrote that, he was getting later in his life.
00:23:59
Speaker
to understand that you can't do anything about your past. Yeah, it affects you, it impacts you, it makes you who you are, but you can't do anything about it. All you can do is decide how you're going to live going forward. And so for many older people, I think what it requires is a tremendous self-awareness. What's got me to where I am, but at this point, what am I going to do with the rest of the days that God has given me?
00:24:26
Speaker
How do I recommit myself to the North star? How do I recommit myself to the idea that the God who created the heavens and earth created me with a purpose? And when he created with me with a purpose, it was not a purpose that was good and valid up to 50 years old and nothing beyond. He had it in mind all the way because the Bible says from the very beginning, he knew the number of our days. So in essence, don't be defined by your past, better to be defined
00:24:56
Speaker
by your future, maybe the future you'd rather embrace, which hopefully is to be more like Christ and the unique person he's made
Learning from History: Using the Past as Stepping Stones
00:25:07
Speaker
you to be. Right. So if you can envision and bring forward your future and behaving like who you who you'd like to be more known for instead of being like, well, I've always been this way instead of being like, yeah, but I'm going to be like this. That's a better stance to take. Yeah.
00:25:24
Speaker
I think you might expect somebody who loves history like me to say this. I don't think you can ever just completely throw your history away. You know, the old saying, those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. If you don't learn from past mistakes, past choices, even past victories, if you don't learn lessons from those things, then you keep coming back to the same old dumb mistakes that you've done in the past. But when you embrace what the history has to offer you and learn from it,
00:25:51
Speaker
then your history is not a millstone tied around your neck. It's a stepping stone to your future.
Encouragement for Growth and Faith Across Ages
00:25:58
Speaker
Well, this has been a lot of words of wisdom from you today, Ridley. I hope it's, I hope it finds somebody who's dealing with things now, either when they're younger and being like, Oh my gosh, this could define me for the rest of my life. I don't want it to find me. I'm going to deal with it now. Or if you're advanced in years, Hey, I've had some things that I want, don't want it to find me anymore. I'm going to move forward differently. Hopefully,
00:26:23
Speaker
So I just want to think, go ahead. Strong, strong encouragement here to this. Somebody shared this with me after the first service on Sunday, the story of Corey Ten Boom. Most of us are familiar with her and her family and the travails they went through under the Nazi regime. But when she got to the end of her life, when she couldn't do anything else but lay in bed, she literally asked people to bring her prayer requests and string them around her bed so that she could pray in the last days of her life.
00:26:50
Speaker
There is a woman who squeezed every bit of purpose out of her life to the last day of her life. I would encourage you if you're an older person, you're going, what do I do in my life? Start by praying and you'll be amazed at what God opens up for you to do next.
Conclusion: Spreading the Gospel Message
00:27:06
Speaker
It's a good finishing word. Thanks for listening to the Grove Hill podcast, where we try to impact the life of every person with the whole gospel by any means possible, including through this show. We encourage you to do the same. So share this episode with somebody who you think might need to hear it, hopefully tactfully, and let's continue to share the whole gospel together.