Our culture sets 65 as the ideal time to quit working and just enjoy life. For the Christian, an eternal perspective places a different set of demands on us. The Lord's work is never done. What keeps us going?
Out With A Blaze Of Glory
November 19, 2008
....his (Moses) strength equaled his days. Deuteronomy 33:25
"What I am most afraid of is, lest I should flag in the later stages of my road. But He that hath loved and helped me, will love and help me to the end. O pray that I may not go off as a snuff. I would fain die blazing, not with human glory, but the love of Jesus."
GEORGE WHITFIELD
E. Stanley Jones the "Billy Graham of India," told Time magazine in 1964 at the age of 80...
"I want to go full steam ahead until the old boiler bursts," says the Rev. E. Stanley Jones, whose fame overseas as an American evangelist is matched only by Billy Graham.
Jones was formally retired by the Methodist Board of Missions in 1954, after 47 years of work —but retirement meant only that he was freed from all church assignments to set his own unflagging pace.
In 1963, for example, he spent six months hopping from one missionary outpost to another in Asia and Latin America, filled 736 preaching engagements, spent his vacation writing his 24th book, a spiritual autobiography.
Last week, after eating his way through a nation-crossing round of dinners in honor of his 80th birthday, Jones flew off to the Far East to start another round of preaching. "Eighty is a wonderful time to begin," he says.
And at 87, in the forward to THE UNSHAKABLE KINGDOM AND THE UNCHANGING PERSON, he wrote:
"At 87 one is supposed to dim down and take life easy and calmly. I do, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and I do take things calmly, for this fire that burns in one's bones is like the burning bush of Moses which was afire but not consumed."
"This divine fire does not consume, it consummates - you walk out of it like the Hebrew captives without the smell of smoke upon you."
"To change the figure, there is no smoke from the exhause - it does not exhause, it exhilarates....I am excited with a divine excitement."
"As a possible last fling, I'd llike to fling my blazing torch of the Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person amid the burned out heap of extinguished or dying enthusiasms, to set them ablaze again with the relevant - the really relevant, the fact of the kingdom of God on earth exemplified in Jesus."
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day - and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Timothy 4:8
High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven’s joys, O bright Heaven’s Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.
BE THOU MY VISION, verse 4