What do you want to be when you grow up?

Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Gordon MacDonald’s book A Resilient Life challenged me, inspired me, motivated me.    MacDonald, a senior citizen, is vibrant and bursting with ministry.    I know from my experience with aging and with the senior citizens in the church, I know he didn’t become this person without great intention and strategic thinking and I want in on his secret!  MacDonald challenges his readers to think of the older people you know — which would you like to be like, why, and how will you accomplish this.  It’s not going to happen without serious intent.

Resilient People:

• are committed to finishing strong
• run inspired by a big-picture view of life
• run free of the weight of the past
• train to go the distance
• run in the company of a “happy few”

People who are resilient live by the gravitational pull of a call.”  Strategic thinking begins here.  “What do I hear God saying about the direction of my life and its contribution?”

MacDonald describes a “call story” as “a history of whispered words and events that capture the soul and make one aware that God is speaking.”  For some, the call story is dramatic, for others, a continual dripping just beats on you until you capitulate.

“Resilient people identify those particular functions and qualities of being that are clearly in the gift zone.” Each of us has things we must do in second gear and things we can do in overdrive.  The overdrive, MacDonald calls the “gift zone.”

“There is a mysterious fervor within us that rises and bubbles when we are in the center of the gift zone.”

Oh, my friend, I want to live the resilient life, I want to go the distance.  I want to be actively serving God and serving people when I’m old; I don’t want to slow down.  MacDonald gives us a lot of information with which to make that possible.  Warning:  There is a lot in there about self-discipline.  The resilient life is not an easy (or natural) thing to obtain.

I Peter 1:13-15 “Get your minds ready for action…….”