Episode S3E26 (130): Preparing for and Anticipating the Uncertainties of Life

Life has lots of interruptions and uncertainties. They may be as simple as too many red lights when one is in a hurry, and they may be as profound and life-changing as an unexpected illness or even death. We can also expect that the longer we live these uncertainties of life may even become more frequent for ourselves or with family and friends. Can we prepare for them? How do we prepare for and anticipate them? Hal and Randy will discuss and encourage us as we trust God with life.

Transcript

Seth Muse: 0:03

Hess Welcome to the finishing well podcast, where we encourage seasoned believers to find meaningful ways to impact their world for the kingdom of God, whether you're 65 and up or not quite there, yet, everyone can begin preparing to finish well. Now here's your host, Randy. Hess with the founder of finishing well ministries, Hal habecker.

Dr Randy Hess: 0:26

Greetings everyone. Welcome back to finishing well podcast, part of a function of a ministry called finishing well. I'm Randy, as I said, and I'm here with Guess who? Hal haba is back and with us. And I think he's happy to be here, aren't you? I

Dr Hal Habecker: 0:47

sure am, and I'm without my cane today, believe it or not,

Dr Randy Hess: 0:50

we're glad to be together again. And yes, kind of getting, you know, some things are just take time to work through. And we're going to talk a little bit about that kind of stuff today, but we're glad to be back together in our new environment, and we hope you all are doing well out there. We enjoy these kinds of discussions. We hope you benefit from them in some form or fashion. We're praying that that happens, and we hope that you enjoy it anyway. How, how are you doing?

Dr Hal Habecker: 1:26

Oh, Randy, I'm doing well. I

Unknown: 1:28

think you look good. Well,

Dr Hal Habecker: 1:30

thank you, and

Dr Randy Hess: 1:31

you look healthy. And I don't think people would even know right now that you had a serious, uh, fall and breakage and all that, because you look pretty dang normal to me,

Dr Hal Habecker: 1:46

and when I walk without my cane, you wouldn't think there's anything wrong with me. So I carry it with me, just if I need it. I do need it occasionally.

Dr Randy Hess: 1:55

Well, our prayers have been answered. I mean, in your prayers, I'm sure, but you've healed? Well,

Dr Hal Habecker: 2:01

I have, and I praise God for that, yep, but it's really an illustration of what we want to talk about a little bit, and I'll mention in

Dr Randy Hess: 2:08

that, well, you're right. It is you I should shut up. But I'm thinking our title is things happened. Yes, they do.

Dr Hal Habecker: 2:16

I will shut up. Interruptions and uncertainties in life. That's that's on my mind today, and I want to just get a flyover 30,000 feet talking about some of these things, and we can drill down on them as the Spirit leads us to so the title would be, can we think about uncertainties and interruptions in life, things that happened that we're not prepared for. Or you may say, Well, I am prepared for them, but then when they happen, it's you hadn't really thought about it. You hadn't anticipated my bicycle wreck. I'm out for a morning ride, just having fun with one of my best friends.

Unknown: 2:56

Bicycle rides. Have

Dr Hal Habecker: 2:57

you done? How 1000s, 1000s, and this one became a major crash and interruption and uncertainty for me. And little did I know that it would take, really, three months now, when I when this happened, they said it would take three to four months, and it is. Right now it's three months, and I'd say it'll take another good month for me to be back at 100% maybe on my bicycle. But there are things like that that happen in life, and a couple of harder ones. I mean, by the way, they're they're all over the place. There. You may have interruptions, like an unexpected phone call and golly, I didn't want to talk that person. I need to get on. Or you're traveling somewhere and you hit a red light and you say, God, I gotta get there. You know, just their normal interruptions in life. But I want to talk about the bigger ones. Let me tell you a couple that I've just been through. My oldest brother, my oldest brother, living, just went to be with the Lord recently. It wasn't expected. It's a major interruption. I think of his my sister in law, his widow. I mean just his wife. You know, life changes. I mean death, particularly, or an illness or accidents of all kind, they happen and all of a sudden, your life has changed. I'm a big fan of Bill Gaither and his music, and they have a group then their network called the nelands. They were flying to Vancouver last week to join Bill Gaither on a cruise up from Vancouver up into Alaska, and their plane went down in Wyoming. Everybody in the plane was killed. The whole music group was taken out. You talk about an interruption, a massive life changing interrupt, family, yes. And I think of the cruise. I mean, if I were running a cruise like that, and one of the key people in our group, how do you go on? I mean, they were gonna leave, like the next day or two days later on the cruise. But you have to manage that. I. I have a good friend who runs a camp, and this camp, a kid fell out of a window and dropped 30 feet. I mean, so and has life changing issues. And this young man, who's a good friend of mine was Lee, is leading this camp, so he's dealing with all this, you know, Randy, you and I have a good friend in the hospital right now who has an unspecified infection in his brain. I mean, it just their life is derailed. Yep, you know, I think of Stephen in the Bible in Acts seven. You know, he gives this magnificent sermon. And where does it get him? It gets him stoned, right there on the spot. Yeah, he had no time to thank his wife, kiss them goodbye, his family, his friends. Yeah, he's gone. Blink, yeah. So there I hear. There are a lot of things that happen in life, and just to jump ahead for a second, then let's reflect a little bit. Proverbs, 2410, has always been a key verse For me, if you're slack in the day of distress, your strength is limited. So you anticipate thinking about things. Hospitals prepare for this. Schools prepare for a fire drill. You know you you prepare for things that would be major interruptions, major tragedies. Try Secret Service trying to protect leaders. You know that kind of thing. I

Dr Randy Hess: 6:24

could do that how I think you're saying something around you. Need to guard your heart so that you're you're helpful to people in times of great stress.

Dr Hal Habecker: 6:34

Well, that's yeah for things that happen to people other than me. Am I ready to help them and let them lean into my life, or let me lean into their pain and say, I'm here. I want to encourage you. God is still on his throne, and I know it hurts and you weep, but I want to help you. God will get us through this. Yeah,

Dr Randy Hess: 6:56

well, all right, I don't want to interrupt you keep going. No,

Dr Hal Habecker: 7:02

I had to take a drink of water. But you know, even churches today, it's uncertain. Shooters come in places of worship, you know, and they, you know, churches go through preparation. The Church of the you and I attend, I'm sure that they have gone through this, and you've may have been a part of this, where people in the congregation are alert for tragedies and uncertainties that may happen in life. So part of my thinking is we need to prepare for it. We need to, I mean, I want to say we're not exempt from those kinds of tragedies, from death, from sickness, for being disrupted by evil. We're not exempt from them, because we're Christians. And I think of what Jesus said in the Gospels. He said they persecuted me, and if they persecuted me, they will persecute you. Now, these interruptions, I'm not sure, are the work of Satan. Some of them may be when it happens, but you know, we will face hardships. I think Ecclesiastes, Ecclesiastes, three says what is crooked cannot be straightened. There are hard things are going to happen to us in this life. And Vicki and I are in the middle of experience in a, I would say, half dozen people that are tragically affected by sickness and death, and, you know, those kinds of things. So that's kind of where I'm at in our mindset. And how do you think about that? How do you recover from that yourself? How do you grow through it? Etc, etc,

Dr Randy Hess: 8:41

yes, I see. And so my, my reaction is that the Lord is Jesus preached that to us that there will that it's that life as a Christian is not a walk down the tulip trail.

Dr Hal Habecker: 9:10

You're exactly right. It's not

Dr Randy Hess: 9:14

so. So prepare your heart for that. Put on the full armor of God and even when you do that, how sometimes it still uh, catches you off guard enough to throw you off. It shocks you, um. And depending on the severity of the blow, whatever it is, I think it takes time to cope with it. So there's two messages here. One is, prepare your heart, put on the full armor of God in expecting that, I beg your pardon, but I didn't promise you a rose garden kind of a. Approach is going to be there, but it'll always be a surprise. You know, in fact, it'll be a shock, depending on the severity. It'll be a shock to you and and so even though you could think about it, think ahead when it happens, when it happens, when it happens to you, it's a whole different story. When it happens to somebody else. You can look back, stand back, assess it, go, yep, that's what you need to prepare for. But when it happens to you, all that kind of thinking goes out the window. Am I prepared? Am I not prepared? I'm not saying that the then, please don't hear me saying that. I think that's a weak Christian, or a weak or a bad Christian in any way that reacts that way. I think it's a person that just in the in the mode of of being affected by whatever it's some you don't sometimes realize how whether you're coping skills and response is going to be able to help You there. And I guess it would be helpful to a Christian to at least contemplate a little bit about that. You know, how do I react to things? How do I react to little things? What? What? If anything kind of throws me off the rail a little bit. And as I think about those things, if it's if small things do that, then I guess I'd say, look out, Charlie, when the real big stuff comes, because you're going to be knocked on. You knocked off your feet. And there is your friends, there is your family, there is other there are others to lean on in those situations that I hope would help any of us. I would hope that would be true. But there are also in the heat of that battle, what really helps is to know the Lord very well. That's the real coping mechanism and reliance mechanism. And even there it's it's tough sometimes, because some things actually breed anger against the Lord. Depending on how people see it, it makes them angry against the Lord because they don't understand. They don't think it's fair. They don't see the purpose of it. In other words, where are you going with this lord and what it does, though, when you reflect on it a little bit after that, what it does to those, I think people who feel that way is causes them to get further into the Word and further in the Lord and think about the sovereignty of the Lord. You

Dr Hal Habecker: 13:17

mentioned God's sovereignty. There's a verse that I memorized when I was in seminary, Howard Hendricks challenged us to all to memorize it. Psalm, 103, 19, the Lord has set His throne in the heavens, and his sovereignty rules over all. Now that's an academic truth, but it's also an experiential truth that helps me think ahead in what's going on in various interruptions or tragedies. You know, I have another friend who says, you know, whatever happens to you comes through God's filtered hand for your life. I mean, he's in charge of our lives. It doesn't make it any easier in that sense. And the more personal it is, I think the harder it is. But here's an illustration I mentioned to you earlier, when we were thinking about this podcast, people I run into, I ran into a gentleman here in the Hope Center, who I know very well. We had a 15 minute conversation in the hall. His wife was afflicted with dementia, Alzheimer's. I asked him, when did she die? He said, Well, she really left me seven years ago, and I've been caring for her those seven years. But as far as my wife being there, she I haven't had one for seven years. She died or disappeared into the empty space seven years ago, and he's getting remarried next month. And I asked him, I said, How long has it been since your wife? Wife died, he said, Well, it's only been a year, but it's really been eight years, and he's getting married, and he was filled with joy. I mean, I can't imagine the pain he lived with seven years ago and going through those seven years as he loved and cared for his bride, but she was no more, in that sense, with Alzheimer's, but he loved taking care of her, but life has changed for him, another good friend and a neighbor. Well, he see the same thing. We see how God provides for people, and going through it is tragic and horrific, but at the same time, you want to build a strong foundation of faith, knowing that God is there with you in the midst of your tears, in the midst of your lostness, in the midst of your devastation, and you hang on to him even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me. Your rod and Your staff. They comfort me, you know. And I think that's how it relates to finishing? Well, in a sense, we talk in the sixth essential about anticipating when we won't be here. Well, we do that for ourselves. Ideally we do and we should. And I keep running into people who never do it. And one of the remarkable things about our series on the seven essentials, people appreciate being challenged to anticipate the end of their life and all the things that they should be thinking about and doing and anticipating. And you know, one of the things we haven't really addressed in that sixth essential is the whole issue of processing grief and helping people through that, but it's important here, because those kind of interruptions will happen in our lives, and they're little things that happen and that we shouldn't let them irritate us. But see God being in charge of our lives. I spoke at my brother's memorial service. Use Psalm 139, verse 16, God knows all of our days before we were born and the day of our death, and so you celebrate God's faithfulness in your life for all that's there through all the interruptions and all the processes along that way. Right,

Dr Randy Hess: 17:19

right? I'm taking a sip of water. What you what you're keeping, what you keep mentioning for finishing well is that it's perhaps of a person interested in the finishing well tracks value to in their value, in their helpfulness to themselves, is to get straight with how I look at the Lord, how I'm looking at that. It's kind of like that. Put on your you know, put on your oxygen mask. If we hit rough pocket here, put on your oxygen mask first before you can help anybody else. And is that selfish or not? I don't know. I don't think so. And that in the case of the airplane, that's just good protocol. But I think in the case of finishing well, it's saying, if your goal is to try to be as helpful as you can in your older, older years, aging years, to someone else or to some others, you first have to be able to breathe yourself. Breathe well, not holding your breath, not not hyperventilating. You know, I don't think you're going to help too many people when you're in that mode. That's all I'm saying. And so where are you with the Lord and making sure that your breathing can continue in a normal way when you're called upon, really could come tomorrow. Could come later today, when you're called upon to comfort somebody that you care about,

Dr Hal Habecker: 19:18

are you able to do it? You know?

Dr Randy Hess: 19:22

I mean, we have lots and lots of friends how you do too, and we have tons and tons of people who have told us through the past couple three years, just thinking about you, feel, feel for you. Praying for you. Don't have any words for you. Don't know what to say, but just asking the Lord to bless you and hang in there. Yeah, and all I'm saying is that that's good. There's nothing wrong. Nothing at all wrong with that. Nothing at all. If you are a person and finishing well, who wants to be able to do something for other people at times of great distress and need, I think you have to know where you are and know where your head is, and be able to just be able to cope with stuff, and the Lord helps with that. Lord really does help with that. So praying about that for yourself, like you said, we we don't. We don't always know how to handle grief very well. We also just don't know how to handle ourselves very well and helping other people in their times of grief or misery or pain or or whatever, we just don't. And I think sometimes the finishing well aspect of that could could emerge by the person who does feel that I understand what's needed here. I am breathing normally. I can become, I can be soothing to these, to this situation, whatever it is, or at least with the with the family around this situation. Don't you agree with that? Oh, I

Dr Hal Habecker: 21:23

agree with that 100%

Dr Randy Hess: 21:24

right? It's helpful to be able to be that person or people who somebody else can lean on.

Dr Hal Habecker: 21:31

Yeah. And first of all, I like your illustration. Put your own oxygen mask on first. You know, we're going to fly to California tomorrow morning, and they'll say that when we get on the plane. But it's true spiritually, and that's what we're talking about. Lean into Jesus. Think about stuff, prepare for it, in a sense, I mean. And when it happens to you, and it will at some point, you know you're ready. You're prepared a little bit for it, and if it, if and when it happens to other people, you can lean in and encourage them as well. And I think that's one of the valuable things about finishing well, encouraging aging people in a congregation, encouraging the pastor, encourage the leadership of the church to be prepared and anticipate more interruptions as those in your congregation who are aging come up against illnesses and challenges in their own life. You know we need to be prepared for that and to anticipate that as a church and lean into encouraging those people.

Dr Randy Hess: 22:38

I guess I'd have to agree that there is a finishing one aspect too, just in the fact of the aging process creates more of these opportunities. As you said, it just naturally creates more of these opportunities to have something happen, either to you, to your family, to your spouse, to somebody, or with friends around you, yep. And therefore, if you are thinking, well, how, how am I? In other words, should I just be a bystander? Stand back and watch it, observe it. I'm an observer. I'll stay out of the way. Or are you a person that can step in and actually be a calming, helpful, encouraging process. You know, person in the process, it's up to you. I would say finishing well might include all of that, if, if you put your thought into it. But I think most of us would rather be the person who is able to actually encourage somebody step in and help them in some form or fashion.

Dr Hal Habecker: 23:49

I think we should. I want to give a verse and kind of wrap all this up. Isaiah, 26 three, the King James Version says, Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee. Talk about the interruptions and the disruptions of life. Uh, numeric standard which I read, the steadfast of mind, you will keep in perfect peace because he trusts in You. So there's a sense in which, as as you mentioned, leaning into God, leaning into Jesus. You know, I think of the vine. Next week, we'll be in California, in the middle of a vineyard where we abide in Jesus. And that's our mission in life, to abide in Him and to anticipate life with him as we grow older. It was J i packer who said there are three seasons of older age. There are the fast goes, the slow goes and the no gos. So each one of them has their own sense of interruption and uncertainty in life, but we lean into Jesus and. Trust him in the midst of that and lean into others as well. Our friends. Any thoughts, last thoughts,

Dr Randy Hess: 25:08

there are uncertainties in life, but you can be certain that you're going to have an interruption of some sort, and it depending on the severity of it, yep, the depth of it. It would be helpful if you were able to put on that oxygen mask pretty quick in those situations and be a helper to everybody around you.

Dr Hal Habecker: 25:35

You know, let me just close an illustration. Eric little is one of my heroes in life. 100 years ago, he set an Olympic record in the 400 meter run in Paris, and they're now in Paris again at 47 six on a cinder track. He had three he went to China as a missionary, and he was caught in the conflict when Japan fought with China in the early 40s. And his life is a great story. If you haven't read it, I encourage you to find in the internet, find his book and read it. But he was a man who walked with God, and he anticipated a lot of things that were happening, and God's faithfulness to him all his life is just one of the outstanding memories and visions that I have, even for my own life. So let's lean into Jesus Psalm 23 The Lord is my shepherd. He leads us, and we will dwell with Him forever and forever. Amen. Thanks for joining us today. Hope we've challenged and encouraged you to think about some things that God has ahead for us. May God bless you, and let's persevere in leaning into him and loving Him with all of our lives. Take care.

Seth Muse: 27:01

Thank you for listening to the finishing well podcast. We hope you're encouraged by today's conversation to continue living out your God given purpose. Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts, or you can find us at finishing well ministries, dot O, R, G slash podcast, and don't forget to follow us on social media at finishing well, ministries, we'll see you next time you.