David: Old age—when does it begin? The dictionary doesn’t give us an age. Instead, it says it’s when strength and vigor decline.

Karen: That’s right. So, we look to Scripture. In 2 Samuel chapter 21, we find not a definition but a picture of declining strength and vigor. Verse 15 reads this way: “Once again, there was a battle between the Philistines and Israel.” (Pardon me for laughing—it seems like there was always a battle between the Philistines and Israel.) David went down with his men to fight against the Philistines, and he became exhausted. King David would probably have been killed had not Abishai, one of his military leaders, come to his rescue. Scripture continues: “Then David’s men swore to him, saying, ‘Never again will you go out with us to battle, so that the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished.’” Apparently, David didn’t know that he’d reached old age—but his men sure did.

Intro: Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David: Karen, just two chapters earlier in 2 Samuel 19, we get an opposite picture of King David. Here we meet a man who was fully aware that he was old. The Bible says: “Barzillai was a very old man, 80 years old.” That makes me feel old at 85! He was a wealthy oldtimer.  Barzillai had provided for David and his men when the king had fled from his son Absalom and Absalom’s rebellious followers. Eventually his forces are defeated and Absalom was killed. And in this passage, David is heading back to Jerusalem. Verse 33 says: “The king said to Barzillai, ‘Stay with me in Jerusalem, and I will provide for you.’” So he has a wonderful opportunity here. Now listen to his response, ok? “Barzillai answered the King, ‘How many more years will I live that I should go up to Jerusalem with the king? I am now 80 years old. Can I tell the difference between what is good and what is not? Can your servant taste what he eats and drinks? Can I still hear the voices of men and women singers? Why should your servant be an added burden to my lord the king? Your servant will cross over the Jordan with the King for a short distance. Why should the King reward me in this way? Let your servant return, that I may die in my own town near the tomb of my father and mother.’” And then you have the scene where they crossed the Jordan head toward Jerusalem. And the king kissed Barzillai, gave him his blessing, and Barzillai returned home.” Here’s this old guy. It kind of a funny picture.

Karen: And we’re going to draw some lessons from this passage.

David: I am just trying to show the contrast between the two people. It was a different world, many years ago. Different country, different setting. We don’t have internal battles going on to see who’s going to wear the crown. But it’s interesting. Here’s David. He doesn’t know that he is old. This guy knows he’s very old. And Karen, he’s gonna pass up what could be the most wonderful time of his whole life.

Karen: To be in the King’s court.

David: The great world that he doesn’t want.

Karen: He has a wisdom, doesn’t he? He is beyond that now at this stage in his life – the comforts of home. Scripture says he is also a wealthy man. He doesn’t need to be in the King’s court. He has his own life.

David: Anyway, one man needed his lawyers to tell him “You can’t do this anymore,” and the other guy is telling whoever wants to do nice things to him “I’m too old for this stuff.” Here’s what I am trying to say into a sentence, I am not sure I’ve said it up well about two contrasting individuals because we still have these kinds of people today in our world. One would do well to view old age as a gift not all that many are given.

Karen: Yes, let’s repeat that one. That would take some thinking.

David: One would do well to view old age as a gift not all that many are given. This has been, Karen, for us, I’m 85, you’re…

Karen: Almost 78, a few months more. Pretty close now.

David: These have been some of our best years.

Karen: Yeah, they really have been. When we look back on our lives, we don’t have any regrets as far as it being fruitless. I mean, we’ve been in marriage and ministry for 59 years, you know, and there has just been from youth ministry when we started out to church planting ministries to the broadcast ministry to telecasting to really working with pastors nationally all across the country. Those were some of the most delightful days. So these have been fruitful years. Our ministry lives have been fruitful years, but the ministry at this time at old age is different because we have time. We have time now. We’re not running from pillar to post.

David: And let me just say that these are observations regarding our life. We’re not saying this should be for everyone. We know that people, you know, some people they reach this age and they have huge health problems. You have struggled.

Karen: I had some, but enough to let me know that the body is frail but not like other people who have a cancer scenario they’re dealing with or diabetes.

David: Some people have marital problems.

Karen: Well, some many marriages don’t last. I think it’s a good 50 some percent do not last. So there’s a broken relationship there.

David: People go through financial stress. You know, some people they’re older and they’ve been hurt by church wars.

Karen: Yeah, or they have estrangement with their children, which would be just emotionally ruin us. You know, we are close to all of our kids. I thank God for that. But I only imagine what that would be like if we weren’t talking to some of them.

David: So let’s go back. And again, we say that this is our experience and we’re just reflecting on it. And we’re saying one would do well to view old age as a gift not all that many are given. I like it that in these years, I can set the pace at one that I want to travel. I don’t have to say just put me on the fast lane.

Karen: I have a funny memory. A couple of times you were flying out of O’Hare and I was flying in O’Hare as the Chicago airport, of course, the big one. And we had like 20 minutes or a half an hour or an hour to sit down and catch up and say, “Well, how are the kids? and, “What do I need to do when I get home?” and, “When are you going to be back?” That sort of stuff was going on in our lives. That is not happening now. We have day after day after day, and particularly with this COVID-19. But even before we had this isolation imposed, we had time for one another every day. And, you know, we weren’t leaving one another.

And frankly, I’ve traveled so much, I don’t care if I ever pack another suitcase because I got that travel bug out of my system and to be our age, the decades that we are in, and to have day after day after day for one another.

David: You’re still busy.

Karen: We’re busy. You have things to do. I have things to do. But David, the thing of it is it’s marked with the fact that we both are aware that there is an eventual ending that’s going to separate us. And so it makes that reality makes the days that we have together just extraordinary gifts.

David: We kind of, in a strange way, we didn’t say, let’s get into podcasting, but we are now into it. And one of the things I like about it is we do it once a week.

Karen: Right.

David: It used to be every day except for Sunday. There was a broadcast. And then on top of that, there was a telecast.

Karen: You look back and you think, how in the world did we manage all that? Of course, we had a large staff and they were wonderful people to work with, but the pressure of those deadlines was extraordinary.

David: You know, Karen, I think even now as we podcast once a week, it’s amazing to me how quickly those once a week’s come.

Karen: Even when it’s only once a week.

David: If somebody would say, why don’t you do two a week? It doesn’t seem like one a week is very much. Two a week would be overwhelming. I just like the pace that we’re on now.

Karen: One of the points that we like about a good old age is that we are able to set the pace at which we’re living.

David: I’d say another thing that I like and I want to be careful how I’m heard, but I think this is me honestly reflecting on my life. I believe I am becoming more Christlike than I was previously. My response to other people is much more loving.

Karen: Not judgmental. You know, yeah, that kind of accompanies the middle years or the younger years, but as you get older, you have a sensitivity to what people have gone through or what’s made them who they are.

David: One of the things I like about what’s happening in these older years is that I talk a lot less and I listen carefully much more. And I’m glad I’m able to say this.

Karen: Well, I had a recent observation. We had some old friends just drop past. They were delivering some Christmas gifts and we’re all mask in our living room on either side of the fireplace. We have one old church, one side and one old church view on the other. So we sat social distancing from one another, catching up with one another. And then our daughter-in-law dropped in with the little grandchildren because we have kittens and they wanted to play with kittens. Of course, everyone’s masked out. And so our daughter-in-law, Angela sat down to talk and you guided that threesome who didn’t really know one another to say, “Well, Angela tell our friends what you’re doing, what you’re involved in.” And then you said to the gentleman, “Update us on your life.” What are you involved in to the woman? Now, no one in that group turned around and said, “David, what are you up to?” You know, and partly there wasn’t time, but I think the inclination on people is so wonderful to have folk ask you who you are, what you’re doing. That sometimes they don’t turn the table on the asker and I thought how gracious your response was because I know that you didn’t feel like no one had paid attention to you. And that’s the gift of old age that we’re talking about. Not needing to have the focus turn your way anymore.

David: Yeah. I think that’s a huge improvement. I think the Lord would say, you matured. You’re coming along. Maybe I’ll give you a couple more years because you haven’t made it yet.

Karen: So point number three, we’ll get another one.

David: Yeah, sure. I would say that these have been less hectic years to enjoy one another more. Those racing years, I don’t want to go back to that.

Karen: Well, for a long time we lived sort of individual lives under the same roof because you had your calling in your ministry. Now, what we did work together on some things, but I had my calling in my ministry and I was out every other weekend traveling and speaking. I was writing. I had a group of writer friends and we were doing supposedly great work. Some of them did do great work, but now it’s a “we” and we actually had a life coach who helped us define what the David and Karen Mains “we” meant. That was extremely helpful so I think these years have been the we living together. I find myself saying to friends when they say how are you doing with this COVID isolation I’m saying what David and I doing well fortunately we like each other.

David: Well, I like you I like you more and more. I would say that as things have slowed down, you’re teaching me lessons that I don’t know why.

Karen: Like what would that be I’m sort of intrigued by that what do you mean.

David: Well, I’d give you the example. I would say that you’re helping me see beauty in life that I went right on past before. You’ll say, “Now just stop what you’re doing the second, David, and come and look out the window.”

Karen: Let’s watch these geese fly over.

David: Yeah or look at this sunset yeah isn’t that beautiful I say by golly it is yeah that’s really something and you are able to see through the course of the day. Yhings I’ve missed all my life well you’re helping me to understand how delightful that is.

Karen: I’m more of a naturalist than you are but I also think I have a high aesthetic ideal and so everything around me doesn’t have to be expensive but it needs to look beautiful. Good I’m glad that that you feel it that’s not your wife nagging you.

David: That’s no, no. Not at all. In fact, this is a very good thing. I could go on but I’m going to make a couple other points that I have in my mind. I’m certainly in these years spending way more time in the Lord’s presence than I ever had before in Scripture and in prayer.

Karen: You probably won’t say this but this is hours and hours every day so I will say for you that I believe the intercession has become your major ministry in these later years. You have time for it but I think more than that you have the hand of the Lord upon you to intercede. You said something really interesting. You pray for all of our grandchildren there nine of them every day but you’re storing up prayers for them in the future because you’re not going to be here on earth and you’re wanting those prayers to work in their lives even when you’ve gone.

David: Our youngest grandchild, little Annalise, she’s only seven so I won’t be around when she’s 30 or whatever. In fact the other day I said to the Lord I was praying for Annalise and it’s like the Lord said which obviously I’m not hearing these but it’s in my mind and my thinking, “You know you already prayed about Annalise today,” and I say “Yeah but this is for when I’m gone. I’m stacking the prayers up so that grandpa is covering. I enjoy those times it’s no longer a chore for me. And I also am enjoying a prayer group I’m in I think here in one of the greatest ways to learn about prayer is just to pray with other people. These people they might be surprised to hear me say but they are teaching me so much. We get together on the phone. There are seven of us. In fact the prayer group started the leader said, “Why don’t you start?” and then he named one of the persons and that person prayed. I’m guessing for four or five minutes then it’s just free whoever wants to. I said “Lord that was an incredible prayer.” Some of those prayers were filled by what my friend has said and it’s voicing but in a new way what I what I feel deeply inside.

Karen: These are all people from all over the country. They’re like you said it’s seven people.  I think we’ve said this before, I think a lot of them don’t know one another. You were the common denominator.

David: It’s probably true.

Karen: But this is something that other people could do David and probably should do. So, we’ll make a little challenge right here. Gather a bunch of friends you’ve known and love, maybe they’re all over the country and then just through a conference call not even fiddling with zoom you don’t need to pray over zoom.

David: Well we do it over the phone.

Karen: I have a conference call and everyone calls one number.

David: You’re gonna pray. You’re gonna pray with your eyes closed probably.

Karen: Anyway, so that’s it’s just been a powerful thing and I think you feel like it’s launching something. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

David: Well it was going to be the last point that I was going to make which is my calling is not to write like you do. It’s more to preach and I’ve had privilege to preach in so many different places. I look back on my life, I enjoyed preaching a lot in college settings. I was able to preach one whole week at Wheaton College which was where I did my undergraduate.

Karen: Spiritual emphasis week. Yeah.

David: I’ve preached among peers at the National Religious Broadcasters. I spoke there. Some really great churches going back as far as when I was quite young. I preached at Woody Church when I worked in Chicago. I remember preaching at the chapel at West Point.

Karen: It was a thrill, wasn’t it?

David: That was really neat. Pastoring and preaching to an incredible congregation that we built from scratch with the Lord’s help. Ten years in Chicago. Obviously 20 years with the Chapel of the Air ministry. That was a phenomenal privilege for me. Spoke at denominational conferences. I’ve spoken indoors and outdoors in camps and various congresses. If I could preach with this message that’s birthing in me now it sounds kind of funny but I’ll tell you where I’d go I’d probably go to a good retirement village. Not to live there but to preach there. I know they have services if I say a nursing home that’s a little bit different. But I’d be happy to preach at a nursing home. If somebody said would you preach at this our church you know say out in Iowa or Arizona or Washington whatever, I probably say that you know the travel is too much for me but if you can find a retirement home close by I would enjoy doing that because I have this strong feeling that the Lord is prompting me to speak in a way. I’d like to actually talk about it more in some podcasts that are going to come up but I think that the older people in this land, those who are aged not necessarily by the chronological years, but just that we’re not as strong as we used to be we can’t go out and fight certain battles I think they’re the ones God wants to call to build up a prayer base all around this country. So that it would be a wonderful news item to say something strange is happening in retirement villages.

Karen: The prayer base of the elders.

David: Right

Karen: That’s an extraordinary picture, David, to call those people who have life experience and are not doing the things that used to keep them as busy as the things that we used to do that kept us busy, but to be a force for God a spiritual force for God in this nation. I just think that’s an extraordinary vision I believe that God has given that to you it you.

David: It was almost birthed during that prayer time that we get together with my friends and I think it is of the Lord it’s still you know it’s in the birthing process.

Karen: It’s an embryo yet. A dream that’s an embryo yet.

David: I haven’t got it. I think a lot of my friends would say, “You can have that, David, I don’t want that calling.”

Karen: No. I think there are a lot of them maybe. But I think there are a lot more who would capture the thought behind the vision. This often happens when the Lord lays something on one person’s heart. All across the country there may be little groups and dreams like this, callings like this, bubbling among other um Christian leaders who are our age.

David: Yeah. I think that’s really really well said. I have my answer as the pieces are coming into place. I have my answer to people who said, “You know, you can have that that’s a dumb calling. I say, “No, it’s better than the one Ezekiel got.” You know Ezekiel was called by God. God said, “Here’s your audience,”

Karen: This is the dry bone vision. Oh my goodness

David: A valley full of dry bones, not even connected. And then the Lord asked him, “Can these bones live again?” And Ezekiel says, “Only you know God.” But then he began to see them.

Karen: What is the song? What are the lyrics?

David: Oh, I don’t know. It’s the bones connected to the…

Karen: …shin bones. I don’t know if you ever think of bones connected to this…

David: Can you imagine what he felt? Looking at something absolutely unbelievable was happening. Whether in reality or in in his mind as he saw all of this. I think wow that’s really something. And look we did it together didn’t we God?

Karen: Valley of the dry bones. What an extraordinary picture out of Scripture.

David: Yeah. So anyway that’s where I am. And I’m saying, “Lord I think that I need to begin to process my friends and say, ‘Who do we know? What is God saying to you?’” So it’s going to take a while for me to see this thing come along but it’s very very important. It’s important that the older people who have memories of prayer meeting. A lot of the new generation, they have no idea what a prayer meeting is like because they’ve never been invited to one.

Karen: Well, those older people have memories of times when God worked in dramatic ways. They know he can be a healer. They know he can restore broken relationships. They’ve seen conversion happen in the lives of their family or there are people who become friends. I mean they have a history of seeing God have having work. And so they can draw on that history to cast a belief system that says prayer will make a difference and we’re going to pray and ask.

David: I think all that’s good. Let me go back to that sentence. There’s a gestation period that’s going on. One would do well to view old age as a gift not all that many are given. I’m saying to the Lord I really am very grateful Lord that you’ve allowed me to still be alive in relatively good health. I can’t fight the flistings physically anymore. But if you would invite me to your table, your majesty, and you would let me be a part of where you are in your head during these days. I would see that as an incredible honor and I’m not going to say no you know I I’m a little tottering now maybe if you’d asked me 10 years ago I could have come no that’s not what I’m gonna say I want to sit at the king’s table here for a while.

Karen: Here I am, use me.

David: Well I just want to say, “What an offer! Wow yes! You know, you think I still have it in me that I can be someone who can enjoy that? Yeah, that would be wonderful. So anyway, that’s where I am in my head and I’m processing and I kind of dominated this conversation. So, the next time we get together I’m going to ask you so you’ve got to get ready.

Karen: So, I got to have something to say as far as what I’m going to do with my old age?

David: Well, I don’t want you to look at it that way. I want you to see it as a gift that God has given you. At least for now you’re going to say, “Not all that many people are given this gift. God, thank you for it and let me use it wisely.” Okay so you kind of get yourself ready, alright?

Karen: I’ll be ready.

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