“Truly,truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself, and  walk wherever  you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, and bring you where you do not wish to go” (John 21:18).

When Jesus said this to Peter, it not only spoke of the way his life and death would glorify God, but that in all of this life His instruction was, “Follow Me.”

I left religion (which is Jesus plus anything) when I was 40 years old, married with children, and in a good career.  Thank God my middle-age crisis led me to put my life in His hands and not in my own!  When at the cross He said, “It is finished,” it hit me that God wanted me to understand it was about sIn, that there is No cost higher than His; no -isms; no easy believisms; no horizontal humanisms… Not the many but the few; not the broad but the narrow.

CHRISTianity begins with Christ.  In that sense, it is not about you or me; it is about Him.  I have been amazed at how we measure it by how good we are or do or serve or need or want… My Bible tells me    to seek Him and His kingdom!  I am not to be afraid or beg, but to deny myself and follow Him. (Luke 12:31-32)

I am nearing 78 years old, have followed Him for 38, and have learned  I have not “grown” in Him when it has cost me nothing.  This walk is about more of God and less of me.  I have evangelized, discipled, ministered, taught, and served… only to have come to the realization in my older years, that the meaning and purpose of our life is for our souls to be restored to our God and Maker (made possible in the Messiah).  Then, Jesus, the light of the world, can enlighten our heart and our soul to look to His Living Word, and we can know He is the Truth, and our spirit joins with God’s.

In this time of old age when all else is failing and truly, I do find myself in the hands of others, He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world and who has even infiltrated the church.  My greatest work now is to worship Him, not by ritual or emotion, but by my trust and hope and desire to yield to Him, that instead of blessing me, it would so please Him!

Rachel and her husband Wayne

About a year ago a spirit of discontentment began to grow within me, and it quickly took over the most basic requirements of the day. Nothing seemed worthwhile or brought joy because I had grown bored with my life. I had much to be grateful for: my husband, my home, a comfortable job. But as I saw the gap between my increasing age and certain unfulfilled dreams grow wider, I started to inwardly panic. My life suddenly felt so repetitive and pointless, and the accomplished person I wanted to be was a mere fancy.

I assessed nearly everyone I met and considered whether their lives were more or less worthwhile than mine. I used other Christians in my demographic as a measuring stick of where I ought to be, and pretty much always came up short. I was also very sensitive to comments from others and could very quickly feel satisfied or dejected about my state based on their opinions.

My mind eventually slipped into a cycle of negative thoughts that centered on myself and my lack of accomplishment. I habitually struggled with anger. I knew God wasn’t to blame, yet I was disappointed in His slow rate of progress in my life. I thought He would have brought me to a place, in terms of spiritual maturity and physical opportunity, to be more effective for Him by this time in my life.

I loathed the oppression that was taking over and realized I could not simply live with it, so mentally, I went through various options searching for relief. I could pursue a more materialistic lifestyle. I have never been a spendthrift, but now I wondered if perhaps I should just let myself run free. It could be that all I needed was a better wardrobe and consistently fashionable hair. Maybe I could even discover a trivial hobby or two. But when thought came to action, I couldn’t bring myself to live for these things and knew they would not satisfy me.

I wanted to go back to college. To what end I was uncertain, but I meditated on the positives of a few years of study followed by a lucrative career. Still–no spark. At the end of the day, I didn’t want my life to be about money. I had the stunning realization that because of the presence of God in my life, I couldn’t just arbitrarily pursue whatever looked good to me. I was owned by God, and if I chose to build my life outside of His will, it ultimately wouldn’t flourish.

“That’s it,” I finally decided. “I need to be doing Christian stuff.” So I took different Christian Education courses and tried to immerse myself in ‘good’ things. Although these activities were enriching, they also failed to satisfy. I needed a deeper root system. I needed the truth of the Holy Spirit to penetrate my thinking in a more profound way. As I went through my days, sometimes frustrated, sometimes dejected, at times outright mad inside, God began to carefully invade my thought processes. He helped draw my mind into an eternal perspective.

Through my struggle, God showed me what proved to be the solution for discontentment. First, I needed to acknowledge that there was a problem with ME – I was usurping the Lord’s place in my life (sin), and I was using the standards of the world and this life to evaluate myself rather than God’s truth (I John 2:15-17). After facing the problem, I realized that freedom and rest came from rightly relating to God and shifting my focus from me to Him (Ps. 45:10-11, Ps. 95).

As a Christian, I know that my life is not my own because Jesus Christ purchased me with His own blood to restore me to God (I Cor. 6:19-20; Rev. 5:9). But in my cycle of discontent, I had forgotten that I was not god, not my own, and not supposed to be using standards outside of Christ to evaluate my life (Eph. 4:17-24).

I was disgruntled with my life because I found it dull and unfashionable, and I was fed up with the boring tasks of going to work and the grocery store and Bible study day after day. I wanted to be the person who did fantastic things for the Lord and was glowingly approved of; but all this simply showed that I was using the world’s standards of measure: man’s approval and how satisfying life’s activities were to me and my religious reputation.
The key to freedom from myself is found in Christ and the fact that He has done all he needs to do for me in redemption, so I must learn to revel in it. I must change my value system (Rom. 12:1-2) and see Him as valuable as He is!

There were several principles I had to learn to walk in order to practice contentment. I had to yield my hopes and dreams to God to the point where what HE desired for me was of highest concern, not what I wanted to do or what I thought would look good.

Secondly, I had to be aware of my faulty character and trust in God’s perfect character. I am prone to fickleness and grumbling, whereas He is pure and changeless. Just because I wake up one day unhappy with a certain situation or longing for new and exciting experiences does not mean that God’s plan for my life, and His desire to see me more like Christ, has changed, or that He somehow lost the roadmap. I had to learn to trust His good plans for my life (Jer. 29:11).

Lastly, I had to practice gratefulness by thanking God aloud for the gifts He gives me daily. The more I look, the more I see His constant blessings (1 Thes. 5:18).

The apostle Paul claimed that he could be content in any given situation (Phil 4:11). With the power of Christ within me, I can too. When I make the choice to believe His promises and accept His truth, that’s when I can rest in the peace and hope of contentment.