Original: August 23, 2007
Hume Lake, CA
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2Corinthians 4:16-18
My dad tells me that a man is at his strongest at forty years old. As I edit this I am 45. What does that make me? Answer, on the back side of the mountain or as some joke, over the hill!” If larger was the measuring rod of a man’s strength I would be at the strongest point of my life. If endurance is the standard, well, let’s change the subject!
I once heard the chorus to a Toby Keith song that defines the aging man, “I ain't as good as I once was, but I'm as good once as I ever was.” Trust me sometime one rep is all I have in me!
My body is definitely diminishing and most definitely not strengthening. My joints ache in the morning. I have a strange pain and shifting in both shoulders. The hamstring I pulled in 2010 cramps up if I move it the wrong way. My neck and back pain is almost constant. My capacity to endure is diminished and I am feeling old injuries all over again.
“I ain't as good as I once was!” Men, it is tough trying to be tough!
I am learning, as Paul, that a man’s real strength is not about who can lift the most, run the furthest, or win the most often. It is about the renewal of spiritual strength that really matters to God. Paul said it best, “For bodily discipline is only of little profit but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds the promise for the present life and also for the life to come” (1 Timothy 4:8 NASB).
As a man’s physical strength diminishes with age so might his godly motivations, drives and dreams, but Paul was able to say “we do not lose heart” (16) because he believed though “outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (16). These earthly, finite bodies strictly speaking are “momentary troubles” that we must endure until we reach “eternal glory” (17) when our eternal spirit will supersede our earthly bodies in victory.
So how do we renew our spirits in the midst of decaying bodies?
Simply by doing what we see in verse 18. Paul admonishes to his readers to, “fix our eyes not on what is seen but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal” (18).
Hebrews 3:1 confirms this by saying, “…fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess.” And Hebrews 12: 2 again tells us to, “…fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Our strength (true, spiritual strength) is developed as we extract the precious and eternal things out of a worthless and temporal reality (Jeremiah 15:19-20). It is being so fixated on the cross that every charlatan to spiritual renewal is discovered, deconstructed, and discarded forever.
