On our journeys through life, there are times when we stop or retire from a job or other activity. For example, I played organized baseball until I was thirty, and then stopped. I coached baseball until I was fifty years old, and then I retired. In 1997, I retired from public school service where I taught and was an administrator for thirty years. I then served as school board president for a term before stepping away.

   From 2001 until the present, I pastored at a small church in Pine Creek Valley; soon I will stop serving in that capacity. But there is one job from which we never retire: serving our Savior. When, at fourteen, I accepted Christ as my Lord, I did not understand the commitment I signed up for. You see, as believers, we serve until the end of our lives on this earth.

   Recently, I read a family mission statement that reiterated this very point. It reads: “Our life is not our own, and this world is not our own. We exist to bring glory to God, our Jehovah Jireh! We are servant hearts in a broken world. We will serve whatever, whenever, wherever, and however God calls us until we are called to be with the Lord or Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns.” The couple who wrote this statement are right; our life is not our own. It was bought with a price, and Paul, in Galatians 2:20, expresses this thought when he says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me” (NIV).

   I gave a sermon years ago on this subject, stating that we never retire as Christians and that God can use us no matter what stage of life we are in. A ninety-four-year-old woman by the name of Libby spoke to me after the service. She wanted my thoughts about what she could do for the Lord given her limitations.

   She decided she would write notes to all the people who were on our prayer list. Each Sunday, she would get the names and addresses of these individuals. Faithfully, she would write words of encouragement to them. What a blessing those notes were to so many people. By the time Libby went to her heavenly home, she had written close to four hundred letters. Through her ministry, she blessed many individuals.

   My friends, our work as Christians does not end until God calls us to be with Him or until He returns to this earth. We do not retire. Remember these words from the Apostle Paul taken from Philippians 1:21, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”