Have you ever wondered how some people out live their children or grandchildren? Have you noticed those who seem to be agile and strong in their seventies and eighties and then you come upon those who are only in their fifties and sixties and they seem to creak, releasing weird sounds from their bodies and they move like a snail on the ground?
Psalm 90:
10-12 The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of strength
they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow. For it is soon
cut off, and we fly away. 11 Who knows
the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. 12 So teach
us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
In
generations past ( some 60 years), maturity was found among the seventeen to twenty-one year
range of age. People lived in harder environments, they lived in harsh weather
without special coverings and protection. They traveled great distances to get
from the place of their birth to the place they would have land, to plant, to
work for a harvest and to build in that place. The life they expected, where
they were responsible people to grow their food, make a place as a home of safety for
family, to ward off any adversity from wild animals to outlaws in a vast
wilderness, with no trains, planes or automobiles.
Those
becoming of age, either educated or taught the life of a farmer or what some
call too, the blue collar worker regarded a trade that would cater the farming
industry as well as to the community in need of repairs requiring engine
repair, welding relating to fencing for cattle or any livestock or to those
like the garbage collector, firefighters, and police service. Men or women at
or considered of age to work had capability to be responsible and those living
in the early days of television, each had a maturity without television, that onslaught of commercials or television programs or movies that teach drinking
parties, good times, fun in the sun with an ale or beer, sporting events, to
take one into the night to knows what, and then you see those tropical beaches, revealing a
tropical breezes, dark tans and the people there are not you!
What I know as my generation, we grew up knowing God in our school with prayer. We knew God at home, at work and within family get-togethers. We grew up knowing how to plant seeds to grow food and see our parents and grand-parents canned suchs food to keep a family well fed in the cold of winter to stay healthy indeed! It is a known truth that television came on the scene in the mid-fifties of the last century.
It is also a known truth that
commercials declared you could see the U.S. A. in your new Chevrolet for
America was asking you to come and call on America. By the mid-sixties there
were soap operas that sold more porn than soap. By the seventies, it was roller
skating parties, boogie nights, pet rocks, and Atari games that were coveted.
And it was at this time we saw little of the growing food for home and family, little family time
together, unless you have four wheels on each foot, and speed cream in those
bearings within your wheels on fancy skates to move you faster down the roller rink floor. In the seventies, words heard a lot were oil embargoes, OPEC, and many like us saw long-lines at the gas stations
and people on strike: like the meat butchers and the milk industry.
THE Eighties
brought greater party times: for there were now floating floors to skate on as
the concrete floors would wear you down. You had musicians with hair longer
than yours. ( and looked much nicer than our own hair) Most of their songs made no sense unless as a youth you had watched many soaps like that world was turning, secret storms, and days of our lives operas. At this time a greater defiance appeared in many. That is when one took an ugly way
and tried to assassinate the President of the United States. Movies depicting
going back to fix something to somehow correct yesterday that was affecting today, to those movies of living far away removed places like on other
planets and yes Death star.. What was wrong with the planet we live on? The songs sung pointed to being
physical, and yes, with Betty Davis eyes, and the importance of every breath you take!
The eighties seen in 1982 presented "The Computer" named Time Magazine's Man of the Year. Microsoft
released "Word" their word processing program. ( now how can a computer be a man of the year, I ask you that)
1984 Band
Aid records "Do They Know It's Christmas?" a charity single to raise
money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Are they not still suffering famine in
that country?
1986 The
Chernobyl nuclear reactor explodes in the USSR..( and people cannot live there today) ( latest report we heard over the winter was that soldiers went there on a military patrol and got radiation poisoning! Yikes!
1988 Two
years after the Challenger Disaster, NASA's Space Shuttle program resumes..
1989 The
Berlin Wall is torn down at the end of the Cold War.
The eighties marked the start of the computer AGE!
In the nineties we saw the Gulf War begin.The nineties have been viewed as that of peace, prosperity and order. But we know of novels which came to light that produced the illusion and work of witchcraft. It was the first three released to be read in America.
The quality of television was raved
about as the “improved”: but it was far and away from the things of God. It was
about me, me and me! New channels added to T.V. those premiere channels which
add a hefty amount to the price of cable and the such, well they included
soft-core porn too and then suddenly they went further! NO fences now, the ambition was a brilliant idea to ushering
that cable thing and bring in more of the world right to your lazy comfort
chair.
THE digital age, of course, got
fully underway in the ’90s. At the beginning of the decade almost none of us
had heard of the web! In the nineties my
thoughts were not on browsers, search engines, nor that of digital cell phone networks! By the end of the decade we had them all. Yes, the end of the nineties decade marked
people had cell phones, but not smart-phones!
Such
technology at your fingertips indeed yet it mostly
heaped distress and work on you to the greater degree. It brings the things of the world into your
hearing and you’re seeing. It does not show the area of responsibility to work
and live with that attitude.
In the generation
we live in today, the mature come to being the responsible around thirty or so years not as in the earlier
generations where the normal was 17-21 years of age some 65-75 years ago. Many
graduating from college return to live at home with mom and dad and remain
footloose and fancy free to live as a child. They are fashionable extroverts,
the carefree daredevils or the clueless pleasure seeker or junkies referring to
what degree they have evolved to in that pleasure seeking. Their highlights include
a late morning rise at noon, make it out of the door by late afternoon and seek
the night life where everything is hidden in the cover of dark. Tomorrow you
will hear of their sudden death from taking something they thought it was
medicine like Oxycodone but it was not. It was a drug dressed like Oxycodone
and yes dressed in something appearing as death. It is a look alike but not the
same created to help in pain and the such, no this is inserting a death pill that is created by those who desire to put death in people. The devil has done a
work indeed.
Yes, the
times have changed. People have changed their attitudes and minds for a culture
and left God out of it. They choose night over day, they choose sleep over work
and at night they choose play over a good night’s rest. They dress different
and choose to find drugs dressed as they are dressed. They choose to lose
themselves in something that is fake much like our news today.
Back to
Psalm 90: 10-12 The days of our lives are seventy years; and if by reason of
strength they are eighty years, yet their boast is only labor and sorrow. For
it is soon cut off, and we fly away. 11
Who knows the power of Your anger? For as the fear of You, so is Your wrath. 12
so teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
By length
of strength they are eighty years: Message Bible We live for seventy years of
so ( with luck we might make it to eighty), and what do we have to show for it?
Trouble. Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard. Who can make such
anger against the very ones who fear you?
Written by
Moses, he sought to pray. He understands God is always in His role as Creator
and Almighty Father. Colossians 1:15-17 He is the image of the invisible God,
the firstborn over all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created that are
in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and
for Him. 17 And he is before all things, and in Him all things consist.
In this
Psalm man relates to man’s frailty. He uses grass, the favorite of O.T,
metaphor for that of mankind or human life, he speaks to God’s awareness. He
speaks of His omniscience.
Acts 15:18
— "Known to God from all eternity are all His works."
Romans 11:33
— Oh the depth of His riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How
unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!
1 John 3:20
— For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all
things.
Hebrews
4:13 — And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked
and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
Romans 2:16
— God will judge the secret things of men by Jesus Christ, according to
[Paul's] gospel.
Then he
gets to what we see as the number of years in verse 10. And we must know that
this applies to what dietary restrictions and purity life one would live out.
But we have seen that even what seems to be the best at the time can be bad to
the temporal body in a length of time. ( Like finding out that mercury fillings in teeth from the
mid twentieth century can kill you later in life) That is why being born again and allowing
Holy Spirit to lead us, we will not end up in the place of not only the bad but
also the ugly place. No Holy Spirit leads us to the wealthy place in the Lord!
If you have
a generation not actually starting to be mature till their thirties in this
day, they only have a half life to live out. The psalmist asked the Lord to
teach us to take advantage of short lives. And in my estimation, I considered
my life short when I was eighteen. Always hearing my father to speak to
remember that life was short and we had to make the most of every moment of it
God had given us. So the Lord has given us Jesus, and He wisdom is made unto us
to become alive unto the kingdom of God. It is spiritual and active. It is
alive unto God and His power and might. It is life God meant for us.
But sad to
write, only a remnant will truly know the fullness of this. The Bible speaks of
that remnant. We can be directed by God’s word, see Him now, always recognizing
His voice, His walk and leading. But for others, they will know the voice of
mom or dad, know when to leave the house for party city and return in the dark
of night to start over again, unless they make the trip for that pill or that
next drag on a smoke, for they find that pill dressed for death. And if death
pill finds its way into their mouth to end the life that truly God had purposed
for victory to live for valor, then how sad one did not live for the Lord and
to His praise. How sad so many have died not knowing what true living was. How sad to never know the loving God who sent His Son to save us: those who would put their trust in Him!
Health
Wealth: Philippians 4:6-9 MKJV 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by
prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to
God; 7 and the peace of God, which
surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ
Jesus. 8 Finally, brethren, whatever
things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever
things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good
report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate
on these things. 9 The things which you
learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace
will be with you.
We need to
pay careful attention to this sequence of instructions because it contains much
that can help us attain both good spiritual and physical health.
In the past fifty years, men have come to
understand how deteriorating and destructive stress is to life. Paul's counsel,
written nearly two thousand years ago, tells us not to be driven by anxiety or fearfulness about life.
In the
Sermon on the Mount, Jesus admonishes us to "take no anxious
thought." The stress of anxiety is wearying, setting us up for multiple
afflictions. If we really "see" God, we should know that He is with
us. Should we not feel great assurance in His promise never to allow us to be
tempted above what we can bear? Faith is a prime solution for anxiety.
Urged by
Paul , we are to let God know our needs in every matter of life. As Jesus
said in the Sermon on the Mount, He already knows our needs, but He wants us to
recognize, evaluate, and communicate
them to Him, accompanied by thoughtful expressions of thanksgiving for what He
has already given, as well as His promises of blessings in the future. Do we
see what this process achieves? It disciplines us to think within certain
well-defined parameters that have Him and His way at the center of our life and our focus.
Paul then
asserts that one benefit of this is tranquility of mind, respite from the
restlessness so common to the carnal mind, which is constantly searching for
new stimulation to satisfy its insatiable longings. This peace of God will
stand guard over our minds like a sentinel, allowing us to meet and cope with
the problems of life.
In the
peace of God, we see God’s way for coping with the problems of life. Our minds
occupied with God and with the things God speaks as the true, noble, just,
pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy. Through this
discipline, we program our minds with the right things; what goes into the mind
determines what comes out in words, actions, and attitudes.
If we would
only stay out of America’s dump ground found in television, you know that "garbage in, garbage out, we should
adhere to the wholesome in, wholesome out". Jesus' statement, "For
out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Matthew 12:34). We
could take this further and say that out of the abundance of the heart the mind
thinks and feels, and the body acts.
Are we
putting our best foot toward a health wealth or a garbage holding lot for that
which culture dictates? As what Paul defines what is wholesome specifically as
what they had learned, received, heard, and seen in him, as he was indirectly
telling them to eat Jesus Christ because he, Paul, as His apostle to the
Gentiles, was His agent to them and their teacher of His way of life.
May we stay clear of that which steals, kills and destroys. Our Father desires to give us a long life indeed.
New teaching at: Voice of Prayer
The “Christ is Risen” Message
