A Resilient Life: You Can Move Ahead No Matter What

by Gordon MacDonald

When I was a young pastor in my early thirties, I remember thinking that almost no man over the age of forty-five ever visited with me about his personal life unless he had a problem that was so obvious that it could not be ignored. Rarely did anyone from the older generation open their hearts concerning their fears, their aspirations, their doubts or convictions, unless I poked and prodded with a bundle of questions. Only after I’d grown considerably older did I figure out why there was this general silence. They assumed I wouldn’t, or couldn’t, understand. I wonder how many meaningless sermons I must have preached from my thirty-year-old heart into the heart of a seventy-year- old one. And now, here I was, about to talk to worship leaders half my age. Now I was in the place of some of my former church members who were older. I was dealing with issues in my life, in my big picture, that almost none of the people in this room could comprehend. And yet they were charged with leading people like me into a worship experience. How could they pray, design worship, familiarize me with God if they knew so little about what was happening in a life like mine? Instantly, I changed the introduction of my talk for that morning.