My Sense of God’s Direction for Me Now that I Am Retired

I believe God has different things for each of us during different seasons of our lives.  For this next period of my life, I want to focus on three priorities:

(1) growing in my own walk with the Lord,

(2) discipling others so they can grow spiritually,

(3) promoting healthy local churches. 

These priorities have been on my heart in one form or another for virtually all my adult life. At the same time, they came into clearer focus some seven and a half years ago when Seminary of the East closed and my full-time teaching career ended.  Recently I have been challenged in a new way to focus on doing what I can to promote healthy local churches through reading some of Mark Dever’s 9Marks material on healthy churches:

  • The Compelling Community: Where God’s Power Makes a Church Attractive by Mark Dever and Jamie Dunlop (Crossway, 2015). 
  • How to Build a Healthy Church: A Practical Guide for Deliberate Leadership, by Mark Dever and Paul Alexander (Crossway, 2021).
  • Nine Marks of a Healthy Church (4th Edition) by Mark Dever (Crossway, 2021).

Helen and I have been blessed by reading these books aloud during the evenings. 

As I have thought about these three priorities of growing in my own life, helping others grow, and promoting healthy churches, I have developed three values or better yet, strategies for growth that seem so essential in today’s human-centered world, namely, becoming more:

(1) God-centered by exalting the glory and purposeful sovereignty of our Creator and Redeemer.

(2) Christ-exalting through treasuring more of the beauty and wonder of Christ.

(3) Gospel-driven by rejoicing in the good news of the gospel as God’s means of first bringing people into a right relationship with Himself and then using this same gospel message to encourage and strengthen those who are already His children.

I know I want to grow more in each of these three areas of growing personally, helping others grow, and doing whatever I can to promote healthy local churches.  I want to learning more about what makes both individual believers and local churches healthy and vibrant through being more God-centered, Christ-exalting, and Gospel-driven.  Hopefully these priorities and values will be the common denominator of everything I do for the rest of my life.

Please pray for me for God’s guidance and direction in all this. 

Thanks. 

Brian Labosier