Proverbs 17:22….Laughter is good medicine: I was on a date recently and the guy took me horseback riding. That was kind of fun, until we ran out of quarters—-Susie Loucks

Getting a cancer diagnosis really shakes things up. I received mine in February 2014. It took me about 30 minutes to adjust to it. My 1st prayers to God were that I’m ready to die and be with Jesus if that was His will. Heaven is my real home. Its reality is so much more real than this present earthly one. As I prayed to God to get clarity, it was impressed upon my mind that He was going to heal me. Thinking this was just my conscience telling me what I wanted to hear, I kept talking to God about it. He finally impressed upon me that He really was going to heal me and that I should get off the fence or He was going to boot me off of it. That I should take Him at His word and get on with the healing process of radiation/chemo.

     Seeing His point and not wanting to get “booted in the butt” by God, I then inquired of Him what he would want to do with the rest of my life. I was shocked when he gave me 6 specific things. Four of these were things I already knew about because I’d been seeking His will for when I would reach retirement. This was encouraging to me that I really did hear from Him. The 2 new things were things that I never would have thought about. As many of you know, I’m not the ‘creative’ type (to put it mildly). Here are the 6 areas God gave to me:

1: my personal life…teaching adult education classes at our church, maybe teaching an astronomy class at a community college, putting my teachings on the internet, developing new classes, getting in shape by walking, volunteering more at our church in areas like the food/clothing ministries, etc.

2: my spiritual life…having more time for reading/studying how to apply Christianity to my life, more prayer time, etc.

3: our travel life…Patti & I have always wanted to travel when we retired. This obviously requires strategic & financial planning.

4: our house life…

A…we’ll be offering a ‘spa’ evening for local area pastors and their spouses. They’ll have the use of our hot tub along with light refreshments afterwards. Pastors are so stressed out, hopefully an evening in a hot tub will bless them.

B…we’ll be using half of our house for visiting missionaries, guest speakers, etc. to stay in while they’re in our area.

5: our spiritual gifts life…Patti is a chaplain at our church, my adult education teaching at our church, putting my teachings on the internet, etc. In other words, look for ways to utilize our spiritual gifts.

6: our parent and grandparent life…vacationing with our kids (our sons & their spouses) & grandkids, having individual time with them, babysitting our grandkids, etc. Even with our adult kids at this stage in their lives, we’re figuring out ways to have time with them, grow closer to them and be a godly influence in their lives. Example: we plan on taking the older grandkids to the Detroit Public library and the Detroit Science Center. We’ve already taken some of them to the Plymouth, MI Ice Festival in mid-January. We’re also taken the older ones on a trip to the Creation Museum in northern Kentucky. For my sons, I’ve taken them to our church’s men’s breakfast. We’re constantly looking for things to do and ways to grow closer to them. God gave them to us as gifts and we want to treat them as such.

These 6 areas will guide the rest of our lives in retirement. Every week, Patti & I have a 10-15 minute meeting where we discuss our last week’s goals, see how we’ve done and maybe make some new goals for the coming week. My one regret is that I didn’t start this planning years ago. The Bible says to seek God in making plans but to give the Lord the freedom to change direction as He sees fit. Read Proverbs 16:19 15:22 and 3:5-6.

If you aim at nothing, that’s all you’ll hit. Have you talked to the Lord about getting a plan for the rest of your life? If not, why not? If so, how is it working for you? God does have a plan for your life. Read Jeremiah 29:11 & 33:3. The only way to be truly happy is to know what that plan is and to be walking in it.

Do you have a life plan? If you do, write and tell me about it.

For His Kingdom,
Dave Maynard