Your Christian Life After Retirement

It seems only natural that older people retire, right? Well, Pastor John Piper doesn’t see it that way. At least not for Christians. They may retire from a job, but never from the great opportunity to serve God and contribute to His purposes as long as they’re still present in this world.

I was watching Downton Abbey and laughed out loud when the Dowager Countess of Grantham asked, “What is a weekend?” To the entitled classes for whom work was below their exalted station in life, all the days of the week were the same. 

I guess you’d say that is true for most retired people in America too.

This is a lazy Saturday morning!  
Saturday’s are different if you’re retired.

You don’t have to cram errands and household chores into a few hours of your free time.  You can go to the cleaners at 2:22 PM on Tuesday or hit Trader Joe’s Thursday at 3:07 PM before the moms arrive with kids and the aisles fill with little people driving little carts right into your shins 🙂

When you’re retired every day becomes Saturday.

Investing versus Spending Your Life

So what are you gonna do with all that time?  All that freedom?

Pastor John Piper shares about stoking our zeal and making sure we write some stellar final chapters to the later years of life.

Please, please, please click this link and read this.  It’s not political, it’s deeply spiritual and empowering.

http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/hillary-bernie-donald-and-me

Break free from the spirit of this age. See the world — see your life — the way God sees it.
John Piper

That was the take home point for me.
See your life the way God sees it.
It’s a challenge to ignore the world’s message.  It’s not easy because that message plays into our own desires and even our inner dialogue that says we’ve earned our time on the bench.

But is that really where we want to be, on the bench?  
Sidelined from our calling.  Wasting the years of hard-gleaned wisdom and hard-earned experience?  Squandering a prime opportunity to be a doer in the kingdom of God.

“God chooses to be helpless apart from cooperation with man.”
G. Campbell Morgan  (evangelist, preacher, and Bible scholar)

Why doesn’t God use angels, or writing in the sky?  
Why would He include us in His purposes?  We’re just dust.

We can ask why.
We can claim our lives and time as our own.
We can stay on the bench.

Or not.
Let’s choose not and see where God leads.

Will You Double Down Or Checkout?

We each get to choose who we’ll serve. Remember Joshua asked that of the Children of Israel. Choose you this day whom you will serve. We’re tempted to go for permanent vacation status, but is that really where fulfillment and meaning will be found? I encourage you to pray about this. If you discovered this blog post, God is probably got a plan that He wants to give you a part in. You could end up having the time of your life and make a big difference in someone else’s life all at the same time. Sound intriguing?