Stage of Life — Morning Devotions

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I wonder this morning if you just come with me as we look at some of the different stages of life that we go through and the environment, if you like, for each of these different phases of life, I wonder how old you are. You probably fit into one of these categories one of these environments. Let’s start with the what we call the environment of the young adult.

Now a young adult. Well, let’s talk about some of the emotional needs of a young adult. Probably has, for example, intimacy is the need to, I think, be part of a circle of personal friendships or have relationships with people. Whether be a chance to give love and also to receive love. These things are very important to someone who was a young adult. They need to have identity and to fit in into society. You know, they need to know that well, you know, someone, takes an interest in me, and whatever I say, people will take notice. And in that age group, there’s the need to, I think, prove ourselves in a career or a vocation.

I like the story of a woman who came in her forties to a respected minister to discuss a marriage that had gone wrong after 15 years. And both the husband wife. Of course, we’re broken hearted, and they, the woman, particularly felt it would take years for the marriage to recover. She said it was really unfortunate that their relationship soured almost before the end of the honeymoon,
and the minister said to her, “Well, didn’t you see that this sort of thing could come before you walk down the aisle?”. “Well”, she said, “maybe I did. I remember my parents expressing some strong reservations about the wisdom of our relationship even that week before we got married. But I didn’t want to listen”. And she said “I had this fear of loneliness. I couldn’t actually bear the thought that I go through life as an adult, a single person. Now I realised that he wasn’t the perfect man”.

But she said, ‘I kind of told myself that we could solve some of these problems after we settle into the relationship. You can do that, you know. And maybe I discovered that there’s a set of problems between two people that can’t be solved”. And she said, “I wish that I’d listened to my parents”. Well, that’s a very sad story. I guess it can be repeated many times, and the need there for intimacy for young adults is very real. And of course, there are many people who, unfortunately, have had to go through the pain of a marriage breakdown. So, the fear of being unmarried, that can be the very emotional environment that can cause a young woman to compromise her standards.

Well, there are, I think, a few reasons why young adults need help. They need older people to come alongside them. We use the word mentors or sponsors to come alongside and offer that sort of encouragement and help. Now, what about the midlife you know, the midlife person who is in the in that time of life, where things like, uh, in fact, they’re running out of time opportunities? They don’t have the energy they used to have. They weren’t or they’re not as young as they used to be.

And so that person can be sensitive to the fact that a large part of the world gears itself to the younger generation, so relationships are changing. Perhaps his or her parents are ageing, the children are leaving, and friends that he’s known have actually moved on to bigger opportunities in their career. And if he’s married, the marriage might have lost some of the charm, and he’s getting older. His body, perhaps, is letting him down. He hasn’t taken care of it, and he could well have the major responsibility for children and his ageing parents. So, there was, I think, the temptation for this group of people those in the midlife to slow down and perhaps by trying to speed life up and to look for things that they normally wouldn’t look for. In fact, I remember someone saying, the trouble with me at this stage of my life is that life is coming unstuck.

And so, these folk and you could well be one of those find that you’re missing out on life, and then there’s the other area of senior adulthood. And to think that he is struggling there with self esteem and the problem of age and sickness and all these other things. So there it is, the environment of different stages of life. I think it’s it’s worth taking note of, well, eternal God. We know it’s a privilege to know Jesus Christ and to trust in Jesus as Saviour Lord, regardless of what our ages, everything else falls into insignificance compared with the joy of knowing you. And may you reach out to us. Lord, as we go through the various stages of life are men.