This opened my eyes today, hopefully it will for you as well.
The truth is we get beaten up by life. We get betrayed, divorced, abused, fired, forgotten, abandoned, we had big plans and they didn’t follow through, we made some tragic mistakes and now we’re living with it. Then what sometimes happens is we loose that buoyant, joyous, creative, optimism about life. It starts to sort of ebb over the years. Our idealism takes a couple of shots to the jaw.
So we begin to sort of tone it down and if often takes years, it’s not just one day we decide, “I’m gonna kind of check-out somewhere deep in my heart”, but the truth is for many of us, that’s what happens. And so we stop being renewed day by day and we lose that thing that we used to have. So our marriage had this sort of ahhhh, but now it has this, ughhh or this “just getting by”, or our job or that particular thing that we’re involved with. Because we get beaten, we get bruised, knocked around a bit, we’ve taken some hits. The biblical vision of aging is that those things that happen to us would not make us cynical or bitter. Our heart would not develop a sort of shell around it. But that we would stay fresh and green.
So what God asks of us is to be renewed day by day. So the ways that we have been hurt, the deep weeds we’ve gone through, the ways we weren’t prepared, the times we didn’t know what to do or how to do it….what God wants to do is heal all of that so that we with great joy, will be able to walk along side of people to the bright, glorious, joyous, buoyant future that He has for each one of us.
Because what happens is we get burned, we get criticized, we get misunderstood and something happens in our heart and what it does is that it affects those around us. We get the idealism beaten out of us, our sense of joyous revolution takes a bit of a hit and so we back off and we get a little cynical and we get a little skeptical, “okay, it’s nice now cause you’re in the honeymoon phase, but wait till your 3rd budget meeting, blah, blah, blah.”
What God wants to do is renew each of us day by day and to take those hurts and to take those dreams and those visions and those plans and those awkward periods and those desert experiences and the time you felt like you were the only one and the time that you felt betrayed and the time that you felt that no one understood it and the time that you felt, “if only people could just see” and all that…..He wants to take it and He wants to heal it, so that we would be new again and new again and new again and new again.
So we wouldn’t be the old crusty, brittle person shooting down everybody’s dreams but that we’d 98 years old with a hammer going, “I wonder what we’re going to make today.”
Jesus says in Matthew: “Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest.”
Is there anyone reading this who your idealism has been beaten out of you, you’re tired, you set out with great plans for your ministry, marriage, family, work, dreams, goals, adventures, trips and somewhere along the way it got beaten out of you? And you’re tired?
So today, you give that tired heart to God. And you’re given a new one.
Is there anyone reading this who has become cynical?
You loved and the love was not returned. You gave and it just sort of disappeared. You spent yourself and no one noticed and it just kind of fell to the ground and there’s a profound sense of, “Why do that again?”. You gave everything you had to this person and you handed them your heart and they took it and stepped on it, so why love again? Why love again?
Don’t lose heart, because we are being made new again everyday. On the inside, where God is making new life.
Is there anybody reading this who you have gotten older? But the problem is, in the process of getting older, you’ve gotten older. The Jesus vision is that you’d be getting older and you’d be getting fresher and greener and younger, the exact same time that your experiences’ and the wisdom that comes from getting kicked around would be melded with youthful innocence and wonder and that those impulses together would create true wisdom, you would be the village elder, because you would, somehow, have been through it all and yet you would be more alive and expectant and assuming that God is in the midst of doing greater things than ever.
In Ephesians it says: “…Now to the God who is able to do immeasurably more, than all we ask or imagine, according to God’s power that is at work within us.”
One of the things that happens over the years, is we stop asking and imagining. Saying, “Asking and imagining is for kids who don’t realize how hard life is.“
Are you in a rut? Do feel like, “Well I’m old”…No, it’s doesn’t matter how old you are. Do you today, need to ask God for the imagination for a whole new tomorrow? Is there some country that you want to swim to? Are there some trees your supposed to chop down? Are there some kids that you’re supposed to invite into your home and you are supposed to re-parent them? And it doesn’t matter if you’re 80. It’s been done. People in their 80’s take people into their homes. People in their 70’s go out into the desert and build mind-blowing compounds. People in their 60’s swim to other countries, people in their 50’s make boats out of trees…….none of those excuses work.
Or have you somewhere deep in your heart “checked-out”? At the moment at which your community needs you more than ever. So we ask God to us a new heart and give us new things to ask for so we can imagine a new tomorrow. So that we would not lose heart, but be renewed day by day.
— God we bring before You our tired, weary, cynical, skeptical hearts, bring before You all the ways we’ve bought into that “new” is better in our culture, in the world and in ourselves that when you’re old, you’re old.
We want to be younger as we’re older, we want to be greener, fresher, like a tree by living water, that bends in the breeze. We ask right now that You would show us the next risk, the next adventure, that you would blow apart all of the myths we have bought into about our relevance and role.
Please rescue us from any view of the world that says, ‘there’s nothing more to contribute’, there’s nothing more to paint, there’s nowhere left to swim, nothing left to build, nowhere left to sail. Rescue us please, from any of these lies, with a vision of what it means to be renewed on the inside day by day. So that we might continue to partner with You in making a whole new kind of world.
Thank you for Jesus, who has died, was resurrected, who gives us life, the kind of life that spills over. In the name of Jesus. Amen.
– A talk by RB.
Sound/Worship 