Growing Older without Growing Old: Dennis & Barbara Rainey

Hey there, David Robbins here. Before we get started today, I just have to say I cannot wait for you to hear from a special couple we have in studio with us today. It is Dennis and Barbara Rainey who got us started on the journey of family life almost 50 years ago as our co-founders. I'm so grateful to have them back. I know you will enjoy hearing their familiar voices and some of the stories and process they're in as they're continuing to grow and helping change their corner of the world. So enjoy hearing again from Dennis and Barbara Rainey. How you live now determines how you become older later.

You don't prepare for becoming older when you're 60 or 70, although it's never too late to start. How do I want to finish the race? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are David and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.

This is Family Life Today. Well, I am pretty excited about today. So am I. Yeah. We have Dennis and Barbara Rainey back. You're back. Yeah.

In the Family Life Today studios. It feels really good. Does it really? Yeah. It feels absolutely awesome.

Does it? I've been watching you guys from out in the control room and hey, run with it baby. You got the stuff. Well, we learned from the best.

I got to tell you this story. Here we go. I knew, I knew we were just going to take over. Yeah. I am going to take over on this one.

Bruce, can you turn this mic down? I was, I was in, I think it was, it was Orlando. I spoke here to a group called Kingdom Advisors, big convention they had and Barbara and I concluded it. And after it was over, this radio listener came up and she said, well, I just have to tell you, I listened to you for years, you and Barbara for years. And when you went off the air, I was bummed, but I decided I'd listen to Dave and Ann. By the way, we were pretty bummed too.

No, you weren't. She said, there's like Dennis, Barbara who? Oh yeah. She said, we love them.

They're so good. So I thought, you know, that's a great story that I want to use on air. What better way to join you than to say one person.

It was probably your mom, but anyway, if you don't know, this is the founder and president couple of Family Life. We're sitting in these chairs because of you guys. We're not here apart from you. I mean, this job is a glorious job for us and we, we'd never be here without you. Well, and none of us would be here without, uh, God's favor and his ordering our steps when you agree, sweetheart. Very much.

Yeah. And I can't wait to talk about what we're going to talk about, but I do want to say this. We have a unique perspective on this job. I think because there's people that, you know, came on staff at our church and I was a founder of that church and they come on staff and you can tell, Hey, they're just glad to be there.

And they're walking in buildings they didn't build. And you know, they've never had the sweat that we did, but you're glad they're there. But we know being a founder of a church, you are a founder of this. We know there were sleepless nights and there were nights you didn't know if God would provide and all those things, you laid it all on the line. So every time we walk in the studio, we never walk in here like, Hey, we got a good thing going. We're like, they built something we didn't build. We are literally on their shoulders and we are so humbled. I mean, we fall on our face and just say, God, for what you did. Our mission statement when we took over between ourselves was don't mess this up. Just don't mess this up.

That's not a very inspiring mission statement. But the first very first recording day, we laid on the floor of the studio and we both were holding hands, laying on our stomachs. We weren't on our knees. We were on our face. We don't know what we're doing. We can't do this apart from now. And I know that you guys have felt that too.

We can't do this apart from you. But we're excited about this topic today. I got to hear some of your thoughts, uh, last year in November about growing older but not becoming old. And I had never even heard that term before when you laid that out with about 17 of us in a hunting lodge in South Dakota.

And I took notes and I'm not going to look at my notes. I'm just going to say, tell us about this journey. Well, let me add this too, Dave, because I feel like as we're traveling, speaking, talking to couples, as their kids leave and they're empty nesters, there's this loss of identity, loss of purpose. I've had so many couples say, we don't know what we're doing anymore. What are we supposed to be doing with our lives? And I think today's going to answer that question. Well, it's, it's our hope.

It would. This journey started for us way back in the 1970s when I snuck in a seminary class at Dallas Seminary that Dr. Howard Hendricks taught. He talked about this elderly woman in her nineties and she would greet him and say, well prof, what's the best five books you've read in the last six months? And he said, that woman was more alive than a lot of my students that I have at the seminary. And he made a deposit in my mind. He made a deposit of thinking about how do you go through the process of growing older without becoming old? And there's a big difference. There is a big difference. And if you aren't purposeful about this, it's going to happen.

It absolutely is going to happen. I had a conversation last week with a friend of mine by the name of Scott and his dad had just died at the age of 90. And Scott had gone to his office after the funeral was over and he just looked around and everything. And he found this camo backpack and phone call with him. He said, you know what I found in that backpack? My dad was 90 when he died.

Okay. He said, textbooks. He was taking two college courses.

Taking classes. In his nineties. In his nineties. And his mom mowed the lawn for the church they attended and his dad kept the place up a bunch and he was purposeful all the way to the finish line. And this was an executive who founded one of the major corporations in America.

His dad was. So I thought, you know, what a great image of that backpack. And my friend Scott's got that backpack in his office. I hadn't seen it yet.

I'm going to go see it here in the next few weeks. Just the image to say, don't quit. Yes.

Keep going. I think Barbara's on the track. Yeah. She's in seminary. I was going to say that. Yeah.

I'm glad you did. She's going to be in her nineties, getting her doctorate. She better not be. Yeah. He doesn't want me to go for.

I look forward to eating her cooking again someday. Yeah. Yeah.

He doesn't want me to keep going. Well, I mean, it's interesting we're talking about this in this state. We're in Florida. Right. Yeah. This is for a lot of people is a dream.

When I'm finally done, I can just go there and play pickleball every day, which by the way, I love to play pickleball, but that's sort of the goal, isn't it? It is. You get a little amped up about this, Dennis.

If that's your values, this is nirvana right here, you know? Yeah. But if you're about the kingdom's work, about what God's up to, which was it Amy Carmichael who said, we have only a few hours before sunset to win the victories, but all of eternity to celebrate them. Yeah. Yeah.

She made that statement that it is in time that we make deposits for eternity. And I think at the heart of it is growing, the concept of growing. We need to be growing when we're young, younger, middle age. And as we move into our fifties, sixties, seventies, we never stop needing to learn and growing as we look at the finish line.

Yeah. So how's it for you guys since you retired from family life? I'm laughing.

But have you heard that? Because people walk up to us in the Detroit area and go, hey, so now you're retired, how's life? I'm like, I'm working harder now than I ever worked in my life. So we need to put our brains together to come up with a new word for retirement. Well, I just say it's retire.

I put new tires on and then we're going, we're going faster than ever. That's a good one. I like that too.

Retire. I like that too. I call it re-firement. Yeah. So re-firing, heading toward the finish line with fresh fuel, fresh fire. And I think God's got an assignment for every living person. I do. And you wouldn't want to miss that.

You wouldn't want to arrive in heaven and find out you missed his calling for your life. Now have you slowed down though? I mean, you're doing different things. You're not walking in a building every day.

You're not leading a big, huge organization. Do you feel like you've slowed down? No, we haven't. But I think what you just said is, is the important ingredient because I think we tend to think when we've done this main part of our lives, whether it's raising kids or the main job, then we're done. And I think God's purpose for us changes. I think it evolves as we grow and we, he takes us in new frontiers.

And you've heard about men who are retired, who work in schools or women who are retired, who do different things. And I think we just need to expand our vision for what God might have for us in a season that doesn't include full-time employment in a career. And I think that takes some creativity. I think it takes focus.

It's not going to come in an envelope in the mail and say, here's your next assignment. You've got to look for it. You've got to pray. You've got to think through what has God equipped me to do and where can I use these gifts for the kingdom and for serving the church, the body of Christ.

That may take some time and energy, but he has that for all of us. Tell us what you would both be feeling had you really retired and now you're just kind of sitting around piddling about. What would you feel in your heart, Dennis?

Would you be frustrated? I think I'd feel purposeless. I think I'd feel like I didn't have a destination. I didn't have a mission I was on, something I was about that was worth getting up in the morning for. And I think I'd become lazy. I think there's a lot of things could happen.

I have this written down. How you live now determines how you become older later. What's that mean? Well, it means you don't prepare for becoming older when you're 60 or 70, although it's never too late to start.

But you get a vision for your life. How do I want to finish the race and Barbara and I want to finish it together. We just celebrated our 51st anniversary.

We also celebrate 27 grandkids, six married kids. And so we've got all kinds of tensions on us, but I don't think God designed faith to be without tension. It's impossible to please God without faith. And I think the nature of life is to give us obstacles and things that we have to confront. We have to decide how we're going to live. Are we going to walk by faith and trust God, get to know him and make sure we're living out his best in the midst of these circumstances?

Or are we going to put the gear in neutral and coast? Yeah, I don't think God ever called us to live in neutral. And I don't think he designed us to sit back and twiddle our thumbs. I mean, the question you asked Dennis, my immediate thought was boredom. I mean, if I didn't have something to get up and do, I would be bored. Now I'm the type that's going to find something to do because I just don't like sitting around. So I would find something to do, but I just think it's really super important to be productive because the natural tendency is to become lazy.

The natural tendency is to quit trying to quit working hard at anything. And that's just contrary to what God made us to do. Well, it's interesting. We were down here in Florida probably seven years ago because our friends had a condo and they said, hey, you and Dave, take a little break, go down there. And so I went on this walk and it was winter in Michigan, but it's glorious here in Florida.

And as I was walking, I'm talking to God and I'm saying, Lord, this is amazing down here. Could you give us a house? Because we can't afford one. I would like to live down here. Can you give us a house?

Like this would be great for the family and kids. Well, and so I prayed that and then I just kind of walked in silence and I had this sense in my spirit. I felt like in my spirit, he said, there's work to be done. There's a battle to be fought.

And as I thought that I'm like, you're right. I've prayed. I've prayed that in my thirties and twenties. Like I want to go out strong.

I never want to stop going after Jesus and winning people for the battle. And so it's crazy, Barbara, as you said, now we're working down here and living down here. So it's like he answered it, but he answered it's like, yeah, and I'm going to bring you down here. I'm going to give you something to do. Yeah, exactly. On top of it. So Dennis, talk to us, how do we grow older and not become old?

Especially younger. There was a little gem that Barbara and I found in the book of John, the last chapter in John. Now think about it, it's the last chapter. These are some of Christ's last words. Barbara, why don't you share with our audience what we just discovered in this passage as Jesus had a confrontation with Peter.

Oh yeah. John 21. Hang with us on this because some of the best advice you'll ever hear comes from the mouth of the Savior about growing older at the end of this passage. The background of this passage I think is really cool because this is after the resurrection and Jesus appears and then sometimes he doesn't appear. And so the disciples are out on the boat. They're doing what they always have done. They're out there fishing and they're not catching anything.

And who knows how long it's been since they've seen Jesus, if it's been a couple days or if it's been a week. But they're out there fishing and they see this person on lamb and they don't know who it is and he asks them about their catch and then they go in and he's made breakfast for them. He's got a fire built on the shore and he's got the flames are growing and he's cooking fish. And essentially he says, come have breakfast with me.

And they sit and they begin to talk. And then after they have breakfast, they begin hearing from Jesus and he says, feed my sheep and take care of my sheep. And he has a specific conversation with Peter. And he said to Peter three different times, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And then he says, feed my sheep and shepherd my sheep. And then at the very end on the third time, he says, Simon, son of John, do you love me? And Peter was grieved because he asked him a third time, do you love me? And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, you know all things, you know that I love you.

And Jesus said to him, tend my sheep. And then Jesus said, truly, truly, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to gird yourself and walk wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will gird you, meaning dress you, and will bring you where you do not wish to go. Now think about the definition of getting older.

Does that not sound like getting older? You get where you can't dress yourself. You can't go where you want to go and someone else takes you where you don't want to go. I remember in my mother's later years when her back door neighbor, who was her really good friend, came over one day and said, I'm moving. And my mom said, where? And she said, my kids think it's time for me to move. And they packed her up and they moved her and didn't really even ask her.

I didn't even hardly know the woman, but the heartache I felt for her, that she was being taken someplace she didn't want to go. Well, this is what Jesus is talking about. And then before you share the rest of what Jesus said, a friend of mine, Dr. John Hannah, who's a, I think a double PhD in church history, brilliant teacher at Dallas Seminary. I was sitting talking with him one afternoon and he just made a very profound statement about getting older. He says, as you get older, your world shrinks. So your options are reduced. Your world gets smaller. How are you going to handle it?

I mean, when you said that, Dennis, I'm like, I know we're there. The world shrinks. Everything shrinks. It gets, and you don't like it. No, you don't like it. So now just brace yourself for Jesus' words.

How do you handle this? He has two words. Listen to this. So verse 19, now Jesus said this signifying by what kind of death he would glorify God. So that's sort of a parenthetical little statement that John puts in there for readers like us to know. But then Jesus turned back to Peter. So immediately after he said these declarations about you're going to be taken where you don't want to go and you're going to, someone else will gird you. He said to him, follow me. So in the context of Jesus' statement in verse 17 about getting older, someone's going to take you where you don't want to go. Someone's going to dress you.

All these things are going to happen. You still follow me. And when we realized the context of that, that Jesus was saying this is what's going to happen to you when you get old.

I'm giving you advance notice. But in the midst of all that, as hard as it's going to be, keep following me. So the most important thing we've realized in getting old is continuing to be a disciple. Don't stop being a disciple. Don't stop following Jesus.

Don't stop walking with him. Don't stop confessing your sin. Don't get lazy in the Christian life. And I think that's everybody's tendency is to get lazy in the Christian life. We think I've been there.

I've done that. I deserve a break. We don't deserve a break. God's called us to follow him. And not just because he's called us, but it brings us life. When we walk with him, there's such fulfillment.

Oh, it's an adventure. And what is a disciple? You know the essence of a disciple? Learner. That's exactly right.

Now think about that. Jesus is saying, how are you going to run your race all the way to the finish line? Keep learning. Keep getting to know me. Keep growing.

That's good. Keep growing. And that's really the aha for all of this with us.

It's kind of like we kind of came in the back door of this because it didn't really start out here when I was studying this. I just kept chewing on it and thinking, how do we do this thing of not becoming old and a codger? You know, a gripey, complaining.

Who wants to be around people that are unhappy and gripey and miserable and all of those things? I don't think that's what God has for us. Yeah. And I think what you said earlier, if you're not intentional, you become old.

Because there aren't opportunities. You just become old. Oh, you're fighting gravity.

Yeah. You're going to go there unless it's like the weekend remember, you're going to drift toward isolation. You got to fight for oneness. I'm thinking when you said that earlier, be a disciple to the very end. As you're reading from John, I thought that's my mission statement.

I don't want to right quit before he calls me. I want to run to the finish line. Just like he said, follow me to the very end. We only have a few minutes left and you're full of stories. You both have stories of mentors that you have watched do this well, that are inspiring. So I'm wondering if you could just close with one of these stories of one of the people, as you've watched grow old well, not growing old, they've gotten better.

Could you end with one of those great stories? Well, Dr. Bill Bright was the founder of the organization Campus Crusade for Christ, as you guys know. Bill showed us how to live when he lived. But maybe some of the greatest lessons he taught was as he was dying of pulmonary fibrosis. And so if you know anything about this disease, you literally strangle to death. You can't breathe. The lungs harden up.

They don't do the job of absorbing oxygen into the bloodstream. Now, we did over 6,000 broadcasts when we led this radio ministry. His broadcast is one of the top five.

Really? Only months before he died. He was on oxygen.

You can hear the machine in the background occasionally. And as he was in the process of dying, you know what he did? He gave me about 15 to 20 things to do. And all of a sudden I stepped out of the room, took off my mask and I was outside there and I go, what did he just do to me? He just delegated all these assignments to me.

And so I didn't put my mask back on. I just burst the door open and I said, Bill Bright, you're a mess. You just gave me a bunch of stuff to do and you're moving on to heaven. And he threw his hands up in the air and just threw them down on his lap and just laughed, sitting up.

It's like, attaboy, son. Keep going. You're not done yet. So don't quit. So that's in the last hours of his life, last weeks of his life.

Yeah. We taped a number of broadcasts that we did with him. You know, some people teach you how to live.

Some people teach you how to die and some people do both. That was a sweet, sweet relationship. Cause when I went out to work for him, it was selfish. I just wanted to be on mission. He did a great job of talking about the great commission and fulfilling God's purpose for your life.

And now served on staff for 53 years. Wow. No regrets.

Absolutely no regrets. I've heard so many stories about Dr. Bright over the years, and I'm always in awe of how he finished well. He ran the race well.

Yes. And he finished well. And I hope that that story that Dennis just shared with us is one that makes you go, you know, I want to finish well too.

Cause it certainly makes me feel like that. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Dennis and Barbara Rainey on Family Life Today. You can hear Dennis Rainey's interview with Dr. Bill Bright in his last days of his battle with pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that eventually took his life.

You can go to familylifetoday.com in the show notes and find the link there to Dennis Rainey's conversation with the founder of CREW, Dr. Bill Bright. You know, I hear stories like the ones that have been shared today and it really just makes me so grateful for the ministry of family life that's been going strong now for 40 years and how God has used it to impact marriages, parenting, families all over the country and all over the world. And I hope that you have been impacted by it as well. You know, this month, the month of August, we are looking to raise $250,000 in new funds by the end of this month. And so if you've been impacted by family life, the ministry of Family Life Today or A Weekend to Remember or any kind of effort by this ministry has helped you, has helped your marriage, has helped you in your parenting, has helped you walk with Jesus even closer, I'd love for you to jump in and partner with us in order to continue to make this ministry one that impacts marriages and families all over the world. You can do that simply by going online to familylifetoday.com and making a donation there. Or you can give us a call at 800-358-6329 to make your donation.

Again, that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And thank you so much for being a part of the solution when it comes to this ministry. We are so grateful for you who support us and make it possible for us to reach families and communities around the world. Now tomorrow, Dennis and Barbara Rennie are back again with the Wilsons to talk about continual devotion to Jesus and staying active as you get older, really just aging with purpose. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David and Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today.