“LENGTH OF AGE OR QUALITY OF LIFE?”
BY: J.FARRELL FISHER, NOV. 11-13, 2017
“Length of age”? At the present time period, I’m 81 years of age on my way to 82 in about 7 months, having outlived “Papa” Fisher who died at 78 and my father, Jim Fisher, who died at 78 years of age! I think I have more Lemons’ genes than Fishers because “Pappa” Lemons lived to about 94; oh, and my Dad’s mother lived to 102! So in physical ‘age-traits’, I have some of both sides of the family. But, when it comes to “quality of life”, that, my friends, is a huge question mark, because I do not see “length of age” as a legitimate indication of “quality of life”!
As a pastor of churches for over twenty years and then missions for another twenty-five years, I witnessed some ‘children’ age-wise who understood and lived out the vibrant ‘quality of life’ even stronger than many aged-men who ‘professed’ faith but had no “Fire” in their bones! I’m all in for a lengthy ‘length of age’, but it’s Holy God on the Throne who can ‘end’ or ‘extend’ as He sovereignly chooses!
It may be that with the psalmist we need to learn, rest in, and live by: “This is the day the Lord has made; I will rejoice and be glad in it!” In Psalm 119:33 the psalmist said: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of Your statutes, and I shall keep it to the end,” even requesting in Verses 34-37, “Give me understanding, and I shall keep Your law; (In Old Testament days, the “law” was engraved on stones to be observed; in New Testament days, the “law” is engraved on our hearts and in our minds!); indeed, I shall observe it with my whole heart.
Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, for I delight in it. Incline my heart to Your testimonies, and not to covetousness. Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things. And revive me in Your way.”
“Revive me in Your way?” For Holy God who IS the Almighty on the Throne, is His concern for YOU the length of your age OR the quality of your life? Do you realize that Holy God knows what HAS your mind, heart, and spirit of life, whether it’s the worthless or valuable quality of life?
Interesting passage in 2 Chronicles 1:11-12! Then God said to Solomon, “Because this was in your heart, and you have not asked riches or wealth or honor or the life of your enemies, nor have you asked for long life – but have asked wisdom and knowledge for yourselves, that you may judge My people over whom I have made you king – wisdom and knowledge are granted to you; (Is God ‘the same’ yesterday, today, and tomorrow?); wisdom and knowledge are granted to you; and I will give you riches and wealth and honor, such as none of the kings have had who were before you, nor shall any after you have the like.” [Are there “The Chosen” and the “Not chosen”?].
Question! “Is there STILL God examining our “hearts” to see what truly has them, whether His eternal purpose or our fleshly pleasures, His eternal design or our instinctive, fleshly aims and ambitions, His eternal PLAN or our ‘self-determined’ desires, ambitions, or ‘self-centered’ awards?” HOLY GOD NEVER CHANGES – the “same, yesterday, today, and forever”! Are you a “stickler” for old age, but void concerning submission and obedience to the King of kings and His instructive Word for true disciples?
It was G.A.Young in the 1930’s who wrote a hymn entitled “God leads us Along”. It says: “In shady green pastures, so rich and so sweet, Where the water’s cool flow bathes the weary ones feet, God leads His dear children along.
Sometimes on the mount where the sun shines so bright, God leads His dear children along; Sometimes in the valley, the darkest of night, God leads His dear children along.
Tho’ sorrows befall us, and Satan oppose us, God leads His dear children along; Thru grace we can conquer, defeat all our foes, God leads His dear children along.
Away from the mire and away from the clay, Away up in glory in eternity’s day, God leads His dear children along.
Some thru the waters, some thru the flood, Some thru the fire, but all thru the blood; Some thru great sorrow, but God gives a song, In the night season and all the day long.”
What has really been the testimony of your “faith walk In Christ” or your “faith walk without Him”? Joshua had questions for all men but especially to those of “professing faith” or of “possessing faith”? Joshua 24:14-15 we read: “Now therefore, fear the Lord, serve Him in sincerity and in truth, and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the River and in Egypt. Serve the Lord! And if it seems evil to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Hear me! Every man, woman, and child is “led” to believe and does serve some kind of god! There are ‘gods’ and there IS the one, true, Living God who desires to be worshipped, blessed, and served by “sold-out” servants TO the King of kings and Lord of lords, not to the gods of men’s flesh-minded inventions! There are vague, ‘flesh-adorned’ thoughts of God but they don’t draw anywhere near to Biblical Truth, though the proponents would argue until their dying days their position is Biblical Truth “whether God likes it or not”!
Even atheists and unbelievers have “theologies” whether they’d ever admit it or not! There are “graced theologies” and “gritted theologies” – that’s men under God’s administration or men under their “best effort” mentality! There is INTERSECTION with God and man, but also there is INSURRECTION because some oppose any relationship with Holy God, and especially if ‘beginning’ is through “the shed blood of the Lamb of God and Him alone!”
Lives without Christ as Lord and Savior and Master of the “new-born” life are men and women, boys and girls, strongly influenced by devilish activity, choosing their “own tents” with no recognition of accountability before Holy God the Creator and Redeemer! For the spiritually unborn, they choose a fragmented ‘faith’ that has no responsibility before the God who made them, lost them, and even bought them out of their ‘bondage, but choose to live “on my own”! And if one shuts Holy God out, they open the door to buy into anything their fleshly mind and will can allow, and does – and the eternal “death-nail” is ready to shut the eternal door tight, away from God, if the Intercessor is not allowed to intervene! (And do you understand? Even in Protestantism, some believers have ‘professed’ Christ while they walk with one foot on the path of faith and the other foot firmly given over to “flesh avenue” – and in the Holy Word, that doesn’t soar into heavenly places!).
But the question of this moment in YOUR journey: “Length of Age or Quality of Life?” In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 is a convicting word that no doubt related to ‘early Jewish believers’ before and during Paul’s time of ministry but has a challenging Word for men today in our modern times since “All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable to all men…!” It says:
“But know this, that in the last days (of Judaism?) perilous times will come: (I’m 81 years of age – and without a doubt, I say to you, WE are living in perilous times!) For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents (especially students (some), before school teachers today, because many come from one parent homes!), unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!”
In our ‘modern-day’ there is far more emphasis on “Length of Age” than there is on “Quality of Life”, understanding that I am using “Quality of Life” as THE WAY OF LIFE in and through repentance toward God and faith in Christ Jesus’ finished work in and through the Cross and His Empty Tomb Resurrection! There’s a challenge in Ephesians 6:3 about honoring your father and mother which says, “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” And, certainly, but sadly, there are those who had fathers and mothers who lived ‘long lives’ but were spiritually faithless in that long journey. At the same time, I also say, there are those whose parents lived victoriously the “Life in and through Christ” and were faithful examples to their children.
Having come from a broken home, my parents divorcing when I was three years of age – and I was taken by my mother to her parents who cared for me for nine years when my mother married again, and I was taken to live with her and my step-father. But my grandparents had two other daughters still at home, one only three years older than me and the other about ten years older than me – and besides my faithful grandparents, their two daughters still at home became dynamic Christian witnesses, nurturing me strongly in the “true faith”!
Paul also said, in Ephesians 6:4, “And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Tell me: “How do fathers bringing up their children today ‘in the training and admonition of the Lord’ sound to you? Does it ring a familiar or strange tone in your life and early relationships with family or lack of it or a reminder of your blessings of true spiritual nurturing?” Sad to say, my father was never in my home after I married and raised three sons and a daughter? If I saw him, I traveled thirty miles from one city to where his business was his entire adult life – but never in my home or never desiring to see his grandchildren. My Dad lived to be 78 years of age, but “quality of life”? Little evidence of a deep or abiding love of the Lord Jesus Christ –it shows in abiding love and concern for your own and for those who need the introduction to Christ’s passionate love for the “lost” and “unredeemed”!
Interesting verses in Deuteronomy 32:3-6! The “song of Moses” says: “For I proclaim the name of the Lord: Ascribe greatness to our God. He is the Rock, His work is perfect. For all His ways are justice, a God of truth and without injustice; righteous and upright is He. They (the, yes, ‘unbelieving Jews’) have corrupted themselves; they are not His children, because of their blemish; a perverse and crooked generation. Do YOU thus deal with the Lord, O foolish and unwise people?”
Oh, and what you’ve just read is followed by Verses 15-20!! “But Jeshuran (‘religious’ but unredeemed Israelites!) grew fat and kicked; you grew fat, you grew thick, you are obese! Then he forsook God who made him, and scornfully esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods; with abominations they provoked Him to anger. They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they did not know, to new gods, new arrivals that your fathers did not fear. Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the God who fathered you. AND WHEN THE LORD SAW IT, HE SPURNED THEM, because of the provocations of His sons and daughters. And He said: “I will hide My face from them, I will see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faith.” [Do YOU see “faith” as true obedience or simply a ‘religious’ mind-set with no “new-birth”?].
Parenting today? Whether by both parents or one, at least those who have responsibility for the children at least have a concern that they learn about “length of Days”, but not as many as there once was who are, yes, truly devoted to their children’s spiritual “Quality of Life” in nurturing them, bringing them up in the biblical “admonitions” of “blood-bought lives” as “devoted, yielded servants of the King of kings and Lord of lords”, yes, regenerated, born-again, Spirit-filled disciples of Christ Jesus!
“Quality of Life” under the administration of the Resurrected Christ, by the Indwelling Holy Spirit, and by the “daily manna” of the milk and meat of the Word of God, plus the “care”, yes, of spiritual brothers and sisters of the Lord’s true “family of faith”?
It was Thomas Jefferson of historic American ‘birthing’ who once said: “Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever He had a chosen people, whose breasts He has made His peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue.” When I read his comment, I wondered, “How many believers today truly see themselves as “the chosen people of God”, set apart by His grace, mercy, and love, to extend His LIFE, to express His LOVE, and to prove His POWER?” That’s like John Steinbeck’s comment years ago who said, “We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent” – and certainly fallen mankind, on his own, cannot graciously ‘create’ “new birth” with “new resurrection life” ordained for God’s “eternal purpose” but exists only with a ‘divided personality’ unaware of their “world” split apart and separated from God’s aim of “vessels” overflowing with His Holy Presence and Purposes as He outlines a “servant of Christ”, yes, every step! DO YOU LIVE IN SUBSTANTIAL AND GENUINE VIRTUE?
The “TLB” translation of the Bible (“The Living Bible”) in Proverbs 8:18-21 says, God speaking, “Unending riches, honor, justice, and righteousness are mine to distribute. My gifts are better than the purest gold or sterling silver! Those who love and follow Me are indeed wealthy. I fill their treasuries.”
Are YOU aware that Holy God, through Christ Jesus, through His Holy Spirit, and through His Holy Word “sustains” and “keeps His own”? Receive Psalm 37:23-26!! It says: “The steps of a good man are ordered (established or made to stand by Him!) by the Lord, and He delights in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down; for the Lord upholds him with His hand. I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread. He is ever merciful, and lends; and his descendants are blessed.”
Yet how many do you know or have witnessed, locally or nation-wide, whose ‘witness’ about God’s and Christ Jesus’s and the Holy Spirit’s “divine revelation” as simply ‘moral relativism’ or “try your best”, rather than receiving, repenting, and resting in “the mercies of God”? I read recently David Wells, in his book, “No Place For Truth”, who said: (p.59), speaking about godless men and their “illusions of progress”, without God’s Grace (!), saying:
“Yet it is interesting that the illusions of progress that went hand in hand with these (fleshly, humanistic, man-made interpretations!) ideologies have managed to live on despite the fact that the ideologies themselves are now hiding in embarrassment or have already passed onto the junk heap of history.” And there’s a reason for that: Wells went on!
“What is it, then, that accounts for the tenacity of the belief? It is not that contemporary people are self-consciously utopian, at least not in obvious ways. No, it is not ideology that seems to fuel this fire but “experience”. More specifically, it is the experience of science. It is the experience of a world made over by technology in which the prospects of conquering disease, discomfort, and distance are large and the expectations of limitless improvement are themselves unlimited. It is this conquest, Christopher Lasch thinks, that has given to science its current aura of immortality and, with that, the immortality of what drives it, the belief in progress.”
“Let’s lengthen their days – that’s the vital thing!” Really? Lengthened days without God’s grace and mercy? Lengthened days apart from eternal purpose? Lengthened days apart from “new-born Life in the Spirit”? Lengthened days apart from the miracle of resurrection life and hope but guided by one’s self-conscious utopia? Fleshly betterment through social self-improvement apart from the miracle of God’s power to “raise up the spiritually dead” just as He raised His Son Jesus from the grave to reign eternally in and through your transformed life? “Lengthened days” OR God’s Gift of His “Quality of Life” in and through Christ alone?
I close with “The Living Bible” translation of Hebrews 11:13-16 which says: “These men of faith…agreed that this earth was not their real home but that they were just strangers visiting down here…they were looking forward to their real home in heaven. If they had wanted to, they could have gone back to the good things of this world. But they didn’t want to. They were living for heaven. And now God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has made a heavenly city for them.” In fact, “His Kingdom has come, on earth, as it is in heaven”, and “in Christ” you live gloriously in and through Christ Jesus’ Resurrection Presence extending His Kingdom Rule, releasing His Kingdom Power, and celebrating daily His Kingdom Purpose! Yes, it’s “To God Be the Glory”!!