Under the big tree at the side of the house, which is where everything happens from May onward, and the table has been out there so long the paint has given up on it.
Three generations. Somebody's boy is under the table with a truck. There is an argument about whether the potato salad is right and it is the same argument as last year.
He is eighty.
He is fine. He wants that established. He is not in pain, he is not in want, he has a family that turns up and a chair that is his and a view of the road.
What he does not do any more is ask God for things.
It went gradually and he could not tell you when. Somewhere in his mid seventies his praying became almost entirely about other people: his daughter's job, the boy under the table, a neighbor's marriage. And when he examines it honestly, which he does about once a month, the reason underneath is not humility.
The reason is that he has concluded God is working with the ones who have time left. There is a great deal to be getting on with in the world and a great many young people to do it with, and it seemed to him, at some point, faintly unreasonable to be putting in requests for himself at eighty.
So he stopped. And nobody knows, because a man who prays only for other people looks like a saint.
If you have stopped asking for yourself, you know it was not a decision, and you know that everybody has read it as maturity.
He said it out loud and it is in the book
The weight first and at its own size, because on this site the honest paragraph comes before the good one and it never gets shortened.
What this costs is not want, because you do not want for much. It is the asking. It costs you your own place in your own prayers, which is a strange and quiet emptiness that nobody around you can see. It costs the once a month examination, which comes out the same way every time. It costs you the difference between humility and resignation, which look identical from a chair under a tree. And it costs you a conclusion about God that you reached on your own and have never once tested against anything.
I am not calling that small and I am not putting it beside anybody else's, because on this site there is no ranking of what people carry and there never will be. Any word from God that needs your eighty years made lighter first is not one Scripture speaks and not one the Holy Spirit has ever carried.
And plainly, before we go on: if the not asking has gone somewhere darker, as far as thinking this family would have less to organize without a chair under the tree, tell one living person today. Your doctor, your daughter, or a crisis line where you live, 988 by call or text in the United States and its equivalent wherever you are. Scripture asks no man to hold that alone, and the Holy Spirit has always moved through people who put the table out in May and leave it out.
Now, Psalm 71, and read a sentence that a man of eighty would not expect to find in the Bible.
Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.Psalm 71:9, 18
Cast me not off in the time of old age.
Somebody said your sentence. Out loud, to God, as a request, and it was written down and kept, and it is in the middle of the book that everybody at that table would say they believe.
He is not being told that he should not feel that way. There is no correction anywhere near it. The fear that God moves on from the old is put into words by a man who had it, and God kept the words.
You are looking at your own conclusion, written out by somebody else and preserved. Psalm 71:9 says cast me not off in the time of old age, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a psalm that old and lays it on a table under a tree in May.
Now, verse eighteen, which is where the psalm goes next and which is the part nobody quotes. Forsake me not, until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come.
He is not asking to be kept because he wants to be comfortable. He is asking to be kept because there is something he still intends to do, and what he intends to do is aimed at the generation that comes after him.
That is a man of your age making a request for himself, and making it on the grounds of a future he will not be in.
You have a psalmist who kept asking for himself and did it on behalf of the people who come next. That is written into Psalm 71:18, and His Spirit in you is the one who makes that land on a man who stopped asking somewhere in his seventies.
Now let me be exact about what this does not say, because a great deal of warm and true stuff has already been said under that tree.
It does not promise you years. It says nothing about how long or about your body, and I am not going to predict either, because what God does there is His, in His own way.
And it does not tell you that praying for other people was wrong. It is a good thing, Scripture commends it plainly, and the Holy Spirit has been carrying every one of those prayers, including the ones with the boy under the table in them by name.
And the strength being renewed inwardly is not a compensation for anything, and nothing in this psalm offers it as a trade. It is additional. Both things are true.
You were never asked to take yourself out of your own prayers. Scripture has an old man asking for himself in writing, and the same Spirit who inspired it is the one who carries it to a chair with a view of the road.
Psalm 71:9 and 18 have an old man asking God not to cast him off and asking to be kept until he has shown God's strength to the next generation, and the Holy Spirit in you is the guarantee that the request was allowed.
Look at what that leaves standing. It leaves eighty and whatever your body does, and I am promising you nothing about the number of years or anything else, because I would rather hand you a sentence that is still true at eighty-four than a warm one that is not true under this tree.
But it puts you back in your own prayers. You concluded, alone, over about five years, that requests from a man of your age were faintly unreasonable, and everybody around you read the result as maturity. There is a psalm in which a man exactly your age asks for himself, plainly, twice, and asks it on the grounds of the ones who come after, and God kept the sentence.
It is already done, the asking, and God kept it in the book. The word says cast me not off in the time of old age, and the Holy Spirit is the deposit on a renewing that is additional and is never a trade.
So settle the potato salad argument the way you settle it every year. The boy under the table is going to be told to come out shortly, and you are allowed to ask God for things.
Declare this over yourself
This standing is yours in Christ and it is not a report on how many years anybody has left. What God does about your body or your time is His to decide, in His own way, and nothing below asks Him for either. Psalm 71:9 and 18 are the ground under these three lines, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an old man's request and puts it back in another old man's mouth.
- Conclusion that He has moved on to people with time left, you are something I decided alone and you have no authority to be a thing God said. Scripture has a man of my age asking not to be cast off in the time of old age, twice. Look like maturity from a chair; you were never tested against one line of the book.
- Habit of leaving myself out of my own prayers, you are broken in the name of Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a psalm across three thousand years to a table under a tree, so praying only for others looks like a saint and was never humility in me. Five years of not asking; he asked, and God kept the sentence.
- Father, You kept a man's request to be held on to until he had shown Your strength to the ones coming after. I am naming one thing that is truer of me now than five years ago, out loud, in my chair. The paint has given up on this table; I need you on that bar, she said, and she was not talking about the note.
Psalm 71:9
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.