Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Redeem the Time. Pick Up the Pace. No Retirement for Christians. - Highlight Episode 354

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Redeem the Time. Pick Up the Pace. No Retirement for Christians. - Highlight Episode 354 · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Speaker 1: All right, friends.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: Today, what does retirement look like for the Christian?
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: It doesn't Tell us, ray.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Why doesn't?
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: it.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: There shouldn't be any thought of retirement for the Christian.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: For the world, yeah, retire, just go over and die somewhere, walk your dog around the block.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: But for the Christian, you can go full-time for the Lord now.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: All your life you've been restricted by work.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Work's a curse.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: God gave work as a curse.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: It makes you sweat.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: You can be free of that and now you can serve the Lord with all your heart, full-time, and all you do is get a diary and when you go witnessing with your dog wearing sunglasses going around the block, get a person's name and write down what you said to them and pray for them afterwards.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: There what you said to them and pray with them or pray for them afterwards.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: There's things you can do where retirement won't come near you, and it shouldn't.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Okay now, oscar, is there a place for a Christian to retire?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Now, we've already dealt with this Not, but not really retire.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: So maybe we can break down the difference in perspective on what the world's talking about for retirement.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think what you're getting at here is is the retiring from vocation is one thing which is moving into a new season of life, and to clarify what Ray meant earlier, I know he meant this is the work is a gift from the Lord to us.
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: We see Adam work in the garden After the fall.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: After the fall, it becomes cursed, right.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: So Adam had God glorifying work.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: We are made to make in the same way that our maker makes.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: That's not a part of the curse.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Part of the curse is that then, attached to that is the thistles and the thorns, and if you work in a vocation, that is hard, that's a struggle.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: You feel the thistle, you feel the thorn.
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: One of the beautiful things about retiring from your vocation, though, if that is in fact you is, now look at it as you get to experience work with less of the thorn, with less of the thistle, because now you're free to work unto the Lord, not just to provide for your family and to check in on a nine to five, but now you know the day you go home after your retirement party.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: It's like what do you have for me, oh Lord?
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: And I thought about it in four different ways.
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: Ultimately, retirement, you get to steward four different things.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: It's time for you to steward your time well, because you have more time than ever.
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: It's time for you to steward your talent well.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: God has gifted you and you have an opportunity to steward that talent in a new way because you're not being held back from the responsibility of your nine-to-five.
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: You have an opportunity to steward your treasure Well.
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: In retirement age we have more excess income than we had through all of our working years, and so you have an opportunity to give, to steward that treasure in an incredible way.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: And you have an opportunity to steward your testimony well.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: You've gone through so many seasons of life.
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: Why not invest that in to the next generation?
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And so, when you have that perspective, you retire from your revocation.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: But now you get to experience work with less thorn and less thistles, because you work into the Lord.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: Often, when you hear people who retire, you'll hear some of them say they'll go back to get another job and they'll say what I needed?
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: Something to do which is indicative of right.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: We're designed to like, create, to do, to be productive, productivity.
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: But I'm baffled that the Christian would ever have to say that we have so much to do.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: I think someone who spends their life busy and then suddenly they retire.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: They're going to feel absolutely useless, just cast on a trash heap.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: And that's tragic when you've been laboring your whole life.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: But now, if you're a Christian, you can be a laborer for the Lord.
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: And I think the key to being retired and keeping your brain and not becoming depressed and feeling useless is to be disciplined.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, Just say I'm going to be disciplined.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I'm going to start the day off with prayer.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: I'm going to read the Word, Then I'm going to go to my fishing spot each day and look for a sinner.
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get a dog, put sunglasses, go around the block.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: I'm going to take gospel tracts, give them out.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get a table and get a local Walmart and you can get permission to do this.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Set up a table outside Walmart and just put free Christian books on it that people can take, evangelistic books, get them from Living in Waters, the scientific facts in the Bible, and they're totally free.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: And you just spend two hours in the morning doing that.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: You come back, have a snooze, say God, please give me more energy, because that's the problem when you get your 70s Every day.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: So and I pray for wisdom and for energy, because energy is life and without that you're just going to roll over and die.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: And so if you're disciplined and make sure you do this each day, life's going to have meaning because you're tapping into the eternal.
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, paul didn't coast into glory.
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: He saw it as a finish line, right, he picked up the pace.
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: I often tell my kids, and I write it in almost every birthday card to my kids pick up the pace, right, I get it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: Life is, for a lot of us, a marathon, I get it.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: Life is, for a lot of us, a marathon, and slow and steady wins the race.
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: But just pick up the pace.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: Have you ever seen the difference between somebody who finishes first at a track meet and somebody who finishes sixth?
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: If somebody finishes first, there's always that lunge right.
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: The difference between first and second you know first, second, everybody knows your name.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: I love that, seinfeld, that's so.
• 6:43
  Speaker 4: Somebody finishes sixth place, though it's almost like they're coasting.
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: There's no urgency.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: But for us Christians, we never retire from the Great Commission.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: We never retire from doing what God has called us to do.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: For 2 Timothy 4-7, I have fought the good fight.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: I have kept the faith right.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: You will still be in the race until you see His face.
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: You'll know when God is done with you.
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: Right, you die.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: You're done.
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: So God is not done with you.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: No matter what you've done, no matter who's made your bed, no matter what drug you've done, no matter how many people's lives you've wrecked, god's not done with you.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: And we know that he's not done with you because you are still alive, and by virtue of the fact that you're still alive means that God still has a plan that he wants for you.
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: So get out of bed.
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: Go to bed with purpose.
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: Lay out your clothes before you go to bed so that you know exactly what you're doing.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Lay out your schedule in advance so you wake up in the morning with a purpose Today I'm doing this, tomorrow I'm doing that.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: And therefore, when you end up doing something like that, you're going to find just this exuberant joy that comes upon you because you're doing what the Lord has you to do.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: We talked about stewardship in terms of money.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: Right, god owns our money.
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: God owns our time too, doing what the Lord has you to do.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: We talked about stewardship in terms of money.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Right, god owns our money, but God owns our time too, and you have to understand that.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: You have to look at your time and say what am I doing with it?
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: The Christian who loves the Lord, when he thinks of retirement, says Lord, how can I redeem that time?
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: And that's biblical right.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: See, then, ephesians 5, 15 to 16, that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time right.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: See, then, ephesians 5, 15 to 16, that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time right.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: That means buy it up, take it and redeem it so that you can then use it for what really matters.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So, friends, I hope that you've been encouraged today to recognize that if you live to that stage of life where you're able to disconnect from your normal vocation, there is so much to do.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: People are sitting in hospital beds, lonely, dying.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: There are kids that are in different institutions because they don't have parents, that need big brothers and big sisters.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: There are lost people all around your neighborhood.
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: And there are people coming out of Walmart and you could have your table there with Christian books on it.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah get a dog, get it some sunglasses.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Get a hole in your beard, it's the cover of his book man, I'm like, yeah, right, but who said it?
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Do something, do something, do something.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: That was Spurgeon.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: Spurgeon, societies and unions are making constitutions.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Let us win soul, yeah.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: Friends, we value your time, so we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Without the jokes and fellowship.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaterstv.