It's All About Me

Two totally unrelated things happened this week that have me wondering about … well, me. The first was the reaction of a friend who did a small freak-out because he is going to turn 40 – in a couple of weeks. He didn’t do anything stupid: no red, sports car; no three-day blow binge; he didn’t start dating self-destructive, early-20s girls … all he did was just check out from “stuff” for a several days and got depressed. I have a lot in common with this friend – we have similar hobbies; we have kids about the same age, and battle some of the same problems. So, since I am turning 40 (in September), I began to wonder if I would have the same kind of reaction.

I am getting middle-aged (wait – I am already there). I’m not the kind of person who thinks of themselves as old (or even middle-aged). I am very much a kid at heart and try and stay young. But, there’s no doubt that I can’t work a 12 hour shift in a Wendy’s and then go and play basketball until 4AM with my friends from the crew; catch 4 hours of sleep and pull another 12 hour shift. I certainly can’t do that over a week. What used to be my amazing eye-sight (20/5) has become 20/25 over the last several years. It annoys me that I can’t read the streets signs before everyone else.

Event Number Two: Monday night, I went to a seminar about prayer and praise. It was *really great*. His talk/practice was about “Worship driven prayer”. You should check him out if you have any desire to never go to a “same old, same old” prayer meeting again. http://www.navpress.com/Store/Product/1576836878.html

Toward the end of the evening, he asked everyone under 30 to raise their hands. Since the event was hosted at Thomas Road Baptist Church, it has a lot of kids from Liberty University there – there was a lot of “young people” (wasn’t I just one of those?). He then asked for “the old people” (I’m not sure if those were his words or not) to go and lay hands on the young ones. As I looked around the room, God pointed out a guy to me – he was a college-aged guy and I was lead to pray for him. I’m not really sure what I prayed for the guy; I am pretty sure that I didn’t pray in the Spirit – out of respect for the place where I was. But, I felt the power of God flowing from me to him.

I guess that it had not really hit me that part of “not being young” was that I had something to offer that I didn’t have when I was younger.

You’d think that being a father would have made that pretty clear; apparently not. I need something – or maybe someone – other than my own life and kids to make that apparent.

So – to sum up: getting older isn’t so bad. It’s just different. Still, I miss my eye-sight.

I have started reading the Bible through. And, so you can keep score at home, I thought that I would add an update about where I am. Today I ended my readings with Numbers 20.

I’m listening to Toby Mac – Welcome to Diverse City.

Peace - Andy