In My Life I Have Learned That Old Dogs Can Learn A Lot From Young Pups

IN MY LIFE I HAVE LEARNED THAT OLD DOGS CAN LEARN A LOT FROM YOUNG PUPS  ~  "Okay, Bill, what are you trying to say?"  Glad you asked.

Recently a hometown Friend and Christian brother, Billy Bell, posted about his excitement in soon being able to get together again with the Wise Guys, a group of young boys from their church.  Like many of us, I assume their meetings and activities have been curtailed due to the Pandemic Lockdown - but now they may be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. 

I posted the following response to his post - and then felt it can be useful to many of my Friends. Especially those of us who spent a good part of our lives in the secular world.  And that thought led me to posting this on my Facebook page and Bill & Dory Gray Christian Ministries blog site:

Bill Gray:   Hi Billy Bell , Your post touched on a distant thought I used to wrestle with on occasion.  In your post you write, "We are having our first, in months, meeting of The Wise Guys this morning.  We are all excited about seeing each other again.  One of the things Chad and I want to discuss is what they want the last few meetings we have left to focus on, practical life lessons, .  .  .   But, how do you do that with soon to be college freshmen?  I didn’t put my spiritual affairs in order until I was 45 years old.  So who I am to teach these young Christians, who are so far ahead of me on their spiritual journey than I was at their age?"

Boy, does that stir a deja vu moment!  I did not become a believer until age 50 in 1987.  And then it took me a few years to feel that I was maturing enough to be able to share with others.  Around 1990, Dory and I were attending Friday Night Bible Study at the home of friends, Fred & Nattie Almeda.

One week Dory was on a business trip to Canada and I went to Bible study alone.  When I got to Fred's home, his high school age daughter, Audrey, told me that her mom and dad were not home and was surprised I did not get the message that Bible study had been cancelled.  Disappointed, I thanked her and was ready to leave when she said, "Why can't we (her younger brother Arnel, herself, and me) have a Bible study?"

I was not knowledgeable enough to lead two teens in Bible study - so she volunteered.  That night the three of us had a great Bible study in the book of John.

Later as I thought about all the young people in our church fellowship, and their Biblical maturity at such a young age - I began to wonder what had happened to me.  I was in worship service, Sunday School, and Bible study every week, read my Bible - and yet these young people put me to shame with their maturity.  Since then, four of those young men have become pastors, and married young ladies from our fellowship - forming young pastoral families.

But where did I go wrong?  Why was I such a late bloomer?  And then God put on my heart, "Those experiences, positive and negative, I had during all my years in the secular world - God can use to help minister to others."

Think about it.  Those young people who, from a young age, were devout believers and became pastors or pastors' wives - how do they counsel a person who has experienced the world, and likely had taken part in some of the negative aspects of our society?  That person who, at age 30, 40, 50, etc., has been living in the secular, pagan, have-fun-at-all-cost world.  And now wants to be a Christian believer, wants to turn his/her life around and serve God.  How does that young pastor, or pastor's wife, counsel such a person with questions about life and the world - when that secular lifestyle is totally foreign to them?

Yet I could, for as the old saying goes, "Been there, done that!"   I know what it is to turn a party-hearty lifestyle around to living a 24/7/365 day Christian life.  Yes, regardless of my life's past ups and downs - God can use my experiences to help others who are beginning their walk toward the cross.

And God being faithful - in the early 1990s, through Pastor Sam Lacanienta, gave me a Christian writing ministry which I have been doing since.  It began with doing a Christian Snail-Mail Newsletter, The Good News - then doing church bulletins with devotional inserts - and for years I have been doing my Friends Ministry eNewsletter, Facebook dialogues and Facebook Notes, and the Bill & Dory Gray Christian Ministries blog site. 

From 2007 to 2015 I posted on the Religion Forum of my Alabama hometown newspaper, the TimesDaily, which was a great learning experience.  I joined because two atheists were dominating the Religion Forum.  And during those years I had the opportunity to dialogue with atheists, agnostics, Christians of the Legalistic, Liberal, and Conservative theologies, Roman Catholic friends, folks in various cults, New Age and Wicca followers, and what I call the vanilla-flavored non-believer - those folks who just did not want to be bothered with God.  In other words, I had dialogues which ventured into many beliefs and lifestyles.  During those years, I learned a lot which I apply to my writings today.

One of those young men from my early Christian walk in our Filipino-American Church fellowship, who became a pastor, Pastor Freddy Cortez, is the one who suggested I turn my snail-mail newsletter which was mailed to about 400 hundred homes in 12 countries - into my e-mail based Friends Ministry eNewsletter which at one time grew to over a thousand people around the world receiving it.  

And for several years I was a contributing columnist on the The Conservative Voice, a news and commentary online web site founded by Nathan Tabor, who holds a Masters in Public Policy from Pat Robertson’s Regent University and is very involved in Conservative politics and in protecting our Conservative Christian faith. 

The Conservative Voice had a number of sections covering virtually every aspect of our Conservative lives.  My posts most often were in the Faith & Family section, occasionally in the Politics section.  That was a great learning experience also, for before, on my own sites and on the TimesDaily Religion Forum - I was addressing maybe hundreds, sometimes thousands of readers - but The Conservative Voice had about 250,000 readers worldwide. 

That was a huge jump in possible readership and was where I learned to stop speaking "Christianese" and find euphemisms which were more broadly received.  An example: instead of writing that born-again believers are "indwelled" by the Holy Spirit, I found that the concept was better received by the wider reading audience if I wrote, born-again believers have the Holy Spirit within us.  Same meaning, less questioning looks from the non-believing world.

The experiences I lived while still in the secular world have flavored my writings since becoming a believer at age 50, lessons I most likely would not have learned if I had become a believer at a young age like Billy Bell's young Wise Guy students in his church group and like the young believers in our Filipino-American churches in Southern California.

One valuable lesson I have learned from all this - is that "We older dogs should never hesitate to learn from the young pups."

Billy Bell, thank you for stirring this moment of deja vu memories for me.

God bless, have a wonderful, blessed day, Bill

Bill Click on the image to enlarge: