Real Life Radio

Jack Hibbs: Be it far from me to sin against God and not pray for you. Isn't that a great attitude? Grandma, will you pray for me? How great for a grandma or a grandpa to say, "I've never stopped praying for you. I would never sin against God, sweetheart, and stop praying for you." Do you know what that will do to a kid? That will galvanize them in life. That will strengthen them.

David J: Welcome to Real Life Radio with Pastor Jack Hibbs. I'm David J, thanking you for joining us today as we listen, learn, and are challenged by God's word, the Bible.

Jack Hibbs: Have you ever thought about what's after life? Do you know that the Bible teaches life is after life? If you know the Lord Jesus Christ, my good friend Phil De Courcy has written a great book, and that's the title: *Life After Life: Exploring the Bible's Wonderful Promises About Heaven and Eternity*, published by Harvest House Publishers. Get a copy for yourself.

*Life After Life* by Phil De Courcy, exploring the Bible's promises about heaven and eternity. It's available for a gift of any amount at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com.

David J: On today's edition of Real Life Radio, Pastor Jack continues his series called *Disciplines of Life* with a message titled "Disciplines of Declining Days." In times when culture and morality seem to decline, we need to strengthen our habits like prayer and Bible study, and especially our trust in God.

Spiritual disciplines help us keep our faith grounded and purposeful. Rather than being discouraged by social decline, we find confidence and direction by focusing on Christ's authority and by obeying God's word.

Pastor Jack teaches that the days of declining activity are to be met with days better spent, and our days of declining numbers are to be met with words that bring new life. Are you older? Then your wise words are needed, and maybe those wise words are what you do if you had to do it all over again. Now, with his message called "Disciplines of Declining Days," here's Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs.

Jack Hibbs: This culture knows more than ever. Money's evaporating, houses are going away, power is being lost. All these must give way to reality. The reality is that very simple things are the things that last. The value of relationships is what matters in the latter days and, ultimately, your relationship with Jesus. In the end, the old ways, the ancient ways, they prevail. God's ways.

This is one of the hardest things to teach or pass on in life as our days decline. I don't mean this to be an insult by any means. Please receive this as instruction. There's something about being young that's very dangerous. Let me tell you a little secret. You send the young guys to war. You never see a general running into battle unless he's George Washington.

The generals are usually older guys, really smart, and they've realized how valuable life is. So they're back in the control center. You send the young guy out on the front line. Why? Because he doesn't think he's going to die. Young guys think they're invincible. That's why you send them to war first. You put all the young guys up front: "You go, go, go!"

All the old guys are in the back saying, "Pray, pray, pray." There is a sense of the human heart and spirit with a young man or a young woman. Here's the tough part: it's hard to teach them anything because when you're young, you think you know everything. It is, no doubt, part of the fall of man. You try to tell somebody and they ask, "Are you done?"

Then they go do that thing and they fall off the cliff. They're down at the bottom crying, and you say to them, "I told you." It's a hard thing. Inexperience, immaturity—it's hard to teach young people. Yet it's the very thing that needs to happen. As resources decline, we need to pass on the spirit of deeper things: the things that will last, the stuff of God.

Wouldn't it be amazing if young people really trusted some old guy or old gal who said, "Now listen to me. You do this and you try this and you watch this, and you come back next week and you tell me how it turned out." There's a movie that never got off the ground. It's a tragedy. I don't even think you may be able to rent it. Help me out here if you did see it.

I think it's called *The Gift*, maybe. It's with James Garner, I think. Does anyone remember? Nobody knows about it. I don't think anybody went and saw it but Lisa and I and a couple of people right here. You guys need to go rent it. Why? Because the values it teaches are awesome. Girls, go rent it because the guy in there, I was told, is really cute and handsome. So go rent it.

Watch what happens when the young guy decides to trust the old guy. It's awesome. It's very cool. I could've played it tonight. Just thought about it. It was just amazing. Go do it. 1 Samuel 12:20 says, "Then Samuel said to the people, 'Do not fear.'" Now he's an old man. "Don't fear. You have done all this wickedness; yet do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all of your heart."

What a grandpa! "And do not turn aside; for then you will go after empty things which cannot profit or deliver, for they are nothing. For the Lord will not forsake His people, for His great name's sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you His people. Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you; but I will teach you the good and the right way."

That's an old man now, in latter years. Listen to what Samuel is saying. Is that not beautiful? This was spoken during his retirement. The days of declining activity are to be met with days better spent. You say, "Well, I don't get out much anymore, don't do much." Your days are to be spent in a better way then.

Samuel just said a moment ago, "Be it far from me to sin against God and not pray for you." Isn't that a great attitude? Grandma, will you pray for me? How great for a grandma or a grandpa to say, "I've never stopped praying for you. I would never sin against God, sweetheart, and stop praying for you." Do you know what that will do to a kid? That will galvanize them in life. That will strengthen them.

Have you ever gone to one of those places? Usually, it's like novelty type shops or places. We were in Solvang when we did it. We did the little genealogy search. I did one on mine and apparently I come from a long line of idiots or something. But up in about 1840, there was a blip on the screen of hope where my grandmother, who I only met once in life for just a couple of days, her dad was a pastor in Europe, in Germany.

Then I find out that my grandmother, on my dad's side, that I'd only met for a few days, the whole family couldn't stand her. They didn't like her because she was a Christian. Starting to feel my roots! I wonder, I'm only wondering, was she a praying woman? Did she pray for the salvation of her family? Let me think. I got saved. I only met her a few days in my entire life when I was nine.

But you know what? I got saved. And then my brother gave his heart to the Lord, my sister got saved, my mom got saved, and then my dad got saved. That would have been his mom. Could she have been praying? Could she maybe have thought, "I'm not going to sin and stop praying"? Is somebody praying in your life? Are you praying for someone in your life for them?

Samuel now is out of the limelight of ministry. He's got no entourage anymore, no more black donkeys pulling up and carrying him off. He's retired. And what does he do? He starts a ministry of prophets. He trains young men how to follow God. I'm going to give you this quote. I think it's pretty cool. It's been said that the spirited twenties press toward the tireless thirties, and the roaring forties and fifties make way for the sensible sixties, while the slacking seventies prepare to yield to the quiet eighties until the day comes.

Not for the believer. Listen to this. As we get older, we can pray giant prayers, even though we might shrivel in size. I'm going to give you a prayer of a man who you don't see often in this way. He's old now. He's very crippled from mistreatment. He's not very attractive according to church history. He's a very little man in stature. His eyes are extremely close together. He's got a very bald forehead and he's old now.

He's got a big hooked nose and extremely bow-legged with severe scars. He kind of looks like, I guess, a scary guy. His name is Paul the Apostle, the battle-hardened Apostle of Christ. He's writing from a cold, damp Roman prison. And he writes, "For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and on earth is named."

Do you think that matters to an old man who is alone now in prison? Family! He's talking family. "That He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man." Why? Because his outer man was almost dead. "That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love..."

He wrote another prayer from a Roman prison. "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you with all joy." Excuse me, sir, you're old, decrepit, and in jail. "With all joy! For your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ."

That's Paul. That's getting old. And we'll end with this. We're out of time. The disciplines of decline is the days of declining numbers are to be met with words that bring new life. Jacob spoke blessings in his old age. In Genesis 49:22, he speaks, "Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a well; his branches run over the wall."

Translated: "Joseph, your life is going to be blessed, everything you touch is going to turn to prosperity, and you're going to be so overabundant that people will be able even to take the benefits from your life as they pass by. Your life will be like a big tree that overflows." Jacob spoke that into a life. We rarely think of gray-haired apostles speaking into our lives.

That gray-haired man, Paul, also said in 2 Timothy 4:7, "I have fought the good fight." Wouldn't that have been beautiful? Just think right now. Think if we had that on the screens, if we had an old man who was kind of dressed up like how we think Paul might have looked, and he would be speaking to us kind of shaky, with his well-earned wrinkles and his gray hair: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally..." You hear that word, finally?

"Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not to me only but also to all who have..." Note this, mark it Bible students, "Who have loved His appearing." First and last time Paul ever mentions the imminent return of Christ in the sense that he was going to go meet Jesus, after all. Jesus was not going to pick him up.

That's the first time Paul ever admitted, "I'm going to go see Him." By the way, right after he wrote that, they cut his head off, which is amazing to me. "What the Lord has laid up for me, a crown of righteousness!" I'm wondering, I don't know, but I kind of know how the Bible works. I could almost hear a Roman executioner sharpening a blade. And Paul just writes down, "Oh, I've got to write this down. There's a crown laid up for my head!"

"Hey, stupid, your head's going to get cut off!" "Oh, no, no, except you may cut it off, but it's going to be right on my shoulders when I blink my next blink. I don't plan on being around here long, buddy." What an awesome man! When I say the decline of numbers, I mean when we don't have many days left. I don't mean few people.

This old guy wrote to the church at Rome, "We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose." What an attitude from an old guy! God's patriarchs are no longer distracted now in later years with the burdens of day-to-day problems of a business or of a ministry or of stuff. They're free from all that now.

Many of you are free from all this stuff now. You come to church because you thought you could kill time. Listen, you're needed. Last verse, Psalm 37:25, David said, "I've been young and now I'm old; I've never seen the righteous forsaken." What an awesome statement! We have to end. I'm out of time.

I appreciate that, but you guys listen, I hope tonight that if you're thinking, "Pastor, I'm getting on in years and when I start taking inventory," you start going through your drawers and you collect nickels and pennies that have been in your sock drawer for a hundred years, gathering some stuff, here's a cufflink from Grandpa Barney and whatever. Stop for a second and realize that spiritually we're supposed to do that.

We're supposed to open the drawers of our lives and look around and say, "Now wait a minute. Do you know how valuable this is?" If this is not going on in your life, listen: gray hair, wrinkles, no hair—listen, your days could just be starting now. "Well, Pastor Jack, I was thinking about this and I noticed we don't do it at the church and I'm wondering if..." That's how He gets things going.

You guys don't want to be around here if I live to be old, because I will have handed this thing off. I've already written it out. It's in writing. The board of this church at a certain time is instructed to replace me. I had that done. I'm not going to hang on to this thing. I'm going to start some old-timer ministry and drive you nuts around here. "Come on, let's go bungee jumping! Bungees for Jesus!"

Right? I mean think about it. I don't want to be standing here when I'm old. I want to go do something. The responsibilities are—let some young guy worry about all that stuff. No, come on man, you know what? We are going to get out of here and we're going to take our gray hair or no hair and we're going to go to Denny's at 4:00, and then from there we're going to go go-karting or do something crazy. Go-karting for Jesus. But listen, seriously, go for it.

Father, we come to You tonight and we thank You that the body of Christ is incredibly diverse. And I thank You, Lord, that You're not like any of the gods of Hollywood, where You only accept the offerings from about 18 to 25, and then everybody from 25 on is pumping up this and injecting this and implanting that to try to appease their gods. Thank You, You're not like that.

We think of the gods of Wall Street, massive, giant, brazen bull altar, where people spend their lives and have their life spent, and You're not like that. Tonight, Christians, eyes closed, heads bowed, Christians be praying right now. And if you're old, be praying hard. That someone tonight, maybe someone tonight, it's clicked with them that their life has been lived and it's not good.

Right here, right now, You would hear this: that Jesus Christ, the Bible declares Him to be God in human flesh, died on the cross, rose again from the dead for our sins, for the sins of the entire world. He was the sacrifice that we might go free. There's nothing fair about it, nothing fair at all. The innocent was tortured for the guilty. And the Bible says that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on your behalf, only if for you personally you accept that offer.

He died on the cross, He rose again from the dead, and most of us in this room benefit from that. But what about you? Heads are bowed and eyes are closed. No spectacle tonight, no embarrassment. But as I look across this sanctuary tonight, would you say yes to Jesus Christ? Would you say tonight, "Pastor Jack, I want my sins forgiven, I want Christ to take control of my life"?

Don't think tonight that if you're an old person that somehow either He doesn't want you or you're almost as old as God, so maybe He needs you. No, that's not true either. You need your sins forgiven, and Jesus called those that He called publicly. No one's looking around but me. Will you acknowledge Jesus Christ tonight as your Lord and Savior by just raising your hand?

Don't be shy and don't be bashful. God bless you to my left, you can put your hands down. God bless your hand right there to my left, in the very back God bless you, hands down. Anyone else? Those of you who raised your hands, pray this prayer:

Dear Lord, forgive me of my sins. I ask You now to write my name in Your book of life. Fill me with Your Holy Spirit, change my life, make me new. We ask in Jesus' name, oh God. In His name we pray. And all God's people said, amen.

David J: Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs, here on Real Life Radio, with his message called "Disciplines of Declining Days." We're glad you spent some time with us today. You know, this message is part of Pastor Jack's series called *Disciplines of Life*. It's a series that highlights the disciplines of a Christ-follower and the high cost of sharing our faith with others in a lost and broken world. And we'll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.

Today you heard an altar call at the end of the message, and I'd like to let you know that just because it was on the radio, it doesn't make it any less real. If you felt God move in your life today and you want to give your life to Jesus Christ, we'd love to know about it and we'd like to help you out with some resources.

Visit jackhibbs.com and there's a tab there that says "Know God." And there you'll be guided through what committing to Jesus Christ really means and the freedom that you'll find in knowing God. That's the "Know God" tab at our website, jackhibbs.com. One more time, jackhibbs.com.

Jack Hibbs: Hey, thank you again so much for listening. And if you'd like to hear or see more of what we do here, you can always go to jackhibbs.com for all the latest on what's going on with this ministry. And please, if you're ever in the Southern California area, come see us at Calvary Chapel Chino Hills. We'd love to see you there in person. It has been so good to be with you today, and I pray you find yourself in the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. See you on the next episode.

David J: This program is made possible by the generous contributions of you, our listeners. Visit us at jackhibbs.com. That's jackhibbs.com. Until next time, Pastor Jack Hibbs and all of us here at Real Life Radio wish for you solid and steady growth in Christ and in His word. We'll see you next time here on Real Life Radio.