Wesleyan Theology

The House Has a New Owner

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

Since my mom died, my brothers and I have faced a task that eventually comes to almost every family: cleaning out her house.

There is nothing particularly unusual about cleaning out a house. You open drawers. You empty closets. You decide what to keep, what to give away, what someone else in the family might want, and what simply needs to be thrown away. Except when it is your mother’s house, nothing is quite that simple.

A drawer isn’t just a drawer. You open it and find something you remember from childhood. A closet contains clothes you still picture her wearing. A cabinet holds something you haven’t seen in thirty years, and suddenly you aren’t standing in an empty house anymore. You’re ten years old again.

Cleaning out Mom’s house brought floods of memories. But it also brought another realization. Life can become incredibly cluttered without us ever noticing it.

Very few of us wake up one morning and decide, “I think I’ll fill every drawer, closet and cabinet in my house with things I may never use again.” It just happens.

We put something in a drawer because we might need it someday. We move something to a closet because we don’t know what else to do with it. We keep something because it belonged to somebody we loved. We hang on to something because throwing it away feels wasteful. One thing becomes ten things. Ten things become a closet full of things. Eventually we stop noticing.

It isn’t necessarily bad stuff. Some of it is valuable. Some of it is sentimental. Some of it once served an important purpose. But somewhere along the way, the house became cluttered.

As we worked through Mom’s house, another thought slowly began forming in my mind. This is what Jesus wants to do with my house. Not the house where Vanessa and I live. Me. My spiritual house.

The House Gets a New Owner

When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, something far more significant happens than inviting Jesus into our lives. The house—my house—gets a new Owner. We deed the property to him.

Paul puts it rather bluntly:

“You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price.”
—1 Corinthians 6:19–20 NLT

The deed has changed hands.

But here’s where things get interesting. We still live in the house. And living in a house you used to own after someone else has taken ownership can get uncomfortable. Because the new Owner begins opening drawers.

“What’s this?”

Oh, I’ve had that for years.

“Do you need it?”

Well, no. But I’ve always had it.

Then he opens a closet.

Jesus, we really don’t need to go in there.

But he does.

Opening the Drawers

There are resentments we’ve stored away. Old wounds we’ve carefully boxed up. Ambitions we haven’t quite surrendered. Habits we’ve learned to live with. Attitudes we’ve stopped questioning. Fears we’ve carried so long that we think they’re part of the house.

Some things aren’t necessarily sinful at all. They simply no longer belong in the life Jesus is creating. And some things carry memories. That’s when cleaning gets difficult. Because Jesus isn’t sorting through somebody else’s house. He’s sorting through mine. He starts rearranging furniture.

Wait a minute. That chair has always been there.

“I know.”

I like it there.

“I know.”

Then why are you moving it?

“Because this is my house now.”

And there, I think, is much of the uncomfortable work of sanctification. By grace, we gladly gave Jesus the house. We meant it when we did. But we didn’t necessarily understand everything that new ownership would mean.

We knew about the things lying around in plain sight. Those were often among the first things we expected Jesus to change. But then he starts opening drawers. Then closets. Then boxes we haven’t opened ourselves in years. And sometimes he points toward a door and we realize we’ve been living in this house so long that we had almost forgotten there was a room behind it.

“I’d like to go in there.”

There?

“Yes.”

Why?

“Because it’s mine.”

The Whole House is His

That may be one way of understanding what we Wesleyans have traditionally called entire sanctification. It does not mean Jesus has finished cleaning the house. It means there are no rooms we knowingly refuse to let him enter.

There comes a point when we stop following him from room to room negotiating over every drawer and simply say, “The whole house is yours.”

And that is more than another step in the cleaning process. It is a moment of surrender—a decisive work of grace in which I quit deciding which parts of the house Jesus may have. By grace, I hand him every key I know I possess. I may not yet know everything stored in every room, but there is no room I knowingly reserve for myself. The question is no longer, “How much of this house will I let Jesus change?” The answer has become, “All of it. Whatever you want. Wherever you want to go. The whole house is yours.”

Not just the living room where everybody can see. Not just the rooms I’ve already cleaned up. The closets. The drawers. The attic. The boxes. The room at the end of the hall. All of it. Yours.

Ownership and Renovation

That surrender can be real and decisive. But it doesn’t mean the work is finished. In fact, it may mean the real work has only begun. Because complete ownership is not the same thing as completed renovation.

Tomorrow Jesus may open another drawer. Next year he may move another piece of furniture. Ten years from now he may show me something that has been sitting in a corner my entire life, something I have walked past ten thousand times without ever realizing it didn’t belong there. That’s not evidence that I never gave him the house. It may be evidence that he loves me enough to keep working on it.

John Wesley understood sanctification as both something God does decisively and something in which we continue to grow. There is a genuine surrender of ourselves completely to God, but there is also a lifetime of discovering what that surrender means.

Maybe that’s because we don’t know our own houses nearly as well as we think we do. We know the rooms we use every day. Jesus knows what’s behind the walls. And grace keeps working. Opening. Sorting. Cleaning. Repairing. Rearranging. Sometimes throwing away. Sometimes uncovering something beautiful that had been buried beneath years of clutter. And all the while, we are still living in the house.

Trusting the New Owner

Maybe that’s one reason sanctification can be uncomfortable. The old owner still has opinions about where the furniture ought to go. I certainly do. But I’m learning that the question isn’t whether I like every change Jesus makes. The question is whether I trust the Owner.

After all, he didn’t purchase this house in order to destroy it. He bought it because he loves it. And he intends to make it into what it was always meant to be.

So perhaps the prayer of sanctification isn’t nearly as complicated as we sometimes make it: Jesus, this house belongs to you. Whatever you find, whatever needs to change, whatever room I have yet to discover—remind me whose house this is.

As my brothers and I worked our way through Mom’s house, every drawer we emptied and every closet we opened made the house a little less like the house we had always known. That was tough.

Those things were part of her life. Our life with her. Some brought laughter. Some brought tears. Some made us wonder why in the world she had kept them. And some were almost impossible to let go. But eventually, everything had to be examined.

Maybe that’s what I didn’t understand about sanctification for a long time. When I gave my life to Christ, I gave him the house. But I brought a lifetime of stuff with me.

Jesus keeps cleaning, sorting and rearranging, not because he despises the house, but because he loves the person who still lives there. And perhaps that’s the grace I’ve begun to see differently. Jesus didn’t buy the house so he could throw me out. He bought the house so that, room by room, it might become a place shaped by his presence.

So, when he opens the next drawer, perhaps I don’t need to become defensive. When he points toward the next closet, perhaps I don’t need to hide the key. And when he decides the furniture needs rearranging, perhaps I can trust that he sees something I don’t.

After all, the house isn’t mine anymore. I still live here, but thanks be to God, I don’t live here alone.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Why I Am an Evangelical Methodist

/ pastorlynnmalone / 2 Comments

People occasionally ask me why I am a member of the Evangelical Methodist Church, yet I pastor a Global Methodist congregation. It’s a fair question.

I spent more than twenty-eight years as a pastor in the United Methodist Church. I served churches large and small. I served for two years as a district superintendent. Methodism shaped me as a pastor and as a disciple, and I remain deeply grateful for many of the people and experiences that were part of those years. But today I am an ordained elder in the Evangelical Methodist Church. Why?

The answer begins with something very simple: They gave me a home when I didn’t have one.

When I Didn’t Have a Home

My introduction to the Evangelical Methodist Church came long before I ever imagined becoming part of it. In 1995, Rev. Dr. Fred Layman was one of my Supervised Ministry professors in seminary. Dr. Layman was a member of the Evangelical Methodist Church, and through him I learned for the first time that there even was such a thing as the EMC.

I wasn’t looking for another denomination. I was a United Methodist pastor and fully expected to remain one. The EMC was simply this little Methodist denomination that I learned about because one of my professors happened to be part of it. I certainly didn’t imagine that twenty-five years later it would become my denominational home.

In February 2019, I served as a delegate to the called General Conference session of the United Methodist Church. That experience became a significant turning point for me. After considerable prayer and discernment, I concluded that I could no longer remain in the denomination I had served for most of my adult life. By August, I had surrendered my United Methodist clergy credentials. What I didn’t have was somewhere else to go.

For almost a year, I was spiritually homeless. I still loved the Church. I still believed God had called me to ministry. I was still Methodist—Wesleyan down to my toes, as they say—but I no longer had a denominational home.

Then, in July 2020, the Evangelical Methodist Church gave me one. There is something powerful about being welcomed when you aren’t quite sure where you belong. The EMC received me, recognized my calling and ministry, and gave me a place to serve. I will always be grateful for that.

But gratitude alone doesn’t explain why I’m still here. Gratitude brought me through the door. Conviction is why I’m still here.

I Have Found a Theological Home

One of the things that increasingly attracts me to the EMC is its emphasis on Wesleyan holiness. In some ways, that attraction reaches all the way back to my childhood. I grew up next door to Pentecostal cousins, and occasionally I would attend worship with them. Those experiences made an impression on me. There was an expectancy about the work of the Holy Spirit that was different from much of what I experienced elsewhere. Then came the charismatic movement of the 1970s, right about the time I was coming of age. That movement reached even our little church in Chatham, LA.

So, from an early age I was exposed to Christians who believed there was more to the work of the Holy Spirit than simply getting us saved and getting us to heaven. They expected God to continue doing something in us. That stayed with me.

As I grew older and eventually entered ministry, however, I began to struggle with some elements of Pentecostal theology. In particular, I had difficulty with the emphasis on speaking in tongues as the evidence of a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit.

Wesleyan holiness theology eventually gave me another framework for understanding something that had attracted me for much of my life. The holiness tradition retains the expectation of a deeper work of grace. It has traditionally spoken of entire sanctification as a “second work of grace” or even a “second blessing.” But the emphasis isn’t on speaking in tongues. The emphasis is on holiness of heart and life.

God doesn’t merely want to forgive us. God wants to transform us. Grace isn’t finished with us when we are converted. The Holy Spirit continues working to make us more like Jesus. And there comes a place in the disciple’s journey where we are called to surrender ourselves fully to the sanctifying work of God.

I’m still working through exactly how I understand some of that language and how I understand it in my own experience. I can’t necessarily point to a particular date on the calendar and say, “There. That’s when it happened.” But I have become increasingly convinced that conversion cannot be the end of what God’s grace intends to accomplish in us.

One way I’ve come to think about sanctification is that when we come to Christ, the house gets a new Owner. Sanctification is the work of that new Owner opening closets, cleaning out drawers, rearranging furniture and sometimes showing us things we’ve kept around far too long. The goal isn’t merely that Jesus occupies a room in the house. The whole house belongs to him.

I find a theological home for that conviction in the Evangelical Methodist Church.

I Like Being Part of a Small Denomination

There is another reason I love the EMC that isn’t nearly as theological. It’s small. And I mean that as a compliment. Actually, there are only a few more congregations in the entirety of the United States than there were congregations in the district I served as District Superintendent in the UMC.

After spending most of my ministry in a large denomination, I’ve discovered something refreshing about being part of a denomination where it is possible to know one another.

I know our denominational leaders. They know me. They aren’t simply names printed beneath titles on an organizational chart. They’re people I can talk to, pray with, disagree with, eat with and call when I need something. There is something healthy about that kind of accessibility.

At our General Conference this summer, I was reminded again how much I value that. These aren’t distant denominational officials I know only by title. They’re brothers and sisters in ministry I actually know. Seriously, every congregation in the connection was represented. Every pastor was present. In all my years in the UMC, I never experienced anything like that.

Small doesn’t mean insignificant. And large certainly doesn’t mean bad. There are strengths and weaknesses that come with both. But at this stage of my life and ministry, I have discovered that I value relationships more than organizational machinery. I like knowing the people with whom I’m doing ministry. I like being known by them.

The EMC feels less like an institution I belong to and more like a family of churches and pastors with whom I share ministry. That matters to me.

I Like Simple

I also appreciate the relative simplicity of the EMC. I’ve spent enough years in church meetings to know that Methodists are capable of turning almost anything into a committee. And then appointing a subcommittee to study it. And then requiring a report from the subcommittee so the original committee can discuss it at the next meeting. Oh, and let’s not forget the potato salad—well actually, that part was good. But I don’t miss the endless meetings.

There is accountability in the EMC. There is structure. There are reports that have to be completed and meetings that need to happen. Any denomination needs those things. But the machinery doesn’t overwhelm the mission.

The paperwork is relatively simple and can be completed online in a matter of minutes. The denominational structure is relatively simple. There aren’t endless layers of meetings demanding the time and energy of pastors and congregations. I appreciate that more than I probably would have twenty years ago.

The older I get, the more convinced I become that the church’s structures should exist to support ministry rather than ministry existing to support the church’s structures.

I want to preach the gospel. I want to make disciples. I want to pastor people. I want to help people become more like Jesus. If our denominational machinery helps us do those things, wonderful. If maintaining the machinery begins consuming the energy we need to do those things, something has gotten out of order.

I’ve found the simplicity of the EMC refreshing.

Why I Have Stayed

There is one other part of the story worth mentioning. When I became part of the Evangelical Methodist Church in 2020, the Global Methodist Church did not yet exist. So, I didn’t choose the EMC over the GMC. There was no GMC to choose at the time.

Since the GMC was formed, however, I have been approached numerous times about becoming part of it. I’ve chosen to remain where I am.

That isn’t because I’m opposed to the Global Methodist Church. I’m not. I have friends there. I currently serve a congregation in the GMC. I want the GMC to succeed in its mission of making disciples of Jesus Christ and spreading scriptural holiness across the globe.

But somewhere along the way, something changed for me. The Evangelical Methodist Church stopped being simply the denomination that gave me somewhere to belong when I needed a home. It became my church.

Its Wesleyan holiness theology increasingly resonates with what I believe about the disciple’s life. Its size allows relationships that I have come to value deeply. Its leadership is accessible. Its structure is relatively simple. And its emphasis on holiness keeps calling me toward the kind of disciple—and pastor—I believe Jesus wants me to become.

I’m not suggesting the Evangelical Methodist Church is perfect. That would be a particularly strange claim coming from a guy who has a website called Not the Perfect Pastor. Every denomination has its weaknesses. Every denomination has things it needs to do better. The EMC is no exception. 

One example is our language around children and baptism. I remain uncomfortable with the option the EMC offers of dedicating children rather than baptizing them, because my understanding of Wesleyan sacramental theology leads me strongly toward infant baptism. 

That’s one place where I continue to wrestle with my own denomination. But I’ve reached a place in my life where I’m less interested in finding the perfect denomination than I am in being faithful where God has placed me.

Almost thirty years ago, Dr. Fred Layman introduced me to a little denomination I had never heard of. Twenty-five years later, that denomination welcomed me when I didn’t have a home. And over the years since, I’ve discovered something I couldn’t have known then: I wasn’t merely looking for somewhere to land. I was finding home.

Gratitude brought me through the door. Conviction is why I’m still here.

And that, my friends, is why I am an Evangelical Methodist.

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

Have I Truly Surrendered to Christ?

/ pastorlynnmalone / 2 Comments

Not long ago, I was listening to a preacher give an invitation at the end of a gospel concert. I don’t remember everything he said, but one question caught my attention: “Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?”

It was a perfectly reasonable question. I’ve probably asked some version of it myself more times than I can count. But this time it confused me. What exactly does that mean?

Most of the people at a gospel concert are probably already Christians. Certainly, there could have been someone there who enjoyed the music but had never made a profession of faith. Perhaps someone needed to hear the gospel that night and respond to Christ for the first time. But I wondered whether there might be another possibility.

What if the person hearing that invitation had already surrendered his life to Christ? What if he had believed? What if she had been following Jesus for twenty years? What if the work Christ wanted to do in someone’s life that evening wasn’t the beginning of faith, but the continuation of it?

The question stayed with me because I realized I’m not always sure what we mean when we ask someone to “surrender your life to Christ.” There certainly is an initial surrender. There comes a moment when we recognize our need for Christ, repent of our sin, place our faith in him, and confess Jesus as Lord. As Wesleyans, we describe that as the moment of justifying grace. God forgives. God reconciles. God makes us his own.

But grace didn’t suddenly appear at that moment. God’s grace had already been at work. Wesleyans have traditionally called that prevenient grace—the grace that goes before. Long before we understood what God was doing, God was drawing us. Before we knew we needed grace, grace was already awakening us to our need.

In my old age, I have come to believe that we are never absent from God’s grace. We may not always be aware of God’s grace, but we are never absent from it. That doesn’t mean everyone is automatically saved. Grace can be resisted. We can turn away. We can refuse what God desires to do in us. But even our ability to recognize our need for God begins with God’s gracious activity toward us.

Then comes that moment when we say yes. We believe. We surrender. We trust Jesus. But what happens the next morning?

I Surrender All—Again

Since I was listening to a gospel concert, one of the old hymns of the church came to mind: I Surrender All.

I’ve sung it hundreds of times. And I mean it. I surrender all. Today. But tomorrow morning I’ve got to surrender it all again. That’s the part of surrender I don’t think we talk about enough.

Surrender isn’t simply something I did once. Surrender is a daily activity. I can sincerely surrender my life to Christ today and wake up tomorrow determined to have my own way about something. I can place my future in God’s hands and then spend the next three days worrying about it. I can surrender my anger and discover tomorrow that I’ve picked it back up. I can tell Christ that everything I have belongs to him and then become remarkably possessive when he puts his finger on something I don’t want to release.

Perhaps that’s part of sanctification. Yesterday I surrendered “all.” Today the Holy Spirit shows me something else that “all” includes. My ambition. My resentment. My money. My need to be right. My fear. My plans. My relationships. My pain. My reputation. My future. My sin. Apparently “all” is bigger than I realized.

That doesn’t necessarily mean yesterday’s surrender wasn’t genuine. It means God isn’t finished with me. That’s the difference between justification and sanctification. The grace that forgives me is also the grace that transforms me.

“Have You Truly Surrendered?”

That’s why I’ve become uncomfortable with that question—not because it is wrong, but because it can mean several different things.

“Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?” Are you asking whether I’ve ever trusted Christ? Yes. Are you asking whether I’ve confessed Jesus Christ as Lord? Yes. Are you asking whether there was a moment when I believed and entrusted myself to him? Yes. But are you asking whether every part of my life is completely surrendered to Christ at this particular moment? Well…

Maybe I surrendered once. Maybe I didn’t this morning. I don’t think today’s failure necessarily invalidates yesterday’s faith.

Sometimes we Christian preachers collapse justification and sanctification into one event. We see someone struggling with sin, obedience, doubt, addiction, anger, pride, or surrender, and conclude that perhaps that person was never really saved. “You need to truly surrender your life to Christ.”

Maybe. Or, perhaps the person has trusted Christ and now needs to surrender to what the Holy Spirit is trying to do next. Perhaps this isn’t a question of whether justifying grace was real. Perhaps it is a question of whether I am presently yielding myself to sanctifying grace. That’s a very different question.

Can We Fall From Grace?

And this raises another difficult question. Can I fall from grace?

As a Wesleyan, I don’t believe in “once saved, always saved” in the way that phrase is commonly understood. I believe human beings remain capable of resisting God’s grace. Scripture takes seriously the possibility of turning away from faith.

But I wonder whether “falling from grace” is always the best way to picture what happens. A fall sounds accidental. I wasn’t paying attention. I stumbled. Suddenly I’m outside the grace of God.

I’m not convinced that’s a good description of our relationship with God.

Perhaps it is better to speak of turning from grace. I can resist the Spirit. I can ignore conviction. I can refuse obedience. I can repeatedly say no to what God is asking of me. And I suppose it is possible for repeated resistance eventually to become rejection. A person can turn away from faith. I don’t know that it requires someone to stand up one morning and formally announce, “I hereby renounce Jesus Christ.” Scripture’s warnings about drifting and hardened hearts suggest that turning away may sometimes happen gradually.

But neither do I believe that every act of disobedience means I’ve fallen out of salvation.

If it did, none of us could have assurance for very long. There is a difference between struggling within a relationship with Christ and abandoning the relationship altogether.

I can be disobedient and still be a disciple, though not necessarily a good one. I can resist the Spirit and still be someone the Spirit is pursuing. I can refuse to surrender something today without concluding that everything God has done in my life until today was imaginary. In fact, the conviction I feel over my resistance may itself be evidence that grace is still at work.

Grace Doesn’t Eliminate the Will

There is another distinction I think matters. Sometimes we talk about surrender as though everything depends upon human determination. Try harder. Do better. Make yourself surrender. Sanctification isn’t self-improvement with religious vocabulary.

At the same time, surrender isn’t passive. God doesn’t surrender my life for me. The Holy Spirit convicts. The Holy Spirit draws. The Holy Spirit enables. Grace makes obedience possible. But I still have to say yes.

Maybe surrender is best understood as the grace-enabled yielding of the human will to God. That’s different from willpower. Willpower says, “I am going to make myself a better person.” Grace says, “God is at work in me, and I am yielding myself to what God desires to do.”

Paul captures that tension beautifully in Philippians: “Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.”

We work because God is working. We respond because grace has already acted. We surrender because the Spirit has enabled us to surrender. And tomorrow, we do it again.

Maybe That’s the Invitation

So, I’ve been thinking about that preacher’s question. “Have you truly surrendered your life to Christ?” Maybe the problem isn’t the question. Maybe we just need to understand how large the question really is. 

There is an invitation for the person who has never trusted Christ: Will you surrender your life to Jesus? Believe. Repent. Trust him. Receive the grace God has already been extending toward you.

But there is also an invitation for the person who has followed Jesus for fifty years: Will you surrender your life to Jesus? Not because your previous surrender was necessarily false. Not because every failure means you need to get saved again. But because Jesus is still Lord.

And there are still places within us where we would rather be lord.

Maybe the Christian life is learning, by grace, to surrender those places as the Spirit reveals them. Today it may be my pride. Tomorrow it may be my fear. Next year it may be something I cannot even see in myself today. That doesn’t mean grace has failed. It means grace is still working. Sanctifying grace keeps reaching into the places I haven’t surrendered yet and saying, “This too.” And I get to answer again, “Yes, Lord.”

The Goal Isn’t Becoming Better

Perhaps this is where I’ve finally landed. Christianity is often presented as though Jesus came to make us better people. I don’t think that’s quite right. Certainly, following Jesus ought to change the way we live. We should become more loving, more patient, more generous, more forgiving, more truthful, more compassionate. If decades of following Jesus leave us just as angry, selfish and cruel as we were when we began, something is wrong.

Becoming a better person isn’t the goal. We don’t follow Jesus to become better people. We follow Jesus to become like Jesus. Becoming better is the fruit, not the goal.

That’s why surrender matters. I can’t transform myself into the likeness of Christ by determination. I cannot grit my teeth and manufacture holiness. Sanctification isn’t a self-improvement project. It is the continuing work of God’s grace forming Christ in me.

My part is surrender. Not once. Again. And again. And again.

There was a day when I surrendered my life to Christ. I meant it. By God’s grace, I still mean it. But this morning there are things I need to surrender again. And tomorrow morning, if God gives me another day, I suspect there will be more. That’s not evidence that my surrender failed. Maybe that’s simply what a life of surrender looks like.

So, what about you? Have you surrendered your life to Jesus Christ?

Until next time, keep looking up…

If any of my reflections encouraged or challenged you, follow Not the Perfect Pastor on Facebook for more conversations about faith, ministry, and becoming faithful disciples of Jesus.

No Longer a Fan…

/ pastorlynnmalone / Leave a comment

I know. I’m old! I’m not sure how I got so old so fast, but here I am and there’s nothing I can do about it. One of the things that’s happened to me as I’ve gotten older is that my likes and dislikes have changed.

Example: I used to love football…and the New Orleans Saints in particular. Yes, La. Tech and LSU were close seconds, but man, those Saints. Even back in the day I would wear the paper bag and yet it didn’t deter me from my love for the black and gold. I lived in constant expectation of “next year.”

Back in the day, Vanessa would leave me home alone on Sunday afternoon if the Saints were playing. She didn’t want to listen to me whoop, holler and shout. I’d whoop, holler and shout if things went well and I’d moan, whine and complain when things didn’t go well (if you’re a Saints fan, you know that was most of the time). It really could be a spectacle at times.

Then, Facebook came along. I soon discovered that Facebook was the new way to watch football with friends. I’d share my comments about the game in real-time and friends would respond and it added to the fun of football, both professional and college.

Now, I really couldn’t care less. It’s just not fun anymore. My love for professional football in general and the Saints in particular really begin its decline after 2020 with BLM and Covid. Sports (not just football) became too political (which is really strange since I’m kind of a political junkie).

I suppose sports was one of the few places a person could go to get away from all the politics, where Democrats, Republicans and Independents could share the joys (or travails) of their favorite team for three hours on a Sunday afternoon. For three hours on a Sunday afternoon, we were united. Yeah, well that changed, and I think it changed me a little, too.

But, it’s probably just because I’m old now. I used to laugh at the old men who sat around the gas stove at Malone’s Hardware complaining about the state of the world. I no longer laugh now because I’ve become one of those old men and I now know why they complained so much and spoke as they did.

I am them and I think it has affected my love for football. Of course, it could be that sports have changed so dramatically in recent years, too. I’d prefer to say it’s that, but I suspect it’s really just that I’m old.

How has it changed? Well, for starters, there’s the money thing. I mean, really, a fan can’t afford to go to a professional game anymore (yeah, people do, but can they really afford it?). I wanted to take my sons, son-in-law and grandsons to see the Saints and the Cowboys. It was going to cost me over $1,000, and that was for standing room only and DID NOT include parking or food! We didn’t go!

Full disclosure: I did purchase four tickets (and no, I didn’t spend $1,000), but as the day approached I just didn’t feel like driving to Dallas, standing through a three hour game and then driving back home. That’s because I’m old! My two oldest grandsons utilized the tickets, so it wasn’t a total loss.

It’s the same with college sports, too. I suppose it really changed for me when NIL became a thing. Now, for the players, it’s all about the Benjamins. I don’t blame them. Get it while you can, I guess, but there’s no loyalty anymore. You never know who is going to be on the team anymore. The teams with the richest alumni can stock their teams with the finest players and claim the championships. These days there are 25 year-olds who have “eligibility” playing college football. Go figure!

I guess I’m just old and I don’t really care anymore. Seriously, I didn’t even watch all of the LSU game last night. I’d rather go to sleep. Besides, I’ve discovered (because things have changed) that I can watch a three hour game in 20 minutes on YouTube the next day. No big deal last night, though. LSU got spanked. You know what that means? It means I didn’t stay up late for nothing and I didn’t go to sleep frustrated, so there’s that.

Yeah, I still watch football, but only when I don’t have anything else I’d rather be doing (like sleeping). Yes, I’ll occasionally comment something on Facebook but I do so only to see if I can wrinkle a few feathers of fan friends. The reality is, though, if I never watched another game, I’d probably be okay with it.

The games I want to see these days? The ones my grandchildren are playing in, and only because my grandchildren are playing in them. I LOVE to see my grandchildren do anything. Because I’m old, I now know why they call them GRANDchildren. Everything about them is grand. I’ve told my children that if I had known grandchildren were this much fun, I would have skipped them and went straight to the grandchildren. You know what? You have to be old to realize that.

So, I’m grateful for getting old even if I don’t like some of the changes that happen when we get old. When I was young, we were told in ministry that we needed to keep working on our “growing edges.” Well, now that I’m older, I have to keep working on those “growing edges.” Those growing edges are just different now.

Let’s face it. The Lord still has a lot of work to do on me and in me, it’s just in different places these days. Will He ever be finished? One day, perhaps He will. After all, I’m a Wesleyan and I believe in the process of sanctification. It is a life-long endeavor. But, you have to get old to realize that.

Thank God for getting old!

Until next time, keep looking up…