Growing Old with Grace or Groaning Old with Disgrace?

Growing Old with Grace or Groaning Old with Disgrace?

Dec. 3, 2024

Host: Dr. Jamie Mitchell

Guest: Dr. Ray Pritchard

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 12/3/24. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue. 

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, welcome again friends to another episode of Stand In the Gap. Today I’m your host, Jamie Mitchell, director of church culture at the American Pastors Network. When a friend of mine knows that I’m hosting a program on Stand of the Gap, they will ask me from time to time, is today going to be a good program to listen to? Now, being a little sarcastic, I usually say anytime I’m hosting is a good time to listen. But what they’re asking is, is this program going to be personally significant to me? Will I be able to use it? Will it be relevant to me? I would say most days that were ting on topics and issues that anyone at any stage of life would benefit from here at Stand of the Gap, but some days it may be more so that a pastor would get more out of a particular program or a topic would be more tailored to parenting or grandparenting.

Jamie Mitchell:  But hearing the title today, if you are old, meaning 55 or higher, you’re going to really resonate with this program. Yet seeing that all of us someday reach what I call the aisle of the Aged, you may want to listen and start planning your future. Well, today’s title is Growing Old with Grace or Groaning, old with Disgrace. Here are some facts. The US in the US, American 65 and Older number 57.8 million in 2022, that represents a 17.3% of the population. That means more than one of every six Americans are older. A number of older Americans have increased to 34% since 2012 compared to 2% of the population under 65. Listen, friends, the number of older people is growing. We’re staying around longer. Matter of fact, males are living past the age of 82 and ladies are lasting past 85, and insurance companies tell us that fact because of life insurance purposes. The question is how are you going to live those older years?

Jamie Mitchell:  It is one thing to live to 85, but what kind of living will you experience? What will you do with your life? Life is not over at retirement. There’s plenty of things to accomplish, and I’m not talking just about playing Mahjong, vacationing, dropping your handicap or finding the best bargain when it comes to early bird dinner specials. If you know the Lord, our lives are to make an eternal difference right up from the time we get to heaven, and that is what we want to discuss today. And to help me is teacher, author, pastor, but most importantly my friend since 2006, Dr. Ray Pritchard of Keep Believing Ministries. Ray, welcome back to Stand in the Gap.

Ray Pritchard:     Jamie, so good to be with you today and I want you to know about that island of aging. Maya Canoe has landed on the island and that’s where that’s living right now. So I’m glad to be here to talk about this.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, Ray, you are in your seventies and you and Marlene have just celebrated 50 years of wedded bliss. You’re active, you still got a full schedule of ministry, yet the reality of getting old has not escaped you, and you have watched how some seniors handle getting up in years. Ray, why is it from your perspective that some grow old with grace and even a dynamic grace and others groan old with disgrace?

Ray Pritchard:     You know, Jamie, it seems to me that part of the issue here is we just don’t know what to do with the age it, and I say that as someone who is 72 heading for what, 75, 80, 85. I mean, people say to me, Ray, do you feel old? And my answer is always the same. No, I don’t feel old, but I do feel 72, and I know people say, well, 70 is the new 50. Well, maybe it is for some people, but I understand some of the difficulties that you were talking about, particularly physically. Your body changes, you get up early, you stay up late, you have trouble sleeping. Things don’t work as well as they should. And I think from a cultural perspective, we got an interesting situation and I think also a tremendous opportunity for the church. We are living in America in an aging population.

Ray Pritchard:     And by the way, Jamie, I am a thousand percent in favor of going after the young people and the children and the young singles, the young couples with kids and the young couples, no kids. I am all in favor of that, but just from those numbers you send Jamie, there is a tremendous opportunity for the church to grab onto the experience and the knowledge and the energy and the willingness to serve Christ. And I think some local churches have discovered this and the ones that have been greatly blessed other churches, they don’t know what to do with us. And so answering it from a cultural perspective, I got a friend who when he talks to me about the schedule that Marlene and I keep, he said, he’ll look at it. He says this to me four or five times a year, Ray, remember, it’s a young man’s game.

Ray Pritchard:     Well, yeah, it is. And I could do a lot more when I was 40, 45, 50. I’m just talking about physically the pace that I could keep up. It’s quite true. I can’t do as much or as fast today as I was doing it 25 or 30 years ago. And our culture, it’s biased in favor of the young, geared to the young, let’s say that. And we can either gripe about that, complain about that, or we can smile and say, Lord, this is a tremendous moment in life, a tremendous stage in life when I can use my resources to help my family, to strengthen my marriage, to be a blessing in my community and to strengthen my local church. So there are some headwinds that we face, but mostly Jamie, I want to say for those of us growing older, 55, 60, 65, 70, and on up 80, 85, this ought to be in many ways the best years for us to use our energies, hearts, and hands to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jamie Mitchell:  Ray, I was getting ready for this program. I was thinking to myself the difference between growing old with grace and groaning with disgrace a lot of times has to do with your church life. Do you have a good church? Are you connected? Your kids, are they close? What’s your relationship like them? Do you have some kind of job? Do you need to work your finances, your health? I mean you think of all those variables and we’re going to touch on some of them today, but you consider all those variables. And if as you get older you don’t grasp those, understand those. If you don’t master them, those things will master you. Friends, listen, we are not in any way minimizing the possibilities that you’re listening today and maybe you’re facing some major physical or emotional challenges. Maybe you have experienced grief and loss. Maybe you’re weighed down by some relational disappointments.

Jamie Mitchell:  All of that could be true today. We want to help you with what’s your attitude, how are you handling it? When we return, Ray and I are going to look on how to plan ahead. I know you’re older. How about planning the next 25 years? Don’t go away. It’s going to get interesting here on Stand in the Gap today. Well, welcome back. I’m privileged to have my friend Ray Pritchard from Keep Believing Ministries with us today. We’re discussing how to grow old with grace and with effectiveness, and not to get old and groan your way into it. Ray, it’s hard to believe that we’ve known each other since 2006 when I had you come to our church anniversary, you had just started Keep, it seems a lifetime ago. And I’m not sure that you would’ve planned or known that all that God had in stored for you or all that you would have enjoyed and accomplished.

Jamie Mitchell:  Yet you must have had some kind of plan back then. And I’ve noticed because I worked with older folks today, planning is not something they like to do. They’re retired. They live in a retirement community. They really have a week open. And when I ask them, Hey, can we get together next week? They usually say, I got to see what I have on my calendar. And I’m thinking probably nothing. But a few years back, you shared with me that you were working on a 25 year plan. Where did that come from and what was the reason for it and why was that important for you to consider?

Ray Pritchard:     Well, Jamie, let me tell you a story. A few years ago, maybe five or six years ago now, I was up at Word of Life in upstate New York and doing some Bible teaching up there at the Bible Institute. It was the dead of winter, and I had flown in on Monday and I taught for three hours on Tuesday morning. And I don’t know, it was like I say, the dead of winter and it was like, I don’t know, 15 degrees and a snow on the ground and all of that. And I was actually not feeling great. I think maybe just from the travel and so on. So I talked for three hours and had lunch with the staff. And one of my friends, my buddy Mike Calhoun was with me that day at lunch, and I’ve known Mike for almost 50 years now. Mike spent over 40 years with Word of Life, and now he’s with some ministries down there in North Carolina.

Ray Pritchard:     And we were there. And honestly, Jamie, I don’t remember much that was said because it really wasn’t feeling I just a little bit off my oats. And I guess I was a little bit negative in my answers to a few questions around that lunch table because the next day in the dining hall, I saw my Calhoun and he just looked at me and he said, the way only good friend can say, he said, Pritchard, I don’t want to hear you talking anymore like you did yesterday. And I went, well, I don’t remember anything. And he said, I don’t want to hear you talking anymore about your age or how tired you are, anything like that. I said, well, okay. And then he said, he just asked me a question. We were standing in the dining hall holding our trays, and he said to me, Richard, when are football games won or lost?

Ray Pritchard:     I said, well, at the end of the game. He said, yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about. He said, Ray, most football games come down to the last five minutes. And he said, it’s amazing how many of them in the NFL come down to the last two minutes, and Mike’s a couple years older than me, and he said, Ray, we don’t know where we are, but on the timeframe, but we’re not in the first quarter. We’re not in the second quarter. We’re not in the third quarter. He said, you and me, Ray, we are in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, and for all we know, we might be at the two minute warning, we might be down to 30 seconds left. And he said, when are games won or lost. They are won in the last couple of minutes when with all your strength and all your energy and all your determination, you keep on playing until the whistle blows and the game is over.

Ray Pritchard:     And then, and only then do you look up at the scoreboard to see how you’ve done. And wow, Jamie, that image just burned itself into my mind that here I am, and I’m sure he is right. I’m sure it was right then and more right now that I’m sure I’m at the two minute warning or somewhere past that. And so there’s, by the way, there’s a place on the internet where there’s in fact a bunch of these that are based on those, you talked about the life insurance stuff earlier, those actuarial tables, there are places on the internet where you can go put in your date of birth, male and female and other information, hit a button, it’ll give you according to those tables your estimated day of death. And there’s one site I went to and I put in, are you male or female?

Ray Pritchard:     I put male. I put down my date of birth, September 26th, 1952, and it said BMI Body Mass index. And I put down none of your business, and I hit the button. And for about eight years in a row, it gave me the same projected date of my death, which is July 8th, 2025, which is Jamie less than a year from now. Now all that means is that somebody might be going to die on that. That doesn’t mean I’m going to die on that, David, when you see it in black and white in front of you, you go, oh my. So my friend Tom Klobuchar, who is Tom is in his eighties now, a very successful Christian businessman. He told me that when he turned 70, he sat down and started to write out a 25 year plan for his life that if he lived from 70 to 95, this is what he wanted his life to be running toward the end zone, running toward the tape coming down the home stretch.

Ray Pritchard:     So I sat down and asked the Lord to show me, and I came up with, I don’t know, 15 or 20. I got to look on here and see, I actually, okay. I came up with 25 things I wanted to do in the 25 years stretching in front of me, and the first one was stay in good shape by riding my bike. Number two was keep growing in the Lord. Number three was invest in the next generation. Number four, be faithful to my wife and number five, mentor my grandkids, and I’ve got them all down there through 25. They’re just things that I can hang my hat on. And this is a way, every few months I can go back and look at this list and say, okay, Lord, how am I doing? How am I doing here with being a cheerleader, not a grumpy old man?

Ray Pritchard:     That’s number 13 or number 18, befriend the young and encourage them. Now I got to say this and I’ll turn it back over to you. Am I going to live all the way through until I am 90 or 95? I do not have a clue. I mean, the future is as mysterious to me as it is to anyone else. I don’t know what’s your life? It’s a vapor that appears for a while and then vanishes away. But let me say to all the older folks, all the seniors listening to this program, you ought to do this. It’s a good idea. We’re all coming down the home stretch. So ask yourself if God gives me 25 more years, what do I want to accomplish for God, for my family, in my marriage, with my friends, and for the church and for the glory of God in the next 25 years? And I think that’s a good measuring stick for all of us. I can tell you this, I’m doing some things now better than I would’ve done if I hadn’t written down this list.

Jamie Mitchell:  Amen. Amen. The Bible says, Ray, that we’re the number hour days we’re to be very purposeful, very intentional, and make the most of every day God gives us right up to the end, whatever that means. Ray, why do seniors struggle with planning and what could you say to them to encourage them to look ahead and make some plans and what kind of difference could it make in their life? You got a few minutes left,

Ray Pritchard:     Jamie. You know what just popped into my mind? That little saying that you and I have heard for so many years, only one life will soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last. I remember when I moved to the church, when Marlene and I moved to the church in Oak Park, Illinois, Calvary Memorial Church 35 years ago to be the pastor there, my church secretary, she was already over 65 and maybe close to 70. She’d been at the church for 30 years or so, had served the previous two pastors. She knew everybody. She knew everything. And she took me under her wing and she wanted to help me be successful. And besides telling me, do this and don’t do this, and Ray this matters and this doesn’t, there was a little saying she had, and if she repeated it to me once, she probably said it to me 50 times with a grin on her face.

Ray Pritchard:     I’d be going out the door out of the church office to go do something. And Shirley, 70 years old, would look at me with a twinkle in her eye and say, remember Pastor Ray, have a blast while you last. I loved that 35 years ago, but it means so much more to me now. Ecclesiastes nine 10 says, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. One translation says, whatever turns up, go ahead and do it. And I think if we want our lives to make a difference, we got to sit down and maybe with a friend, maybe with a group seniors, this would be a great and fun exercise to do. Sit down and just say, if I’m going to live 25 more years, I don’t know if I am. But if I am, what do I want to accomplish as a husband, as a wife, a father, a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, as a friend, as a Christian, as a Christian leader, what do I want to accomplish in my life that will make a difference for me, for my family, and for eternity?

Ray Pritchard:     And it doesn’t have to be all heavy because some of my stuff is as simple as saying when I’m wrong. Admit it. Okay, that’s good. Number 22, make new friends along the way. Number 23, live without fear. And then number 25, the very last one says, be ready to die when the moment comes. Keep short accounts for the Lord. So whether he comes today, tomorrow, or in 50 years, whenever he comes, I’ll be ready to see him. So Jamie, I think a lot of our listeners, this shouldn’t be like homework. It ought to be a fun exercise. What do you want to do? What do you want to accomplish in your life? How do you want to live? If God gives you 25 more years, just write it down and use it to keep yourself accountable and growing and going. Remember, have a blast. While you last

Jamie Mitchell:  Ray, the President of Columbia University once said, there’s three types of people, people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, but most people are the people who wonder what happened. Beloved, we don’t want you to be those kind of people. We still believe in our later years. You can still make some things happen. Get a plan, look ahead. When we return, we want to consider how to handle unplanned and unexpected detours that come in our lives. Well, welcome back. We’re trying to help you wisely and strategically about your life, especially as you get older. Ray Pritchard has been challenging us about looking at our life with a long view and a right attitude, and even putting some plans down on paper and using those plans to serve kinds as a compass for your life in these later years. Ray, you had your 25 year plan and all of a sudden you were faced with some health concerns about a year ago. You got word that you had cancer. Would you share a little bit about that situation that obviously came as somewhat of a detour in your life?

Ray Pritchard:     Jamie, looking back, I was going about 125 miles an hour, and all this sudden, the Lord, if it’s like the Indianapolis 500, suddenly the flags came out and the Lord said, come on over here to the sidelines. We’ve got something else to do. People say about those of us who are in the senior years that they’re three stages we go through, go slow. No go. Well, I’ve been in the go-go phase for the last few years because even though I’m 72, have not retired still I have slowed down a little bit in terms of the ministry travel, but we’ve been going pretty strong about five years ago. This of course happens, what I’m about to say, happens to a lot of men. I went to the doctor for checkup and he ran the tests and came back and said, Ray got to tell you, you got prostate cancer.

Ray Pritchard:     It’s small and it’s not growing right now, but we’re just going to watch it for a while. And so for about four years or twice a year, I would go see the urologist and get the PSA done and nothing much was happening. And then about a year ago through a providential kind act of God, I had a test done, an MRI done, and they expected it to show absolutely no change whatsoever. And the doctor called me up and said, Ray, the days of active surveillance are over. We found new cancer and it’s on the move. And for those who wonder if prostate cancer is a big deal, which I did not know what I’m about to say until a year ago, prostate cancer is the number two killer of, or the number two cause of cancer death among men. The only thing that kills more men as far as cancer is concerned is lung cancer.

Ray Pritchard:     And that’s because prostate cancer hits so many of us as we get older. Well, my doctor said, well, you have a lot of choices, but one choice you don’t have is to do nothing because you can’t let it get out your prostate. And so I got to tell you, Jamie, you are a pastor. For years, I was a pastor for years and I preached a lot of sermons on prayer. And as a pastor, I dealt with cancer every single week. Not a week went by as a pastor. I either wasn’t dealing with somebody who had cancer or a loved one has cancer, or somebody said, pray for my Uncle Joe or my aunt. She’s got some kind of cancer. It’s just a common thing in the ministry. I can tell you an obvious statement. Cancer looks a lot different on the other side of the pastor’s desk when it’s you who’s got it.

Ray Pritchard:     I mean, suddenly time seems to stand still. And it doesn’t matter what the doctor says about prognosis or anything else. Now you are a cancer patient. And I understand this. I have been given a lifetime membership in the cancer club and there’s no way I can turn in my membership ticket until I go to heaven and see Jesus face to face. It’s just now a part of my life. And all of the listeners out there who’ve ever had cancer, you know exactly what I mean. Once you get cancer, you’re in the club. And even if you go into remission, it’s never really out of your mind. And so for about the first, really for about 10 months, my life just turned upside down. Our oldest son came to me and he said, dad, I don’t know what’s happening here, but he said, I don’t know why, but God has decided to shut slow you and mom down. I thought about that. I thought, that’s exactly right. He’s slowing us down through the radiation and through the A DT, the hormone treatment.

Ray Pritchard:     Let me say it, Jamie, let me say it this way. I haven’t really been sick for 72 years until the last 12 months. I’ve hardly been sick. I’ve hardly ever been in the hospital, in the hospital about five years ago after a bike wreck, and I messed up my ankle. But aside from that, until the last 12 months, I’ve been pretty healthy. And if you ask me, what have you learned from the last year of cancer treatment? I got to tell you what I’ve learned is a real surprise to me. And Jamie, if you and I had talked a year ago, this answer that I’m about to give is not what I would’ve said to you. It was new to me among many other things. The Lord has shown me that I am an impatient man, an impatient man. Now I look back and I think I have been in a hurry all my life.

Ray Pritchard:     I have been running a hundred miles an hour all my life. I feel like I came out of my womb running. I was in a hurry to get born. I was in a hurry to walk. I was in a hurry to talk. I was in a hurry to go to school. I was in a hurry to make friends. I was in a hurry to get to high school. I was in a hurry to graduate. I was in a hurry to college. Y’all go to college. I was in a hurry to graduate. I was in a hurry to get married, a hurry to go to seminary, a hurry to go into the pastorate, a hurry to start writing books, a hurry to traveling. I was in a hurry to start having kids. I was in a hurry to raise my kids. And then I come down with cancer and I realize I’ve been in a hurry all my life.

Ray Pritchard:     Now ask myself, you know what? Let me say I want to get this on the record very clearly. Basically every stupid thing I’ve said and done and every foolish mistake I’ve made, I can look back and see it so clearly now. And I didn’t see it until this last year. I was in a hurry and I wasn’t willing to wait for God because really what is impatience? It’s the sin of believing you know better than God, what is best for your life? And every dumb thing I have done has sprung from the impatience of my life. And you know what I want to say? I thank God for this cancer because it showed me something about myself that I never would have known any other way. And you say, what is the answer? Well, how many? It comes down to something that I’m still very much in the learning process about waiting.

Ray Pritchard:     I don’t want to wait. Most Americans don’t want to wait. But look how many times the Bible says wait on the Lord. David said in Psalm 27, he said it this way in Psalm 27, 14, wait on the Lord. And again, I say, wait on the Lord. Why do you say that? Because we’re dumb and we’re in a hurry. And we didn’t hear it the first time. They that wait upon the Lord. This means so much more to me now shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. And I want to just give a testimony, Jamie, to all of our listeners today. I understand now what the psalmist meant, the Psalm one 19 verse 71, it was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your statutes.

Ray Pritchard:     And I publicly praise God for this cancer. I don’t think I would’ve learned this lesson any other way. I have learned that God can do what he wants with me and he can do what he wants without me. We all like to feel we’re indispensable, don’t we? And you know what? We are all indispensable until we aren’t. It’s like Charles Dega said, the graveyards are filled with indispensable men. And I think anything, Jamie that helps us slow down and take stock and get a new vision of God, anything that causes us to learn to wait on him is good for us and good for our soul. And so I thank God for what’s happened in my life. And by the way, my prognosis is good. The doctors don’t make any promises and it doesn’t matter because in the end, Jamie, we both believe in Jehovah Rafah, the Lord who heals my life is in his hands. What happens to me is in his hands. And I think this last year I’ve learned to trust him in a brand new way. And again, I thank God for what he has shown me about myself and what he has revealed to me about his grace and his goodness.

Jamie Mitchell:  Ray, what’s important about that story and why I wanted you to talk about it, we had been together and listeners, Ray has this great little booklet called What I Learned from Cancer, and we’ll tell you about it a little later. But the fact of the matter is, Ray, these kinds of things happen to us a lot when we get older, these detours, these things that weren’t expected, they kind of land in our lap. But how you are responding in regards to saying, Hey, this thing has happened to me. How does God want to change me? How does God want to shape me and mold me and maybe finally work on something that He’s probably been trying to work on me for all these years, but now he’s got my attention in a new and a fresh way? And you see that’s growing in grace because it’s the grace of God that takes those difficult times and reshapes us and works us over and in many respects, points us to being able to find what our legacy is to be.

Jamie Mitchell:  Listen, friends, every one of us leaves a legacy. The question is, what will it be? What kind of legacy are you going to leave? What kind of impact will we make? And even having cancer can be part of shaping that story. I want Ray to talk about reaching those behind us, leaving a legacy looking back, but also looking forward. Join us for our last segment here at Stand in the Gap today. Well, it’s been so much fun to have my friend Ray Pritchard on today. Ray, you do know you hold the title of one of my wife’s favorite preachers. Now I hope I am still her favorite, but who knows anything could happen. But for sure, like herself and myself, we love to listen to you open God’s word, explain it and help followers of Christ apply it. If you want to know about Ray’s ministry and all the amazing resources he has produced, checkout Keep believing.org. Ray, are there any new resources and opportunities that our listeners could experience in your teaching ministry?

Ray Pritchard:     Thank you, Jamie. Folks, I want to you to come on over to Keep believing.org. Keep believing.org. We’ve got a lot of video resources where I teach through books of the Bible all the way through Revelation, all the way through Daniel Ephesians and James and Galatians, but just finished a brand new series, my first topical series video series on spiritual warfare in an age of terror. It’s called Stealth Attack, arming Yourself Against Satan’s Dirty War. And I just finished it, oh, about a week and a half ago, which meant I was doing that teaching. There are 10 sessions and we started in September and finished in the early part of November. It’s 10 sessions that will explain to you who the devil is, what his tactics are, and the weapons God has given us to emerge victorious on the field of battle. And let me tell you, friends, we are in a battle today as never before.

Ray Pritchard:     Jamie and I both believe we are living in the last days before the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. I don’t have a date to give you, neither does Jamie. We don’t know, but we know he’s coming back and the devil is on the prowl. He’s a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Christian. Friend, you are on the menu. So if you don’t want to be a victim to Satan’s schemes, maybe come on over to the Keep Believing website and check out the free video series called Stealth Attack and you can download my book. It’s a moody publication book called Stealth Attack and also a free study guide, excellent for personal study or Sunday school classes or small groups. Anyway, come check it out. Stealth Attack Video course at the Keep Believing website.

Jamie Mitchell:  Hey, Ray, as we finish up, one of the things that we must embrace as we get older, and especially if you want to leave a legacy and have some significance and meaningful impact this last quarter of life, is that we need to look to how to be in touch with the younger generation. How do you do that and what challenges are there connecting with generations that are behind us today?

Ray Pritchard:     Let me come in by the side door on that question. Just a few weeks ago, there was this much ballyhoo boxing match between Mike Tyson, and I believe his name was other guy was Jake Paul was on Netflix, and I have millions and millions of people watched it. And of course, Mike Tyson is 58 years old back in the day, one of the most fearsome fighters the world has ever known. I think the boxing match, they, from what I read, it sounded like this recent was a little bit of a dud, more like an exhibition. But I read it or I didn’t read it. I watched an interview that Mike Tyson gave to a young girl, and I say young. She looked to like she was maybe a high school student, 16, 17 years old, and he towered over her and she asked him, Mr. Tyson, what legacy do you want to leave behind?

Ray Pritchard:     And he gave a startling answer. He said, in rather rough language, I thought, he said, it doesn’t matter. He said, I don’t waste any time thinking about my legacy here. You live, you die. It’s over, and people forget about you. Why should I care about my legacy? Let me say, I don’t know where Mike Tyson stands with the Lord. I really don’t know. But what he said there is the way a lot of people in the world think you live, you die and you’re going to be forgotten. Who cares? That is not the Christian position. The Christian position is only one life to live. Only what’s done for Christ will last. I want to say this, it’s my experience that the younger generation is hungry. They are hungry for authentic relationships. That is, they’re hungry for older folks, older men and older women who will invest in them, who will care about them.

Ray Pritchard:     And I am now doing, as far as my legacy goes, I want to leave behind a legacy of faithfulness to my wife and to my kids and to my grandkids. I want to be faithful running the race, crossing the finish line, doing the best I can, and I want to spend these last years of my life pouring into the younger generation. And I got to tell you, there are ways you can do it on the internet. Internet is, I know it’s a source of a lot of consternation and maybe people think a lot of evil, but I got an email the other day from a young woman, I’m going guess in her twenties. I don’t know her. I’ve never met her. She comes from the gaming community. I don’t mean the gambling community, I mean the video gaming community, which is huge. And she and the young people in her gaming community have been watching my videos last year, read all the way through the Bible out loud, all those videos with a little application, 365 videos on our website going all the way through the Bible.

Ray Pritchard:     And somehow this young girl, Christian girl and her Christian friends from the gaming community and all of them, Jamie had these hip and contemporary, what do you call them? Handles or titles. I don’t know any of them personally. They’ve been watching my videos. She wrote me and she said, I have got a friend, I guess he’s in the group, I don’t know who has been struggling with his sexual identity and he’s been sort of leaning toward this transgender stuff, and he’s not sure he was raised in the church, but he’s wavering. She said, would you pray for him? I said, I certainly will. And she and I exchanged emails and I gave her some suggestions. She wrote me back about a week ago and she said, oh, pastor Ray, thank you so much. Thank you for encouraging me to be strong with my friend and to stand on the word of God.

Ray Pritchard:     She said, he’s still struggling, but he has decided he wants to get back in church. He wants to get back in the Bible, and he wants to walk with the Lord. Now, that’s a young woman, Jamie, I’ll probably never meet, and the young man she’s helping, I’ll probably never meet him until we all stand before the throne of God in heaven. It thrills me no end to know that I can sit down at my typewriter, I can pick up my iPhone, and I can write words of encouragement to young people who will pass them along to their friends. I can plant seeds of truth that are going to be passed along from one generation to another to another. Psalm 1 44 says, one generation shall tell to another the mighty works of God. Friends, you can do it. Listen to me. If you’re not dead, you’re not done.

Ray Pritchard:     God still has work for you to do. Let’s take the time that God has given us to invest in the generations to come so that when we get to heaven, if God lets us lean over the battlements of heaven, we can look down and see the young people we have influenced who are still standing strong for the Lord. I can’t think of anything better than to go to heaven and knowing that we made a little bit of investment that’s going to pay a great dividend for the generations that are going to follow us. So friends, no matter what your age, Lex, look, I’m all for going to the seashore. I’m all for taking cruises. I’m all for RV vacations and all the rest, but don’t waste all your time sitting around and doing nothing. Let’s invest the time God gives us while we have time and strength and breath, because there are young people looking to us. We can make a difference for Christ, and that’ll be a great legacy now and for the years to come.

Jamie Mitchell:  Well, thank you Ray Pritchard. Your insights have been just so encouraging. I know that each person, old and young, ultimately wants to make a difference for Christ. Friends, thanks for entrusting another 60 minutes to us. Getting old can be a challenge. Change is not easy. It all takes courage, and that’s why whenever I’m on Stand in the Gap, I always end this way. Live and lead with courage. We need more courageous people. God bless you. Have a great rest of this day.