John Lennox has given advice on “finishing well” in an interview for the Sing! Conference.
The 82-year-old Christian author and theologian spoke to those attending the October Getty music worship conference on the importance of humility and remaining open to advice and challenge in later years.
The Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and international speaker urged believers to remain rooted in Scripture and not to tire of seeking the Lord.
Share the Gospel
Lennox is President of The Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. He said that “the chief test of all shepherds is the way they end up”, warning: “It is perfectly possible for a person who has led an exemplary Christian life, been a leader, to end up a silly old fool.”
He explained: “One of the things I believe that has sustained me through life is constantly to be alive to opportunities to witness”.
a colossal hope based on the resurrection of Jesus
He added: “There’s nothing more life-giving than seeing other people experience what you yourself have seen. In other words, the joy of salvation and beginning to grow.”
Honest friends
Lennox warned: “As you get older, it’s very easy to get into the mindset that you know everything and to close down and not listen to anybody.”
The professor noted: “I’ve watched it again and again happen in people that you would have said would never happen to them. It can happen to any of us. And it’s something to fear in a way.”
He advised: “We must surround ourselves by friends, family who are close enough to us to be honest with us.”
Wait on the Lord
As an author who has written extensively on technology and AI, Lennox observed that modern technology is making people “desperately impatient”.
He added: “I fear that there will be a great deal of spiritual bankruptcy through the overuse of technology. Instead of being a useful tool — which it is — it becomes a master and destroys the very thing that we’re hoping it will do.”
He noted the importance of the book of Psalms, and said: “What the hymn book of the Bible tells us again and again is to wait on the Lord. That is a crucial idea. And in the modern electronic speed of life, that’s the last thing people are going to do.”
Lennox reminded Christians that heaven is not ‘the goal’: “Heaven is where Jesus is — being with him, wherever he is, is the goal.”
Colossal hope
One concept Lennox described as “very powerful” is how: “Generally speaking, older Christians, as they got nearer to death, their hearts and minds were getting excited about the fact they were going to be with the Lord and it was expanding into eternity.
“Whereas non-Christian people, it was the next year, the next month, the next day or the next hour. Their whole horizon was coming in.”
He said the hope of the new creation with no more suffering is “not a trivial and a vague thing, that is a colossal hope based on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead”.
Lennox concluded by answering what he is looking forward to: “I’m looking forward to seeing the Lord. And it’s going to happen.”
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