Shifting Gears

It’s been three months since I retired from the pastorate on June 1, 2026. After 7 years of camp ministry and 40 years of church ministry, it was time. If you’ve ever driven an old truck that needed double-clutching to shift gears, you will know that sometimes shifting gears gets tricky. Life has a lot of tricky shifts, like after you say, “I do,” or after the diagnosis comes in, or after you get accepted to wherever, or after retirement. What do I do now?

Moses may have had the same issue. How do you shift gears after going through the Red Sea? Or after the Israelites voted not to go into the promised land? It may have been a time like that when he wrote our verse for the week:

Psalm 90:12 (CSB)

¹² Teach us to number our days carefully

so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts.

So, how do we do that? Well, if you can carve out an hour this week, I’ll give you a guide I’ve adapted from one used by Awakened Heart Ministries that I found helpful. I went through it myself before retirement, we used it at one of our elder prayer meetings just before I left AnchorPoint, and I’ve revisited it on and off these last three months.

Ready? Here we go…

Theme: Receiving what God has given—and faithfully entrusting it back into His care.

Assumptions:

• God is already at work.
• Our calling flows from who we are becoming, not merely what we are doing.
• Clarity most often emerges through listening, not acting out of urgency.
• “Legacy is not what we leave behind accidentally. It is what we steward faithfully once we realize what has been placed in our hands.” –author unknown

Listening: John 15:9–16 (NIV)

⁹ “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. ¹⁰ If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. ¹¹ I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. ¹² My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. ¹³ Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. ¹⁴ You are my friends if you do what I command. ¹⁵ I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. ¹⁶ You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you.

Observation – Don’t overthink. Simply notice what draws your attention.

1. Read – What word, phrase, or image draws your attention?

• Reflect – Why might this word or phrase be touching you now, in this season of life?

• Receive – What invitation, reassurance, or calling might God be offering you right now?

Personal Reflection: Your Calling & Legacy

Looking Back: Tracing the story God has already been writing

• When have you felt most alive, aligned, or deeply grounded in God’s purposes?

• What themes or patterns do you see across your life—not just isolated moments of success? (Pay attention to recurring movements, not standout achievements)

Looking In:What kind of man do others tend to become when they are with you? Notice what you seem to give without trying to make something happen.

Looking Ahead:As you look toward the later chapters of your life, what do you most want to steward faithfully, rather than try to achieve or control?

Final Thoughts

1. What surfaced for you that surprised you?

• Did you notice themes/patterns that have followed you longer than you realized?

• Where do you sense God has been more faithful than you often acknowledge?

Prayer of Dedication

God, I place into Your hands, what I was never meant to carry on my own.

Shape my life into a faithful witness, that I might reflect Your light in the darkness.

Guard my heart, and the heart of my church, that it may remain pleasing to You and bear lasting fruit.

Keep what You have awakened alive within me—protect my heart and mind, that I would not lose my way.

And lead me, gently and courageously, into the year ahead, for the glory of Your name. Amen.

Be encouraged,

Dan

Photo by Alok Sharma on Unsplash

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