I am certain that the thought has occurred to many, if not most, elderly Elders that the problem with 40 years of experience is that it takes 40 years to get it, and by then most people think you are too old and too “out of touch” to have anything valuable to add to the conversation!

As an elderly Elder I want to share some of the theological knowledge and spiritual insights that I wish I had known when I was a younger believer. I hope that you will find them helpful.

I believe the single most important theological lesson I have learned in my 40+ years of ministry is that it is easy for a person to develop a relationship with a Church without having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ!

This was certainly true of me.

When I was 21 years old, my girlfriend’s father told her that she could not date me unless I joined their Church (which required that I be baptized by immersion) so I went to their Church on a Sunday night and was baptized.

I knew nothing about what it meant to be saved let alone how to be saved. This began an eleven years long saga of my being a member of four Churches and attending a Christian University without ever coming to realize that I did not really have a personal relationship with Jesus.

Sadly, it is really easy to become a member of a Church and once you are a member of a Church almost everyone will assume that you have a relationship with Jesus and therefore they will not seek to find out if you really do have a personal relationship with Him.

Two simple things are required to have a personal relationship with Jesus: first, you must repent of your sins, and second, you must believe in Jesus.

To repent means to recognize that you have sinned against God and to confess your sins to God and forsake them.

Proverbs 28:13 “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

To believe in Jesus does not mean a casual belief such as when we believe it might rain, rather, it means to believe to the point of committing yourself and your life to Him much like a skydiver believes in and commits their life to their parachute.

You must believe two things about Jesus to have a personal relationship with Him: you must believe WHO Jesus is and you must believe what Jesus did.

John 8:24 “I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”

1^st Corinthians 15:3-4 (3) “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, (4) that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…”

Romans 10:9-10 (9) “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (10) For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

It is easy to know if you really believe these things because if you truly believe that Jesus is God in human flesh and that He paid for your sins on the cross and rose from the dead, you will desire to obey what He commands!

John 14:15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

Luke 6:46 “”Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

Beloved ones, nothing else in life is more important than having a personal relationship with Jesus!