Flourishing as Living Faithfully

Scripture — Proverbs 3:5-6 (NRSV)

Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

Devotion

So far in this series that I’ve called “Biblical Wisdom for Flourishing” I’ve shown that, from a biblical perspective, flourishing includes living fully, living richly, and living truly. Today, I’d like to add another dimension of flourishing. Once again, taking my lead from Scripture, I’d suggest that flourishing is living faithfully.

Scripture consistently encourages us to live faithfully in every part of life. In the Old Testament, Proverbs urges us: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Prov 3:5-6). Living faithfully isn’t simply believing the right things about God. Rather, it is trusting God completely with all our heart. It is acknowledging God in all our ways. Thus, in the New Testament, Paul writes, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:19-20, emphasis added). Like Paul, we are to live by faith in the Son of God in every setting and season of life.

For many Christians, the busyness of life makes it difficult to focus on spiritual growth. When we’re working full-time, raising children, volunteering at school, helping out at church, and so forth, we may find it hard to devote time to growing into a deeper relationship with God. The good news is that God is present, not only in our times of quiet prayer, but also in the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Yet, when we come to the third third of life, we may have the opportunity to go deeper in faithful living. As I speak with folks who have retired from full-time work, I often hear them talk about having more time for spiritual disciplines. They engage in these disciplines, not out of a sense of guilt or obligation, but because they are eager to know God more intimately.

Moreover, the losses and challenges of getting older can lead us to trust God more fully and profoundly than we did when we were younger. An example of end-of-life faithfulness appears in Paul’s second letter to Timothy, where Paul writes: “As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim 4:6-8). No matter our circumstances, no matter our limitations, we can continue and even grow in faithful living all the way to the end of our “race.”

I’m not suggesting this is easy, nor that it happens automatically. However, I have seen how people can live faithfully even when dealing with extremely difficult personal challenges in their final years of life. I think, for example, of Leon, who spent his last years limited by Alzheimer’s disease. Though he couldn’t recognize his wife, he could still sing the hymns of his youth with gusto. He was living faithfully even when his brain was significantly diseased.

Also, I remember Helen, a member of the church I pastored in Irvine, California. When I began at the church, Helen was quite old and feeble, but still able to join us for worship each week. Before long, however, her body began to give out, and she was confined to her bed. Before long, her doctors told her she had only a few days to live.

Hearing that news, I went promptly to visit Helen. I wondered what I would say to someone who was suffering so much and so close to dying. How could I encourage her to live faithfully in her last few days? When I sat down in Helen’s room to talk and pray, the tables quickly turned. She told me how eager she was to be with the Lord in heaven. She shared how real Jesus seemed to her as she prayed. It felt to her as if Jesus was sitting by her bed, in the very chair I was using. In that meeting, I wasn’t the pastor encouraging a congregant in her faith. Rather, I was a young man being encouraged by a spiritually vital older woman who was living faithfully as the time of her death drew near.

Now, I do not want to discourage you from living faithfully in the first two-thirds of life. Rather, let me say clearly that we can flourish by living faithfully in all seasons of life. But those of us in the third third, who can often feel the loss of how we once flourished, should be encouraged to devote the time that is given to us to a deeper and more trusting relationship with God. May we be able to say, like the Apostle Paul, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Proverbs: God’s Great Self-Help Book (Video).