Welcome to the Paul Tripp podcast, where pastor and best-selling author Dr. Paul David Tripp connects the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life.

As we grow older, we look back on life and have regrets.

We're discouraged by the passing of our dreams. We realize we're not the person we once wanted to be.

In today's episode, we'll listen to the first session

from Paul's conference, Lost in the Middle,

which reveals that these difficulties of life

are not evidence of God's inattention.

In fact, they are signs of his grace, love, and faithfulness.

Here's Paul with Session one of Lost in the Middle.

It is great to be with you.

I was thinking about what I should say to you as we begin,

and I have a lot of thoughts about this material.

Maybe you're here and midlife seems distant. Maybe that's

because you haven't arrived yet or you've been through it years ago. Well, this material is much broader

than just material on the middle years.

It really has to do with the way God meets us by His grace

and in the personal work of Jesus Christ,

in the middle of the harsh realities of life in a fallen world.

My mom, as a young believer was noticing that older believers as they would face the last few days

of their life would die with such grace.

And she went to her pastor, and she said, Pastor, I've watched these people die with such grace, and I just don't think that I have dying grace. And he said

to her, Faye, that's because you're alive.

...