Welcome back to the Aspastur John podcast and Pastor John.

We have not done an entire episode on the midlife crisis, especially your own experience

of a midlife crisis, but you have a story to tell that it's not something that you have

talked about at length.

I think there's an old conversation with you and John MacArthur where you talked about

it a little bit more length.

And now speak to middle-aged listeners, men who are 40 or who are nearly 40.

What did you learn during that dark season of your own life?

And what would you say to other men who are facing those midlife years or soon to be

in them, take us into your story and what you learned from it?

I think I was 40 when we were on vacation in California and Ben Patterson who was at that

time the pastor of a Presbyterian Church in Irvine asked me to preach for him and offered

me his house for some days of vacation while they were away.

And so we took him up on it and two things happened which were remarkable and probably

a wake-up call, a warning for me in midlife to hold fast to Jesus.

One was that I felt inexplicably depressed while I was there.

One morning I was sitting on the stairway to the second level of their house crying.

And my wife found me and was startled because that's not typical.

She asked me, what's wrong?

And I simply said, I don't have any idea.

That's what MacArthur got so surprised in that conversation that we had.

He just shook his hands and said, I've never experienced anything like that.

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