A Biblical Look at Aging (Part 2) - Howard Hendricks

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A Biblical Look at Aging (Part 1) - Howard Hendricks
A Biblical Look at Aging (Part 2) - Howard Hendricks

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript

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What is Retirement?

Day 2 of 2

Guest: Dr. Howard Hendricks

From the Series: What is Retirement?

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Bob: Pastor Rick Warren has referred to life as a dress rehearsal for eternity. Howard Hendricks says that's a perspective we need to maintain even in our retirement years.

Howard: C.S. Lewis said it – "Hope means a continual looking forward to the eternal world." It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next world. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this world.

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, January 19th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. There is still a lot of eternal work that needs to be done, even in the retirement years.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. I know there's still a few years before you and Barbara hit 65, but …

Dennis: Yes, I was thinking about you, too. Are you and Mary Ann ready for retirement?

Bob: We're still – we're much younger than you.

Dennis: I was thinking, have you thought about early retirement?

Bob: Are you trying to suggest something? Pick up your check on the way out the door?

Dennis: You know, there are some people who, if they heard that, and you know I'm kidding 100 percent, but if they heard those words, that would be chilling words – to hear your boss say, "Have you ever thought about early retirement?" And the reason is, they don't know what they'd do, because they're not sure what they're about today. And I think, as never before, we, as followers of Christ, need to be on a mission that transcends what we do at work.

Bob: That's right. We're listening this week to a message from Dr. Howard Hendricks, who spoke to the couples who speak at the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember conferences. We asked him to come in and help us think ahead to that time as we grow older when we'll face retirement, and we've got some young couples who speak at our conferences – couples in their late 20s and their 30s, but they were taking notes just like everyone else was taking notes, as Dr. Hendricks laid out a game plan for us to think ahead to that time when we may slow down a bit, because our body does slow down; when we may have less vocational work to do. But it's not a time to just sit on the porch and rock. It's a time to have a new focus and a new mission.

Dennis: It is, and this message is a part of a three-message series we're offering here on FamilyLife Today on the whole aspect of growing old and thinking through the aging process biblically, and I think there is a need for us to do that.

Dr. Howard Hendricks was my professor at Dallas Theological Seminary where he's taught for over 52 years. Now, think about that – he's had a job there for a long time. He is still teaching there. He and his wife Jeanne have four children. I think they have eight grandchildren, and he is a great man and a great friend.

Bob: Well, let's listen together. Here is part two of Dr. Hendricks' message on getting ready for retirement.

[audio clip]

Howard: I'd like to share with you five principles, but I want to underscore for you every one of them has a danger inherent in it. Number one, retirement requires intensive prayer and planning and preparation. It is hard to come up with the statistics, but if you talk to people who are specialists in the field of geriatrics, they will tell you this is virtually nonexistent, and I would say, "Well, maybe that's just true of the pagan community and culture." I could only wish it were true.

I spend all of my time in the Christian community, and I’m here to tell you the preparation is in the algebraic minus quantity. There is a passage of Scripture that I hear, in my judgment, perverted. It's found in the Book of James, chapter 4 – now, listen, you who say today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a time, a year, there, carry on business and make money. Why, you don't even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? Here is the key – your life is a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. You've got a little slice of life in which to make your impact for Christ, and often this is said to be a prohibition against planning – nothing further from the biblical truth. Look at the last part – instead, here is your option, you ought to say if it is the Lord's will, you will live and do this or that. As it is, you boast and brag and all such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins. What an indictment. Not of lack of planning but of planning with presumption that I'm going to do this or that in my retirement and that is guaranteed and no thought of the will of God.

That's why I say you need to begin by discarding the secular concept of retirement that prevails in your culture, and you need to replace it with the understanding it's not what do I want for my retirement – what does the Lord of my life want for my retirement? How does He want me to spend those bonus years, which are priceless? And planning, I am discovering, is a form of spiritual discipline. Most of us don't plan to fail, we fail to plan, and that's particularly true in the area of retirement. What's the danger in this? The danger is the danger of unrealistic expectations. They're either false or they're shifting or they do not exist and, in any c...