Even To Your Old Age

Isaiah 46:4 ESV "Even to your old age I am he, and to Grey hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and I will save."

I just turned 60 years old this year, and I work as a painter, a very physical and demanding job. Some days I come home exhausted and weary of mind, and my body aches everywhere. I had a ten hour day like that yesterday, but I woke up this morning and the Lord gave me this verse from Isaiah. What a promise! what a blessing to know that I He has everything under control, and I am his forever. (that's not presumptuousness on my part, that's confidence in His grace and faithfulness!)

It is a great comfort to know that I will grow old with the grace and mercy of God looking after me and protecting me. Just as he has kept me alive this long, and has brought me through many dark and disappointing days, my God has promised to 'carry' me through this life, and into glory.

Even on those days when we feel useless and decrepit, He is in our corner, at our side, and In the heart of the believer. He has said "I will never leave you or forsake you", and " I will be with you to the end of the age".

As an ignorant new believer, a helpless child, God led me and protected me through many trials and failures, and I am still here in His service, 40 years later, because of His faithfulness and grace. I expect that he will carry me and lead me until I die and go to the Jerusalem Above, where I will see him face to face and stand before his throne with all the saints who have gone on before me.

Ps.92:12-15 ESV "the righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the Lord is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him."

The born-again Christian is righteousness because of the finished work of the cross. We can continue to grow in Him, as we drink from his endless supply of Living Water. This grace in which we stand (Rom. 5:1,2) is a free gift from our heavenly Father. We flourish in His courts because we are in Christ and seated with Him in the heavenly places.(Eph 1:3, and Col.3:1-3)

We can continue to bear fruit in our old age, because Christ lives in us, and we are in Him! Eternal life flows through us and will carry us through this mortal life, and into eternity, where mortality will be swallowed up by immortality.

The hope that we have, is not 'wishful thinking', it is a confident expectation that God will complete what He has started! Christ in us, is our hope of glory (Col.1:27). Just as surely as Jesus is our Savior and His Spirit is in us, we are assured of a home in glory! Our sin has been washed away by His blood, and is no longer imputed to us (2 Cor. 5:18-21).

Like trees of righteousness filled with the sap of his grace, and rooted in the person of Jesus Christ, we can flourish and bear fruit into and beyond our old age. We won't always feel fruitful, but our faith and hope are in Him and we can remain always confident of His faithfulness.

God Bless you, as you rest in His grace!

©2012 Rev. charles J. Loubert