How to Stay Young and Useful

This past Sunday we watched as Dr. Charles Stanley talked about “How to Stay Young and Useful (all the days of our lives).”

He says that as long as we are alive we have the responsibility of being fruitful. If, when we retire, we think that we are “finished” our body begins to break down. Psalm 92: 9-15 (from the New Living Translation) says:

Your enemies, Lord, will surely perish;
all evildoers will be scattered.
But you have made me as strong as a wild ox.
You have anointed me with the finest oil.
My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies;
my ears have heard the defeat of my wicked opponents.
But the godly will flourish like palm trees
and grow strong like the cedars of Lebanon.
For they are transplanted to the Lord’s own house.
They flourish in the courts of our God.
Even in old age they will still produce fruit;
they will remain vital and green.
They will declare, “The Lord is just!
He is my rock!
There is no evil in him!”

What is essential to making ourselves young and useful all the days of our lives? Dr. Stanley gives some tips: keep learning (and learning the Word of God), keep loving, keep laughing, leave your cares behind, and a few more. I can say that from my interviews of centenarians (and near centenarians) that there are a few core personality traits that they have in common in addition to what Dr. Stanley lists: be engaged, do as much for yourself as possible, when encountering a difficult situation decide if there is anything that you can do to change it – if not, then let it go.

Watch the video and listen to what he says. Following these instructions will help you to be young and useful all the days of your life.

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An Outsider Visits a Legendary United Methodist Church

Today we traveled with Matt Whitman, from the podcast “The Ten Minute Bible Hour,” to Savannah, Georgia where he visits a United Methodist church. The pastor, Rev. Ben Martin, gives a fascinating insight into how Methodism began and what they (we) believe today.

It is a beautiful church, and the beauty on the inside is rooted in Methodist history, particularly with John Wesley’s “methodology” of worshiping Jesus Christ and his visit to Savannah in 1735. Wesley was from England, a member of the Church of England, and an Anglican Priest. “Methodism” was a movement that began in the 1700’s and carried on through others who subscribed to Wesley’s methods, although Wesley himself always remained a member of the Church of England his entire life.

John’s brother, Charles Wesley, was also instrumental (so to speak) in the movement through his writing of over 6,000 hymns. He also accompanied John to Savannah in 1735. Rev. Martin definitively answers Matt’s great questions with incredible insight and communication skills. For me, until now I haven’t heard such a succinct, yet full, description of the Methodist tradition as it is presented here.

Here is the video.

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How a Bible is Made

Maybe a better description of what we discussed today is “How a Bible goes from a concept translation to a final book that we can read.” The 10 Minute Bible Hour is a podcast that is sometimes very interesting. Today we watched host, Matt Whitman, as he took us along on a visit to Tyndale House Publishers near Chicago.

Tyndale is a large, and well-known, not-for-profit Bible translation and publishing house. We saw several key people in the organization interviewed and got a sense of how a Bible translation comes into reality. It is a glimpse into an effort that probably needs to be seen to understand the magnitude and Christian responsibility of what goes into a Bible project.

Here is a link to the video.

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Something the Lord’s Prayer does NOT say

The vintage Discover the Word group of Haddon Robinson, Alice Matthews, and Mart DeHaan have a conversation about something that the Lord’s Prayer does NOT say. You would think that Jesus would mention in His model prayer to the disciples for us to ask something like “how can I be a better person? How can I be more spiritual?” But He doesn’t.

Instead, He changes the perspective for us to hallow God’s name. To have us pray about glorifying God. Spirituality begins with God… not with us. But, in praying this way, WE are changed. We are changed in a way that allows us to reflect God to others when they interact with us. They may not know what they are seeing. We may not know what we are allowing to happen. But, as Sherry said, “The Holy Spirit has a chance to open us up and do His work through us when we hallow and glorify God in our prayers.”

Here is a link to the short audio lesson.

Blessings to you all.

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Where is Your Faith?

“Where is your faith?” is an online meditation episode by Tim Keller. We have seen some of his episodes before, and even though this one sounds like a simple topic, it is not. As we get older (and, hopefully, wiser) we can be faced with a barrage of difficult circumstances in our lives that sometimes tests our faith in God.

But, we get so busy with the details of the day, that we often don’t think about the spiritual qualities that we need to develop to cope with these tests. Meditation/Devotions in the morning, walk out the door, and kaboom! We get blasted with something that takes our mind and our attention away, pointing it to ourselves.  “How can I make sense of this?” “How can I solve this?” We forget about continuing our meditations/devotions and asking God, “How can I trust YOU to make sense of this?” “What are YOU going to do about this?”

Developing faith/trust in God, Who knows all things, during the smaller trials in our lives is good practice for when we need to draw on our faith/trust when the bigger storms come.

Here is the video we watched today by Tim Keller.

Another topic that we discussed was an extension of today’s sermon regarding humility. Sometimes the good things that we, and others, accomplish during our lives isn’t known until it is told by someone else. For example, we know that Oscar Schindler accomplished what he did during World War 2 in humility. There was a whole movie made about that. But what do we know about the story of Nicholas Winton? We know that he was born in 1908, was a British stockbroker, and died in 2015 at age 106.

But, his story wasn’t “discovered” until in 1988 when the BBC researched and told it. In this short video Sir Nicholas Winton was invited to an event, but he wasn’t told what it was about. It was here, and at age 80, he discovered to his own surprise how much of an active participant he was in his own story.

Here is the video we watched today about Sir Nicholas Winton.

And, here is a link to a more detailed article about his accomplishments.

I believe that there are a lot of Sir Nicholas Wintons in the world who may not quite understand the magnitude of their own accomplishments, and who don’t tell their own story as a monument to themselves even if they do. Someone else does the revealing.

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