Live As An Example

"God would have our final years be joyful and peaceful, a fulfillment."

OUR LEGACY is in our children, who need us to live long, joyful lives. We get the children part, how they are our posterity. We speak about blessing the next generation, about setting forth all the future generation needs. But we miss that they need us. And for as long as we can live as an example on this earth.

There is no place to give up on our lives, for us to settle for lesser, then to simply say they must somehow live beyond us. If my parents hadn’t set me an example, if my aunts and uncles hadn’t loved me, my grandparents on either side, if my pastors hadn’t poured into me, then I’d be in a mess. All I am and all I know comes from adults who took the time to speak into my life. In this same way, I pour into my daughter’s life and into the lives of others around me. I must live a long life for her sake.

We give up on life as we age, but this is not God’s desire for us. Psalm 91:16 says, “With long life will I satisfy him.” This has two sides to it. That we will be SATISFIED with the QUALITY of our long life, AND that we will be SATISFIED to HAVE long life in the first place. Our lives in our 80s and 90s should be just as beautiful as in our younger years, only now, we are surrounded by the evidences of all we have sown. Here, with us, are our children and grandchildren, looking up to us for what we have learned. And what do they learn if we choose to crumble and die? God would have our final years be joyful and peaceful, a fulfillment.

There are moments in life which require fighting. Not against the devil, because Jesus de-feeted him. But against ourselves. We must renew our mind, or change our thinking, to reflect what God has promised. The Spirit in our spirit has produced much good fruit by the time we have reached our senior years. We should know it and see it. We should rejoice in that we HAVE aged and in WHAT our lives have grown around us. Not worried about creaking knees and feebleness of mind, but instead, being strong in God. Just as Moses was without physical weakness and had all of his eyesight at age 120, so is God to us (Deuteronomy 34:7). Let’s not settle for less because we age but reach out for all that the end of our blessed lives have given us.

And let’s do so, so that our children and our children’s children can say, after we’ve gone, “I’m going to be just like my grandfather, like my grandmother.” All because we sustained ourselves well with them in mind.

“And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated.” (Deuteronomy 34:7)

“Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.” (Proverbs 17:6)

Image by Sabrina Belle from Pixabay


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com