Moving out of full-time work is repurpose-ment, not retire-ment. It is a time to repurpose how and why we invest our time, energy, wisdom, experience, and resources. The goal should be to finish life well. Being a good steward of this phase of life will not occur unless we are prepared with a proactive, well-grounded, and thoughtful vision. Be intentional and expectant about having your life experiences and wisdom being used providentially in the lives of others.

My new Human Resources/Medicare employment identity is “Working Aged.” Ok, sure, I get it—as in elderly, feeble, decrepit, ancient, debilitated, worn out and shot. Yes, I am 64 and approaching retirement age, but what a dispiriting designation.  If I continue to work beyond 65, what will they call me next, the “Working Dead?”
Is my true usefulness over? I get the message—you are old and your ability to contribute has been significantly compromised. It’s time to pack it in and go for a cup of coffee and a McMuffin in the morning with other aimless folks in the same boat and then watch TV the rest of the day. You have reaped the rewards of your hard work by being put out to the proverbial purposeless pasture. Upon retirement, my colleagues will send me off with congratulations, confirming that I have earned this final useless chapter of my life. Really?
Something does not seem right; this strikes me as a misguided and hollow outlook.
The bluntness of being called the “working aged” has prompted some healthy reflection on the concept of retirement. What is retirement, anyway?
The Book of Numbers contains the only passage in the Scriptures that specifies an age limit for work. The Levites, the priestly class in the Old Testament, were to withdraw from their formal duties at the age of 50. The Levites performed many crucial spiritual functions pointing the Israelites to God, but they also, as an example, performed construction, maintenance, lifting, and transporting duties related to the tabernacle. There is a time when an aging body is not suited for a particular work. But this transition, described in Numbers, involves “assisting their brothers” in other ways. The purpose was not to “retire” the priests, but to redirect their expected service in a more mature direction. Their Godly wisdom, discernment, and experience was intentionally and purposefully utilized. Nowhere in the Bible does it mention that we should stop working.
An American creation, the age 65 modern retirement idea of pleasure and leisure came into being in the 1950s. It says relax, rest, and put those feet up to enjoy a carefree and work-free life. This line of thinking has indoctrinated us into believing that retirement involves completely withdrawing from any notion of work in order to have no obligations, commitments, or concerns. This is not God’s intention for us. Intentional work is part of the Lord’s lifelong design for us. Our multi-faceted and continuous vocational callings have no age limitations. Christians never retire from serving God through all the seasons of life. We are to grow and invest in our gifts and talents, while simultaneously looking for opportunities to serve. Time is a gift, and we are to redeem each day by glorifying God, serving the common good, and furthering His kingdom. There is true dignity and consequence in laboring in His vineyard until He calls us home. This call to service remains the same throughout our lives and is an expression of Christ’s love to others. Retirement is not a time for self-serving idleness.
Moving out of full-time work is repurpose-ment, not retire-ment. It is a time to repurpose how and why we invest our time, energy, wisdom, experience, and resources.
The goal should be to finish life well. Being a good steward of this phase of life will not occur unless we are prepared with a proactive, well-grounded, and thoughtful vision. Be intentional and expectant about having your life experiences and wisdom being used providentially in the lives of others.
Do not let age define your life. Author Richard J. Leider states that “the trouble is, when a number—your age—becomes your identity, you’ve given away your power to choose your future.”
The Lord’s call does not fade over time but summons us to the high calling of life-long, meaningful service to Him.
Age with purpose.
Dr. Jim Thrasher is the Senior Advisor to the Vice President for Student Recruitment and the coordinator of the Institute for Faith & Freedom’s working group on calling. This article is used with permission.
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Steady fathers clothe themselves with love and let Christ’s peace rule in their hearts (Colossians 3:14–15). The peace of Christ is the root of Christian sober-mindedness. He is our peace. He is our stability. He is the sure and steadfast anchor of our souls. And a godly father who welcomes the peace of Christ in his heart is empowered to be a sober-minded anchor for his family. The peace of Christ enables him to be a spiritual harbor for them in the storms and trials of life.
Fathers are called to provide for and protect their households. To do this well, they must be sober-minded and stable men who lead their families with gladness, fortitude, wisdom, and resilience.
To provide literally means “to see before.” Thus, a key element of provision is anticipation. A dad is responsible to anticipate the needs, threats, and temptations in his household. His goal is to have clarity about the issues facing his family, coupled with a readiness to act with wisdom to address them.
And he does not do so by himself. In seeking this clarity for the sake of provision, a father does well to remember that he has been given a helper precisely for this purpose. Together, they will see more than if they try to see alone. A faithful father welcomes the insights and wisdom of his wife concerning the needs of the family.
Fathers with Sober Minds
A common pitfall in a father’s leadership is defensiveness in response to his wife’s insights, comments, and encouragements to act. Say a mother sees a pattern of sin forming in her son’s life. She brings it to her husband’s attention, wanting him to do something about it. He gets defensive, or blows up, or shuts down, or shifts blame. All of these reactions display a lack of sober-mindedness.
This is true regardless of whether his wife brings the issue to his attention in a helpful way. Say that the sin in the kids has awakened fear in her. She knows that little sins, when left unchecked, become big sins. Little sinners, if left unchecked, grow up to be big sinners. And so, she brings this to her husband’s attention with some anxiety, agitation, and (perhaps) frustration that the sin has festered as long as it has.
Such situations call for stable sober-mindedness. At a basic level, sober-mindedness is the opposite of drunkenness (1 Thessalonians 5:6–8). Drunkenness refers to the physical, cognitive, and moral impairment caused by drinking too much alcohol. Drunkenness negatively affects one’s judgment, frequently leading to other sins. Those who are drunk don’t see clearly, nor do they stand firmly, nor do they act wisely.
Crucially, alcohol is not the only intoxicant. Passions too, whether ours or others, can cloud our judgment and hinder wise action. Under the influence of passions, we become reactive and tossed to and fro. Again, we get defensive, blow up, shut down, or shift blame.
Therefore, to be sober-minded is to see with clarity, stand with stability, and act with wisdom. Sober-minded men govern their own passions, and thus they are able to absorb and endure the passions, reactions, and agitations of others.
Making a Resilient Dad
Where does such sober-mindedness come from? In my own life, I frequently return to Colossians 3:12–17 as a way of building sober-minded resilience into my soul. So let us consider the passage, not merely as a word to all Christians, but as a word applied particularly to husbands and fathers.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, October 6, 2024
If you don’t actively embed habits into your life then they won’t get there any other way. It takes, depending on who you ask, between three and seven weeks to form a habit. Once they’re formed they last until a strange sequence breaks them, and then they need forming again. Discipline your life, like an athlete or soldier (1 Corinthians 9, 2 Timothy 2), and you will reap rewards. Decide what you’re going to do. Tell someone about it. Make a start. Fail. Keep going even after failing. The rewards are worth reaping. Will Jesus love you more? No. But will you love him more? Yes, I think so.

I’ve argued that we’re in a discipleship crisis in the charismatic church in the UK. Friends from wider spheres of evangelical churches in the UK and elsewhere seem to agree. I’ve tried to plot some sense of what that looks like and why that might be the case. We’ve explored a model of formation, seeing the importance of doctrine, duty, and devotion (or head, hands, heart).
In the charismatic world we do well with the devotion side of things, but less well on the other two. I’m hoping to write slowly through a list of things that might help. None of these are solutions, and I keep emphasising that because we’re prone to machine thinking—if we do x we’ll get y result—and neither people nor the faith are mechanistic. Instead, I hope they are suggestions that could shape a community together over time.
They fall under three headings, which are my real prescription of a way forward in this particular cultural moment: Embedding Habits, Thickening Communities, and Stretching Minds.
Embedding Habits I
There are three kinds of habits we need to embed at the three layers of ‘society’ that the church usually thinks in: individually, in the household (or community), and in the church. I think we could think about what habits of life in cities or nations look like, but I don’t think most readers have access to levers there so I’m not going to touch on them.
We start individually, looking at what someone like John Mark Comer would call ‘a rule of life.’ He’s drawing on the old monastic traditions that would require monks to subscribe to a rule: a set of conditions that the community was formed around with each monk adhering to. Essentially, I’m arguing that each Christian should consider carefully how they can embed particular habits into their life in order to submit all of their life to Christ.
Before we turn to what that could look like, I’d like to address two objections. Firstly, someone might point out that monastic communities were a very small percentage of mediaeval Christians and whether we think that phenomenon good or bad, surely it isn’t for everyone? The thing is, in countries like the UK where evangelical Christianity is a small minority of people, we’re all monks now. I also don’t expect every Christian to do this, or any of my other suggestions. Every way we can shift the temperature of Christian faith in local churches will involve doing so with a small number of those in our congregations whose consciences are in some way pricked by the Spirit. While that could cause division if done badly, a good aim is turning a small number ‘hot’ in order to raise the general temperature a little. Think of them like early adopters on a technology adoption curve.
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