Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Young people generally think they're immortal; they'll never be like the old folks they see in nursing homes. A kind heavenly Father says: "Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, before the difficult days come, and the years draw near when you say, 'I have no pleasure in them': ... and desire fails" (Eccl. 12:1, 5).
Good common sense! The leaders of the Sanhedrim let their intellectual faculties become hardened with age so that when the young Man from Nazareth came with His refreshing message, they had "no pleasure in" it. When God poured out the "former rain" gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they missed the blessing.
In His loving patience, our heavenly Father tries time and again to interest us in the most precious beginning message of "the latter rain." But if we have loved our intellectual ease more than stretching the mind to grasp it, we will drift beyond the capacity to appreciate fresh revelations of truth.
Our problem is worldliness, "conformity" to society in or out of the church. While we still have a semblance of youth, let's "be transformed by the renewing of [our] mind[s]" (Rom. 12:1, 2). Elderly people can have young, renewed minds!
It was night when Samuel heard the voice of God calling; he immediately got up to listen (1 Sam. 3:3-9). The Lord gave him four calls and he responded each time. It's quite possible that because "the Lord [our] God [is] a jealous God" (Ex. 20:5), we'll have only one call to listen to "the latter rain" truth. "Buy the truth and do not sell it" (Prov. 23:23).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: October 4, 2005.
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