To Encourage You

Psalm 71:17-18 “O God, from my youth you have taught me, and I still proclaim your wondrous deeds.  So even to old age and gray hairs, O God, do not forsake me, Until I proclaim your might to another generation, your power to all those to come.”

If you’re like me and have lived over half your life, have you thought about what you most want to do before your life ends?  Do you have a “bucket list,” i.e., things you’d like to do and places you’d like to go before you’re too old or feeble to do them? Do you want to eat, drink, and be merry as long as possible? Is your goal to just put your feet up and relax? Maybe you want to spend as much time as you can with your family.  It’s all a very personal thing.  

But I’m struck by the words of the psalmist in the passage above as he looks toward the end of HIS life.  He wants to live long enough to do one main thing. His great desire before he dies is to share the truth of God with those who are coming after him.  He wants the next generation to know about his Lord.  It’s his focus in the twilight of his life.  

So, is something like that on your bucket list? Is it something you’re focused on for the rest of your life?  In Acts 13:36 we are told the following about King David: “For David, after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep . . .”  One of the things David left all of us as he fulfilled that purpose was many of the psalms. One example is Psalm 23.  Aren’t you glad he did this? 

In Titus 2:3-4 the “older women” who are believers are told this: “They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women . . .” Of course, those things that are “good” are those things that God had taught them from His Word.  In 2 Timothy 2:2 Paul gives the following instructions to Timothy: “what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Those things that Timothy had heard from Paul are also given to us in his many epistles. And so, God’s instructions to Timothy through Paul are also God’s instructions to us. So, is that on your “bucket list?” Is that a priority of your life? It should be, for proclaiming the glory of God to the next generation is one of the best uses of the time God has given us. 

In Deuteronomy 6 we are given God’s greatest command, i.e., “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”  But right after that command we are given a description of a person for whom such a love relationship is true.  Like anything or anyone else we love, we’ll talk about it.  And so the Lord’s instructions are that “these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” It’s the same message.  We need to pass the message of the faith on. 

But how do we do this?  Well, it should be a natural part of life – intentional, but natural, as moment by moment we look for opportunities to speak truth into the lives of those we love.  Again, back to David’s psalms. In them he talks about almost every issue of life. He shares his triumphs, as well as his failures. He shares his commitment to follow the Lord, and his sins when he failed to do so. He talks about the judgment of God, but he also writes about His wonderful forgiveness. He talks about his greatest joys, and he talks about the darkest moments of his life. He talks about the glory of God, but he also talks about his struggles when life just didn’t make sense.  But in all of it he talked of his relationship with his God.  He taught us the things God had taught him, and he wrote it down so we could, in turn, pass it on. 

So, are you doing that? Are you making the most of the opportunities God is giving you? Do you see the time He is giving you as a time to check off the things on your bucket list, with a focus on the here and now? Or are you focused on eternal things, the wonderful truths about our infinite God? Are we using our time to proclaim God’s might to the next generation?  Do they see that the main thing in our life is the glory of God? Is speaking about Jesus to those who are coming after us among our highest goals? It should be, for that’s surely one of God’s highest purposes for us before we, like David, fall asleep.