Never Retire from Spiritual Growth: Dennis & Barbara Rainey

Dave and I had the chance to speak at a marriage conference this past spring, and this woman came up in her early 30s. Soon as I saw her, she hugged me and started crying. And I said, Hey, what's your name?

What's your story? And she said, I've gone through the hardest year because I lost my mom a few years ago. And she said, I felt like the mentor in my life is gone. I go to a good church.

She goes, this is going to sound crazy to you. But you and Dave are my mentors now. Through listening to Family Life Today, she said, I feel like I'm being discipled.

I feel like the gospel has a whole new meaning of how it can apply to my marriage and my parenting. And I just hugged her because I thought, this is amazing. I remember seeing you guys over there, you know, talking and hugging.

I'm like, what was that all about? Well, what that's all about happens all over the world, not just through Family Life Today broadcast, but our resources at Family Life Weekend Remember conferences. We have guides in neighborhoods who are impacting their world through our small group resources and all that to say, Family Life is making a mark on the world and you are making a mark on the world.

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I think that's why we are here. 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 Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. So we've got Dennis and Barbara Rainey back in the studio today. It's such a good day when they're here. Oh, that's awesome. They created this show. We're just running behind them.

But here's what I remember just looking across at you guys. And by the way, founder, president of Family Life. Forty years.

Forty plus. It wasn't a ministry initially. I was the national director of the Marriage Preparation and Family Emphasis. They wouldn't even let us become a ministry until we grew up. What you needed to do. We did.

This one just came to my mind. Remember, you don't know the year, but it was 1989. We're joining the speaker team. And that's the year whoever came up with the idea, the new speakers have to do a skit, they have to introduce themselves.

And we almost got fired on our opening skit. Do you remember that? Oh, I remember it. Well, I remember yours better than anybody's. Wow. Because it was just so well done and cool and out of the box and unafraid. It's too bad we don't have this on video.

And it's turning red right now about the color of an apple. I mean, we did this little wrap. And again, we don't even get into it. Black leather jackets. Well, we started with flannel and jeans because the wrap was like we grew up in Ohio and sort of country folk.

And then we rip off our shirt. That's probably what you remember. And I have like a little tank top on and a one glove because we're going to wrap and I'm going to be Michael Jackson.

I was thinking there was black leather somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. So we start this little wrap and I'll never forget, Crawford and Dennis are in the front row and their jaws are like. And I'm like, we're getting fired right now.

We're not even technically on the team yet and we're getting fired. Never came close to that. It was so creative and entertaining. And anyway, I loved it. It was life changing for us. And we felt incredibly honored to be on the speaker team with The Weeknd to remember to get to know you guys a little bit better. Yeah, you became mentors.

Well, here's what I marvel at. You know, I think about the first conference you came to in 1980. We were engaged. You were our preparation for marriage two weeks before our wedding day. Oh, it was that soon.

And Dennis even did the wives talk. So we struggled horribly. Six months in, we were headed downward and we barely took a note at The Weeknd to remember marriage getaway. Because we thought we don't need it.

Because you were too weak to wed me away. We love Jesus. We love each other. We're going into ministry. We're not going to struggle.

Oh, who cares? I came from two alcoholic parents and a divorced family. We're going to be fine. And then we struggled. And we're on staff with Athletes in Action. They sent us to the University of Nebraska. The first football player I met said, Hey, so you're here to do ministry with the athletes?

Yeah. Well, I don't think you know this, but a lot of us are married. Could you and Ann lead a marriage Bible study for us?

And I'm thinking, you got the wrong couple because we don't even like each other. But of course, what I look at, I said, sure, we'd love to. And guess what we did? You led it. We came to remember Manuel. We pulled out the manual. And we taught it.

And did that make sense to you then when you were teaching it? It saved us. We're like, this is the most amazing gospel-centered material. That it's a biblical game plan of how to make a marriage work, which is what the Weekend to Remember Conference is. And it saved our marriage.

We don't even know if it helped anybody else, but it helped us. God is all about second chances and redemption. Less than 10 years later, you're standing up in front of people at the Weekend to Remember teaching it. Isn't that God?

And there's also another lesson. We've said it many times. You want to save your marriage?

Give it away. Oh, yeah. You always think you turn inward. Like, okay. And that's good.

I mean, you need to focus on each other. But when you serve others, Jesus says this way, you want to find your life? Lose it. Lose it in service of me. You're going to find your life. I literally don't know if a marriage was saved.

Ours was because we gave it away. So here we are. It's a perfect transition because we're going from early days when I had hair and we were running fast and now no hair and can't run. You do pretty well.

I run and pull hamstrings now because I'm playing senior softball. That's a whole other thing. But anyway, let's talk about how to finish well.

Because everybody starts well or wants to start well, but winners are found at the end of the game, fourth quarter, last minute. That's where you find the way. It's at the finish line. So yesterday we started a conversation with you that you've done a lot of thinking on, and I'm hoping it becomes a book. I'm hoping this is something we can read and share with the world through literature in the next couple of years about growing older, not becoming old. So remind our listeners where we started yesterday, because we're going to talk about how do we do that? Well, we started yesterday with the first principle that we figured out, which is called growing older, not old, and becoming a lifelong disciple. Because the antidote to becoming old, an old person, is growing and staying alive and staying active and engaging with people and doing what we've always done in life, which is get to know people and reach out. And as you just said a minute ago, giving your life away.

And so I think the way to not become old is to stay active, be intentional, and be engaged. As we looked at the verse out of John 21 yesterday, too, Jesus said to Peter, follow me. So his challenge to all of us who belong to him is to be a follower all the way to the very end. Don't stop following.

Keep following all the way to the end. Keep learning. In fact, a verse that we don't hear much about these days, that we heard a lot about as college students, was Jesus' promise. He said, I have come that they might have life and that they might have it abundantly.

Yes. What are we talking about as we are growing older? Life, how we're doing life. And if you don't start out when you're younger, that becomes more difficult to get on that playing field when you're 50, 60, 70.

When you need to be growing older on purpose and making an impact, giving your life away, like you talked about. It's interesting. My sister was the first person in our family to give her life to Jesus. She shared the gospel with me. I was second. So no one else in our family was following or knew Christ. So all of us became believers. But my dad, he's the one that said to me, hey, don't get any ideas. It's your sister, I know she's into this Jesus thing, but you're strong like me.

You don't need that. So to watch the end of his life, being 92, very successful, built several businesses, lived on a golf course with a big house that he built. And at the end of his life, he's in an assisted living with a little one bedroom. My mom had just passed.

They had been married over 70 years. And I walk into his room of his assisted living place, all the workers are in his room. And so I'm like, hey, what's up? And this young woman who's probably in her 20s, she goes, oh, this is where we love to hang out. I said, what? She goes, oh, yeah, we all have our lunch breaks here.

And I said, really? She goes, oh, we love your dad. He asks us questions. He asks us advice.

And but the best thing he does is he always tells us something great about ourselves. Wow. I was blown away. Weren't you, Dave? Yeah, he just really went from a selfish, self-centered person to serving his wife as she went through dementia and then giving his life away to others.

It was pretty cool. And one of the most beautiful things about us with Anne and I were dating just a few months before that conference where we met you at the weekend. Remember, we got on our knees in her living room at her parents' house and said, God, as we get married, we're asking you to use us to lead this whole family to Jesus. No one was a believer.

He had a separate sister and he did. I mean, we knew and we learned it at the weekend. Remember, marriage isn't about you. It's never going to be about you. It's not about your happiness.

Hopefully you're happy, but it's about mission. But my dad was an avid learner till the day he died. And he loved people. And so I watch him like everything has been torn from him. He couldn't even walk. He's in a wheelchair.

And yet everyone flocked to his room because he was so interested in them. Reminds me of Jesus. What a great example. Yeah. So keep learning.

Give us another one. The second thing that I think we need to be doing is we need to be growing in our purpose. Why has God got you here? I think the person who's growing older knows who he is or who she is, as in God's. And he also knows what he is called by God and commissioned by God to do.

And I want to give a very, very strange illustration at this point. Henry Noun wanted to go to a monastery to see how priests lived and to gain, I think, to learn and to grow as a result of it. He tells the story in a book that contains his journaling as he was growing older. And one of the stories he told was a guy by the name of Philippe Pettit, a Frenchman, who was caught at 7.40 in the morning in New York City in the 1980s, walking between Twin Towers, World Trade Center One, when it was still there, and World Trade Center Two. Do y'all remember this? No, I haven't heard this.

You haven't heard? I remember when it happened because it was made in the news. Oh, well, it was so dramatic that some guy strung a tightrope up and walked with no net, no nothing. He didn't have a net?

No, no. In fact, what he did was he took a crossbow at the top of one of those World Trade Center buildings, and he fired a smaller rope across all the way to World Trade Center Two. And then he strung a heavier rope, a really substantial rope, may have been a cable, I don't know, from World Trade Center One to Two, and he anchored them in place. And at 7.40 in the morning, he walked across between those two buildings with no net, nothing underneath him.

And of course, he was arrested when he got to the other side by the police. And you can Google it and see a picture of it. Really? I mean, it's just this little speck. You can see him.

110 floors up. I mean, just think about that. It's crazy. It hurts the back of my legs when you think about that. So the police ask him, Felipe, why did you do that?

And here's what he said. When I see three oranges, I have to juggle. When I see two towers, I have to walk. So the police did what they would do with any lunatic who could answer a question like that. Bam, psychoanalyzed with a psychiatrist there in New York City, and he came back with a sound mind. And they said, what is this all about?

Why are you doing this? He said, because when I see three oranges, I have to grab them and juggle them. I was made to juggle those balls. When I see two towers, I have to string a rope between them and walk. And he'd done this all over the world, other major cities. This was not the only one. And so here's what Henry Nown asked at the end of this story.

What are your three oranges and two towers? Ooh, that's a good one. Isn't that a good question? Because all of us, according to Ephesians chapter two, verse 10, we are created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he has laid out for us to walk in them.

And he's actually made us a work of art, a divine work of art, with all these capacities and desires. And it really is a good question for everyone listening, but also those who aren't listening. And if you're married to one of them, ask them and give them some time to think about it. Make sure they answer it.

What are yours? I want to make a gesture. I just thought of this question, Dennis.

What are your three oranges and two towers? Well, I have had some time to think about it. Yeah. I'm all about passing on the reality of Jesus Christ generationally within our family and beyond that to other families, because I think the family's in trouble. And I think it's a natural place for discipleship, for evangelism and for reaching other people, because people are looking for hope today. I think that's why we are here. Well, Barbara, let me ask you, some people might hear that and think nobody wants to listen to me anymore. I'm old, you know, they don't even care.

What would you say to them? Well, first of all, I don't think that's true, because as the story you told about your dad illustrates, there are plenty of people who want somebody to care about them. I mean, there's so many lonely people in this world. And one of my favorite role models, and this is somebody I never met. Actually, it's two women that I never met, but my friend Susan Yates has told me this story about her mother and her mother-in-law, who both in their 90s were leading Bible studies with college girls. And I just, you know, the contrast of someone in their 90s and college girls, it just doesn't seem to match. Right, right. But these college girls, just like the nurses in your dad's room, they wanted to hear someone who was interested in them.

Yeah. These two older women in their 90s cared about these college girls and taught them the Bible. And they came every week to their apartment or wherever it was that they both lived.

And they would sit in the living room and listen to these older women teach them the Bible. And I think that's an opportunity that is available to anybody who is a believer in Christ, no matter where you are, no matter where you live. And it may not be a group. It may be one person. It may be somebody in your neighborhood or somebody in your family or somebody in nearby.

I don't know. But God has someone for you to give your life to. I'm seeing this more and more of this whole generation, this longing to be reparented.

Are you seeing it too? Oh, yeah. But they're dying for somebody older. And I say to people, if you've been married several times, you're not disqualified.

If you've been divorced, if you have learned a lot, and you've gone through a lot and there are people that are longing to learn under you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I'm not going to put words in your mouth, but I know one of your thoughts on how to keep growing older and not become old is put younger people around you. Right. It's one of your thoughts. Oh, yeah. I think one of the best things we didn't even realize for 33 years being a Detroit Lions chaplain, we're around 20 year olds, 25 year olds, 28 year olds.

And they keep you vibrant and they challenge you and they want what you have. So I remember saying to a player years ago when I was getting older, I was probably in my 40s, and I said to Luther, I said, Hey, I think I'm done. He goes, what? I go, you know, I used to be the sort of the age of the players I could relate to him. He goes, now I'm as old as their parents. I think I'm done. He goes, dude, are you crazy?

These are the best years. I'm like, why do you say that? He goes, now you're our mentor. We don't want a peer.

We don't want a peer. You said to me when I turned 60. I probably said this to a lot of 60 year olds, but you said it to me and I've never forgotten. He goes, best decade of your life. I go, whatever, dude, I am, you know, this is not going to, this can be the best. You inspired me to run into my 60s. Like, this is not, you're finishing slow.

You are now at a place where a guy can really, really use you. Well, you may be slower by the time you finish the race, but I'm thinking of a man who was instrumental in my early formative years of walking with Christ, his name was H.D. McCarty, and he was a pastor at University Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and he had one fourth of the student body on an annual basis come to that church.

Now, not every day, not every Sunday, but HD was relevant and was preaching it. Well, I've watched him growing older and I had lunch with him the other day. He would not let me come and pick him up. And he's 91 years old. That's a little scary.

Yeah, well, let's not get into that, OK, because we're all headed there. So anyway, yeah, yeah, but he wouldn't he wouldn't let me pick him up. But we walked into this hamburger joint in Fayetteville and he was back in the kitchen challenging these young men. It was two brothers that put this barbecue burger place together and he was challenging them, were you doing what's right? Were you living for Christ?

And he doesn't even care what they think of him anymore. The way that that carries from someone that's that age who's willing to walk into the kitchen and ask you, are you living for Christ? You're going to go, oh, I need to pay attention to this guy. I mean, there's something about there's an authority that comes with age, if he really cares about me to ask me, I need to pay attention to this.

I mean, we love being around HD. Both of us do, because I went to the church as much as he did. He was employed, but I went every Sunday, too, and learned so much from him. And I mean, when we get a call from him on the phone, we both are, he's on the phone. I'm listening because I want to hear every word he has to say. And nobody wants to be around old grumpy. Oh, they don't know he is alive. But when HD calls, he's 91.

I want to hear every word he has to say. I mean, so there's a big difference in older and becoming older. So he's still fiery for Christ. Oh, he is. In fact, what we're talking about is how he's finishing and what he's thinking about proclaiming Christ. He's finishing a book. He has had this book going for 30 years.

He's 91, keep in mind. But he's got these people around him now that are helping him get that book. It's a thousand pages long. It's going to need an editor. Yes, but when you get together with HD, this is something you said Dave just reminded me of it.

HD's had a couple of strokes. And so he talks haltingly, but he does get it out. But what he's talking about has so much substance and life and Jesus Christ, and it's always about that. It was always about that on Sunday morning when he preached. He was the most Christ centered preacher, teacher that I've ever heard, ever known. He just wanted to talk about who Jesus is, what Jesus has done for us, and confront people with him so they'd come to faith in him.

Because he said all of eternity is based on that. The thing that HD is doing, now he's 91, he can't get around very well. But he calls people and he has this list of people who were very important to him through the years. And he calls these people. He's calling two or three people every week and he keeps calling. And you may not have the ability to go lead a Bible study somewhere, but you can have a cell phone and you can pick up a phone and call people and encourage them on the phone, because every time he calls us, it's like, oh, HD's on the phone. What does he have to say? We want to hear every word he has to say. And that's a very practical thing that anybody can do, because people are longing to be encouraged and to be thought of just to have your phone ring and have somebody say, I was thinking about you, how are you doing? I mean, that means the world.

Yeah, I mean, when I hear you talk about HD and I don't know him, but I can feel your excitement about his excitement. Here's what I think. If there's a word that describes a lot of older people who are living old, not growing older, but living old, what's the word that comes to your mind, because I had a word come to my mind. Withdrawal. Yeah. Pull away. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah, it's like they're done. And I had a word come to me, it's cynical. Mine was self-centered.

It's all about their pain and their situation and what they've lost. And you hear that and you're like, no, I do not want to be that person. But I think what you're saying is you will become that person unless you grow older.

It's got to be a growing process. HD couldn't stop calling because he has a hard time with language now. But he has not stopped him from making phone calls. He thinks at the speed of light. OK, yeah, translating it through his tongue into words, all that. And I just listen to him. I just say, you know, great to be with you, HD.

And I'll call him when I get back after after this trip and we'll chat for a little bit. Here's the thing. HD could have been a victim. He grew up in Highland Park, Texas, North Dallas. He once told me the only thing he ever heard his dad promised him was a lie. He said, one Saturday morning, I was sitting eating cereal and my dad came down and walked out the screen door and said, see you later, son. And the next minutes that followed, there was a scurry of people around his house, HD's house, his boy. And he went outside to find out what was going on. And he walked out into the garage and found his dad having shot himself.

Wow. So he could be a victim. Yeah, but he's not. You know why?

Because the one who said, I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly spoke that into HD's life and he's been living it ever since. Hang out with those kind of people. You're going to be changed. They're going to rock your world because we all need to make sure we're listening to the right voices today. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Dennis and Barbara Rainey on family life today, you know, the Ministry of Family Life has really made its mark in so many different marriages and families. And I'd love it if you would make your mark alongside of us. One of the things that we're trying to do this month is raise two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in new funds by the end of August, and we'd love it if you would partner with us.

Link arms with us. The Ministry of Family Life to help reach marriages and families all over the country and all over the world. And when you do and you partner with us with any donation that you make, we're going to send you a family life pen along with a copy of Brant Hansen's Unoffendable. It's just a small way of us saying thank you for partnering with us, supporting this ministry and being part of the solution when it comes to reaching marriages and families for the glory of Jesus Christ. Again, you can head over to familylifetoday.com to make your donation or give us a call at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now, tomorrow, Dennis and Barbara Rainey are back as they explore topics like heaven and discuss the eternal significance of living with purpose in your later years. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.