How Old Are You?
Let’s face it. Let’s be honest with ourselves and with everyone else. We are blessed. Even in our most challenging of situations, our difficult circumstances and our stressed relationships, we are blessed. To view our life as anything less than extremely blessed is to allow ourselves to focus down to the narrowest of perspectives and to ignore the totality of our lives. Bad things happen to good people. How are we to address and to regard our challenges?
2 Corinthians 4:8-18 English Standard Version (ESV):
8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.
13 Since we have the same spirit of faith according to what has been written, “I believed, and so I spoke,” we also believe, and so we also speak, 14 knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and bring us with you into his presence. 15 For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.
16 So we do not lose heart. Though our “outer self” [a] is wasting away, our “inner self” is being renewed day by day. 17 For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, 18 as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.
We must understand eternity and our eternalness to correctly comprehend what success for humanity really is.
How old are you? This scripture says that our outer self is “wasting away.” Our body is aging and physically, time challenges and diminishes the strength and capability of our body. Our body ages. But, our “inner self”, our spirit man, the eternal us who will never die, is being renewed day by day. The real us is as strong and as capable as we have ever been. Our mind, the gatekeeper and the part of us who chooses who will decide what thoughts and what actions control our lives in time, must be programmed to agree with what our Creator says and has said. Our spirit does not age. Our spirit does not get old and lose capacity. So, how old are you really? The real you that does not die but lives forever. How does this perspective impact the living of our lives in time? While our outer self diminishes and loses strength and ability, our inner self should increase in strength and in ability. We have the ability to develop our inner self continually and to gain capacity in the forever realm of who we really are. With this knowledge we have the ability to develop the wisdom of application in the most important part of who we are, the eternal us.
