“We have met many challenges that youth presented. We have taken risks and secured through work many goods. The Lord has blessed our efforts for his kingdom, and we begin to rest on our laurels. We slowly begin slipping into a spiritual forgetfulness.”
Each stage of adult life presents its own unique challenges. Young adults worry about finding work and getting married. Older folks have increasing health problems and the loss of independent living. And those in their middle age years, with their own set of struggles, often find themselves “caught in the middle” trying to help aging parents while guiding their children into adulthood.
In the midst of these challenges, it might be helpful to be aware that there are also unique temptations to sin that are more age-specific. Without denying any sin can tempt any believer at any age, can we not identify one sin in particular that is perhaps most common in the church to each of these ages?
For young people, is not worldliness often the big issue? One of my mentors regularly told me that for covenant children growing up in a Christian home, their biggest struggle was often not whether they would express faith in Christ, but rather would they submit to his Lordship. The tug of the world with its passing pleasures and prominent positions causes many a young believer to wrestle, and some do fall away into these offerings of the evil one.
For the aged, perhaps inflexibility is the prevalent matter. What becomes of their bodies is often true of their souls – they have difficulty stretching and bending. Having grown up and matured in a previous generation, the elderly can look at those in the following one and become annoyed with changes they see. Especially in the church, the “we’ve-never-done-it-that-way-before” line can become the refrain of the senior citizen section of the chorus.
Well, being a middle-aged believer myself, my real concern is speaking to my own heart and my own age group. For I wonder aloud if complacency is not our most common sin? We have met many challenges that youth presented. We have taken risks and secured through work many goods. The Lord has blessed our efforts for his kingdom, and we begin to rest on our laurels. We slowly begin slipping into a spiritual forgetfulness as we enjoy comfort, and unknowingly begin to fulfill what the Lord said of his people long ago: “As they had their pasture, they became satisfied, and being satisfied, their heart became proud; therefore they forgot Me” (Hosea 13:6 NASB).
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