Topics: Diligence; Healing; Ministry; Miracles; Missions; Results; Retirement; Sacrifice; Work
References: Acts 20:35; 1 Corinthians 15:9–11, 58; 2 Corinthians 6:5; Hebrews 13:7
Before J. Oswald Sanders was fifty, he had arthritis so bad that he could hardly get out of bed. He could have taken a nice retirement. Instead, he entered the most productive years of his life.
At age fifty, he left a prosperous career as an attorney in New Zealand to lead the China Inland Mission (now Overseas Missionary Fellowship). After several years of leading the mission, he retired, only to take on the directorship of a Christian college. Then he retired again.
As a two-time widower, he certainly deserved a rest. But rather than taking it easy, he accelerated, spending his last twenty years speaking around the world more than three hundred times per year. His respect grew even though he never sought the limelight or tried to maintain his position. He was almost ninety and working on a book when he died.
—Jerry White, Dangers Men Face (NavPress, 1997)