Dear Young Christian:

Letter from a Senior Citizen
By Ken Laue

As I write this at the ripe old age of sixty, I remember a time a few decades back (not so long ago, really) when I had just had one of the most wonderful experiences of my life.

I was a brand new convert to Christianity at a small, thriving full-gospel church on Tucson's south side.

Although I had said a sinner's prayer at the altar a couple of weeks or so ago, congregation members kept buggin' me. "Have you been filled with the Holy Ghost yet?"

I was annoyed. I'd been coming to every church service. Didn't these people recognize that I was now one of them?

Finally, a brother figured out that I had no understanding of the difference between a salvation experience and being filled with the Holy Spirit. So he took me to the altar and prayed with me.

I was filled with an overpowering sensation of God's love and comfort, and found myself speaking strange words.

I was still aglow and jubilant with the sensation of God's presence as my wife Bonnie and I drove home after service, but Bonnie had her hand on the door handle, like she was going to bail out of the car at highway speed at any second.

A dark cloud hung over her as we drove the dark, lonely stretch of highway, and I could tell something was wrong. She refused to answer my worried inquiries and continued to smolder until we finally pulled into our driveway. As I stepped out of the 1977 Datsun (still a fairly new car) Bonnie commandeered the vehicle and took off like a bat out of Halifax!

Man, was I scared! Never in our seven long years of marriage had I seen her act like this! But I felt a strange conviction not to worry. The powerful impression told me to let her go. I could have tried to chase her down in the old '61 Chevy pickup; but no, don't.

Later Bonnie told me what had happened. Early in July, we both prayed at the altar to receive Christ. Eric and Brenda Strutz, now long-time pastors in California, had prayed with us. But for the next couple of weeks, as we attended every service and the people of the congregation began to lavish attention on us, Bonnie began to feel more and more "left out." The attention seemed to be almost entirely focused on me, and she felt overlooked.

The night I got filled with the Holy Spirit, she did not. No one had asked her to go to the altar to receive it. I was all aglow, but her feelings of being left out were intensified. In fact, the feeling of being overlooked, left out, was so strong, so bothersome, she just had to have it out with God.

She drove to a spot in the desert that she knew in Tucson Mountain Park. It was beyond Tucson Estates, the very last development before the preserve, in a place where no one would see her or bother her.
In the dark night, she called out to God. Where did she fit into God's plan? With her eyes closed, she sensed a light shining on her.

What did Ken do? Call the Sheriff? Is that who’s shining a flashlight on me?
But when she opened her eyes, it was totally dark. Nothing but the dark hulks of saguaros and the chirping of crickets. The presence of God swept over her. She realized everything was going to be all right. She realized God had a special place for her.

After thirty-two years as I write this, this has proven quite true. Among many other accomplishments, Bonnie has been a key Children's Church and youth worker, helping with Believer's Boot Camp, Faith Camp and leading an award-winning Christian puppetry team.

Manoah and his wife in the Book of Judges were a couple like Bonnie and me - in that they had a personal encounter with God. The Angel of the Lord, which many Bible scholars believe was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, visited the couple to tell the barren woman of a baby boy she would soon bear, and to give specific instructions on how they were to raise the boy.
When Manoah and his wife offered up a burnt offering, The Angel of the Lord ascended up in the flame, into Heaven. Manoah and his missus knew they had had an encounter with the living God!

While Bonnie and I weren't barren, in our seven years of marriage we hadn't conceived any kids. While a lot of times we were careful to use contraception, other times we were very lackadaisical about it. But like Mr. and Mrs. Manoah, we soon bore children of destiny.
Figuring a nine-month gestation, we conceived Melissa right after we got saved in 1979, and her little sister Michelle followed two and a half years later.

While Manoah and his wife were God-fearing people, in spite of their personal visit by the pre-incarnate Christ Himself, their child of destiny, Samson, did not seem to have the same respect for their values and convictions.

For example, Samson violated his vows by deliberately touching a dead animal (to get honey from a bee’s nest in a rotting lion carcass). He took up with harlots. Although God still used Samson to fulfill His purposes, it was clear that Samson did not value the convictions of his godly parents.

In twenty-five years or so of children's ministry and working with youth as they grow up in church, Bonnie and I have noticed the same problem that Manoah and his wife encountered with Samson. While we have seen numbers of children grow up in church and go on to serve God, there have been some, who like Samson, have not valued the convictions or beliefs of their parents. They have gone on to violate, as Samson did, core values of their faith.

It makes me wonder about a couple of things.

First, although God did use Samson in spite of himself, and gave him victory at the end of his life even after his shame left him shackled and blind, how much greater could his legacy and contribution to God's Kingdom have been if he had followed his parents' footsteps?

Secondly, while his parents had a personal encounter with Christ, which became the focal point of their lives and aspirations, why was much of this lost on Samson, as witnessed by his disobedient acts?

I have often wondered: why do some children of godly parents in the church stray away from their parents' faith? In most such cases you can't blame the parents for some gross failure in parenting, or some major failure in Christian exampleship.

Many times I have wrestled this problem through, only to eventually come up with the same conclusion. In spite of the experience and testimony of godly parents; in spite of God Himself using the young person (like Samson) in a powerful way, it still comes down to this: each child, each young person, must choose for themselves their own heart attitude towards the things of God.

If someone goes astray, like the prodigal son, but realizes his or her error and repents, that's one thing. God can work with that person. But if Samson ever repented of his sexual sins or violations of his Nazarite vow, I missed it when I read about him in Judges.

When he came to his senses and knocked down the temple on the Philistines and himself, it was the end of his life.

Nothing Mom or Dad can say or do, nothing the pastors can say or preach, not even if God Himself uses you... none of this can make a difference if in your heart you choose to disrespect the things of God.

The inescapable fact of the matter is each boy and girl, each teen or young person, every adult and older person, must choose for themselves their heart's posture towards God.

Reverence or drifting away? Obedience or sin?

At some point, nothing anyone can do will matter if you or I set our hearts to stray or disobey. In the end, each of us must live for God for ourselves, or not live for Him. It is a decision every boy, girl, mom, dad, young person or old person must make.

While we are each naked and alone in this all-important life decision, once we make the right decision there is a wonderful support group: the local assembly of believers.

They are there to help you and me in our journey for Christ. And we are there to help them.

As a senior citizen, and a veteran in the Kingdom of God, I hope and pray you'll make the choice to stay connected to the faith of your fathers, to follow in the footsteps of your parents -- whether physical or spiritual parents or both -- who have gone before you in the faith.

Like Manoah and his wife, or even like Bonnie and me, you must contend for your own encounter with the Living God, and then guard your heart not to grow weary and disrespect that revelation when you are years down the road.

One final thought. As we age, our memories often fail us in the physical realm. (Okay. I got up and walked across the room. Now what did I get up to get?) But spiritual Alzheimer's, by contrast, is strictly by choice.

Few things are more painful and heartbreaking than having a senior citizen in a nursing home with advanced Alzheimer's.

Except for a young person with the spiritual version of the malady.