Have you ever heard a sermon that made you angry?

I was visiting a church a few years ago. The pastor was in his early thirties, very gifted, handsome and with a winning personality. The worship was excellent, the people friendly, the coffee strong and hot; everything you need for a good worship service, right?

The pastor was preaching about bearing fruit, being productive for Jesus. It was a really good sermon, except for one little (or not so little) thing.

Early in the sermon, he told the listeners about his weekly routine.

“Every Sunday after the last morning service, I go back to my office. And on the back of my office door is a sheet of paper with a number on it. So the last thing I do when I leave after the final morning service every Sunday is … I take that sheet of paper off the back of my office door, throw it away, and put up a new sheet of paper with a new number that is ONE LESS than the old number.”

He went on with his sermon without explaining what the number on the back of his office door represents. He left us to wonder.

Then, at the end of his sermon, he finally told us what the numbers were.

“The number on the sheet of paper on the back of my office door is the number of Sundays I have before I turn sixty.”

When he said that, I was furious. Well, not really furious, that’s an overstatement for dramatic effect on my part. But I was more than a little irritated.

He’s preaching about being fruitful and productive for Christ, and the frame that he wove his sermon around was the number of Sundays before he turned sixty. Those were the years, he felt, that comprised his career. He seemed to be saying that when he reached sixty years of age, that would be the end of his productive service for Christ.

(I wonder: was I the only person in the congregation who is approaching [or already] sixty? Were they as irked as I was?)

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I will turn sixty in a few months, and all this past year I have been very conscious of this approaching birthday.

And I’m very conscious of the youth bias in today’s church; everybody wants YOUTH and ENERGY. (Everybody wants to hire a 30 year old pastor who has 20 years of full-time ministry experience.)

You know what? I don’t care about the youth bias. I refuse to care about when other people think their time of fruitfulness has ended.

I AM RESOLVED that the next 10 years (plus a few months, I’m not sixty quite yet) are going to be the most productive, the most fruitful season of my life. I’m constantly praying to that end.

(If you’ve read this far, please join me in praying for this coming decade to be fruitful, for both of us.)

I am thinking of changes I need to make if my sixties are going to be what I want them to be.

• What habits do I need to develop that will make these years fruitful for God?
• What habits do I need to break if my work is to be impactful for God?
• What new endeavors do I need to embark upon?
• What productivity-wasters do I need to leave behind?

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Lord, only you know the number of my days. Take the time that I have and USE ME. Don’t let me waste it on things that won’t matter in eternity. Root out the things in my that limit my fruitfulness.

Take the time that I have and use me to bless the churches of Croatia, the Christian workers of Zagreb and beyond.

Take the time that I have and make me a blessing to the American churches and institutions and individuals I interact with.

Guide my steps and thoughts so that they bring you glory and help the churches, in American AND in Central Europe, to grow in health and positive impact on the world around them.