Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Now then, just as the LORD promised, He has kept me alive for forty-five years since the time He said this to Moses, while Israel moved about in the desert. So here I am today, eighty-five years old! I am still as strong today as the day Moses sent me out; I’m just as vigorous to go out to battle now as I was then. Now give me this hill country that the LORD promised me that day.’ … Then Joshua blessed Caleb son of Jephunneh and gave him Hebron as his inheritance” (Josh. 14:10–13, NIV).
Ancient literature can be perplexing, even after the work of the finest translators. So allow me to summarize this text. Caleb: “Give me my land or I will kill you with my bare hands!” Joshua: “OK.”
This grizzled veteran of God’s holy wars had no interest in retiring and could die in peace only if he knew he had fulfilled the mission God had given: conquer the land. Since he had received no termination of those orders, he continued his mission. No one would stop him, especially not Caleb.
Dangerous Retirement
In Edinburgh, Scotland, on Jan. 12, 1839, R.M. McCheyne, laid low by physical illness, wrote: “I am persuaded that I have been brought into retirement to teach me the value and need of prayer. Alas! I have not estimated aright the value of near access unto God.… You will be thinking my affliction is teaching me much, by my saying these things. Oh! I wish it were so. Nobody ever made less use of affliction than I do. I feel the assaults of Satan most when I am removed into a corner; every evil thought and purpose rushes over my soul, and it is only at times that I can find Him whom my soul loveth.” McCheyne found that forced retirement was a great trial upon the saint. He was tempted to be lazy and almost overwhelmed with sinful thoughts, and his work of moment-by-moment prayer seemed harder than his parish ministry ever was.
Retiring from Church
The ministry of older men and women (1 Peter 5:5; Titus 2:2–5) is critical to the church. The retirement mentality cuts off many “hands” and “feet” that the church needs for health and growth. “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ And the head cannot say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:21–22, NIV). With the Scriptures so clear on this matter, it is unnerving how many older people, certainly wiser than I, have fallen in this area. So let’s talk to an expert.
Out of Retirement: Q & A
Dottie Heater, who lives in Ocala, Fla., retired from retiring several years ago. I asked her a few questions about this topic and was surprised by her answers.
Barnes: Why do many people seem to quit living for Christ when they reach 65?
Heater: Spiritual immaturity. They never grew before they were retired, so why expect it afterward? It is going to take spiritual growth for a retiree to see their problem or even understand the need to be on fire for Jesus Christ. Or they were never saved at all—deceived.
Also, I believe the minds of our seniors have become stagnant on the garbage they see and hear all day long without any input from the Lord. He just comes on Sunday, and that’s not a day of rest; it’s just another day of their perpetual vacation.
Barnes: So it is as much about age as culture?
Heater: I think it is conditioned, as the times have brought more escapes and toys and the opportunity for the “big vacation” when all these things can be mine. Oh, the Christian is in such error to believe this.
Barnes: How did you discover your error?
Heater: My husband and I retired, but then God chose to save both of us almost 20 years ago. Even in Christ, the retirement life brought too much free time to do with as we pleased, and all we did was play like the rest … we were miserable, lazy, and fat. Our brains could no longer think. But we were motivated by the truth from the Word of God to change our lives. I believe there are others like us. The harvest is ripe and ready.
Barnes: How can we reach these people?
Heater: I believe the best way to reach the Christian retiree is with personal testimonies of God’s power to change lives. It is difficult to interrupt their fun-filled lives, but we should challenge them to look again at their lives—what are they doing with their hours and days? Are they reading and learning, or are they lazy, conditioning themselves for many years of stiff thinking and walking? I will never retire again. My life has just begun. I am at the beginning of my most adventuresome time with the Lord. I am watching each moment for the Lord to move me.
I will pray that the Lord will give you exactly the words to reach the many with lame brains and spirits, and revive them to usefulness and joy in fellowship with their Savior.
Barnes: Thank you, Dottie. If Jesus had retired after His earthly work was done, we would be above all men most to be pitied. He has set the greatest example of continuing the spiritual work to which God has called all Christians.