Maturing With Age.

Dr D Martyn LLoyd-Jones tells this rare story.

"I remember once - forgive me for giving a personal story, I do it in order to illustrate my point - I remember I was preaching in a certain part of the country and staying with a man who was the Chairman of the Education Committee of his county. We were invited by the headmaster of the local grammar school to address the children in the afternoon. On the platform, I made this older man speak first, before me. He was a jovial type of man, and he did what I anticipated he would do. He looked at the children and said, 'Boys and girls, what wouldn't I give if I could only be back where you are! That was a wonderful time! Oh to be a boy again! I am an old man now, and if I could only go back, I would give the whole world!'

 

Well, when my time came, I said the exact opposite. I said, 'Boys and girls, I thank God I am not sitting where you are! I thank God, because I can tell you life gets better as it goes on.'

And it can. I meant it. I still mean it. But there is a negative attitude that comes even into the Christian life, and it is wrong, it is a denial. The Old Testament is clear about this. Here is the psalmist, writing under the old dispensation, and this is how he puts it: 'The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing' (Psalm 92:12-14). (Did you know before where the expression 'fat and flourishing' came from?)".